Digitise your collection

Digitise your collection

Everyone has film, video, tapes or photos tucked away at home. Family outings at the beach, holidays, Christmases, christenings and birthdays. As time goes on it becomes more difficult to view or playback this content. Eventually, it will be impossible to recover information from an 8mm film or open reel tape. Migrating this material to a digital format is the only way to prolong its life.

We digitise all kinds of material, however for our archive we are interested in Maltese memories at home and in the Maltese diaspora. We encounter a great deal of photographs and film which were taken abroad on holidays, or audio and video recordings featuring copyrighted material. We cannot use this type of material in our projects and so do not usually digitise it – although we do recognise its value to you.

Tell us what you have and we’ll see what we can do for you!

Magna Żmien can digitise your collection at a flat rate of €20 if you choose to donate the content to us. Once digitised, we return everything along with a digital copy. We keep these digital files on our server and make them available to use by artists and researchers – we do not re-license your material for commercial use. See our Events Archive to learn more about the kinds of projects we produce.

  • A €20 administration fee covers processing your collection
  • Ideally you drop off your collection at our studio in Valletta, or else we can pick it up from you for €10
  • We return your collection to you via download (free), but we can also provide it to you on a USB (€15) or DVD (€2 per disc)

As stated above, not everything is suitable for our archive. Holidays abroad (unless captured in the Maltese diaspora) and copyrighted material such as TV and radio broadcasts, plays, etc, can’t be re-used in our projects, so we can’t digitise these for free. If we find these in your donated collection we will let you decide whether you want us to transfer these at a cost.

Private digitisation

Perhaps you have photographs or recordings that you want to preserve for the future, but which you don’t want to donate to the Magna Żmien project? We can help! We can digitise your audio-visual memories using the same high quality equipment and to the same high standard that we’ve applied to all of the collections we’ve worked on since 2018.

By having us digitise your collection you can retrieve your memories from obsolete formats whilst also directly supporting our community archive. As a Voluntary Organisation we rely on public funds and on private services such as this to operate. All funds we receive go directly to costs such as paying our engineers to make and edit the transfers, equipment maintenance, studio rent, and web hosting.

Private Digitisation Rates

(All prices include VAT)

35mm slides€1.20 per slide (2500dpi)
€1.50 per slide (5000dpi)
35mm negatives€1.20 per image (2500dpi) – €7.20 per strip of 6 images
€1.50 per slide (5000dpi) – €9 per strip of 6 images
Medium Format negatives€2.50 per image (4800dpi)
Glass negatives€2.50 per image (4800dpi)
Photographs€0.60 per print (1200dpi)
8mm film (Normal 8 / Super 8)€25 – 50-150 feet / 3″ to 4” diameter (with / without sound)
€30 – 200-400 feet / 5″ to 7″ diameter (with / without sound)
VHS / S-VHS / VHS-C€18 per tape
Video 8 / Hi8 / Digital 8€18 per tape
Mini DV / DVCAM€18 per tape
Open reel audio tape€30 per reel
Audiocassette€15 per cassette
Microcassette€15 per cassette
Minidisc€15 per disc
Vinyl / acetate records€3 per 7″ / €12 per 12″ LP
Gramophone disc /other disc€7 per disc

35mm slides & 35mm negatives: 2500dpi / 5000dpi 24bit AdobeRGB TIFF; also provided in 24bit JPEG (Reflecta RPS 10M)
Medium Format negatives: 4800dpi 24bit AdobeRGB TIFF; also provided in 24bit JPEG (Epson V600)
Glass negatives: 4800dpi 24bit Adobe RGB TIFF; also provided in 24bit JPEG (Epson V600)
Print photographs: 1200dpi 24bit AdobeRGB TIFF; also provided in 24bit JPEG (Epson V600)
8mm / Super 8 film: ca. 1080p MP4 (custom Bauer T502, modified speed control, LED, and macro lens)
VHS / S-VHS / VHS-C: PAL 576i / NTSC 486i MP4 (JVC HR-S7965EK with Panasonic TBC)
Video 8 / Hi8 / Digital 8: PAL 576i MP4 (Sony TRV-355E with Panasonic TBC)
MiniDV / DVCAM: 720×576 DV with 16bit / 48kHz WAV sound (Sony DSR-11)
Open reel tape: 24bit / 96kHz WAV; also provided in 16bit / 44.1kHz WAV and 320kbps mp3 (Revox B77 mk1, Tandberg 3000X)
Audiocassette: 24bit / 96kHz WAV; also provided in 16bit / 44.1kHz WAV and 320kbps mp3 (Yamaha KX580SE, NAD 6240)
Microcassette: 24bit / 96kHz WAV; also provided in 16bit / 44.1kHz WAV and 320kbps mp3 (Genexxa Micro-22)
Minidisc: 24bit / 96kHz WAV; also provided in 16bit / 44.1kHz WAV and 320kbps mp3 (Tascam MD-801R mk2)
Vinyl / acetates: 24bit / 96kHz WAV; also provided in 16bit / 44.1kHz WAV and 320kbps mp3 (Technics SL1210 mk2, Stanton 505.V3 cart, Stanton N500S stylus)
Gramophone discs: 24bit / 96kHz WAV; also provided in 16bit / 44.1kHz WAV and 320kbps mp3 (Technics SL1210 mk2, Stanton 505.V3 cart, Rek-O-Kut styli pack)