Darkwing Posted September 17, 2012 Share Posted September 17, 2012 So finally, what my family owns for technology has kinda caught up to some of our ambitions! Anyways, my dad way back in the day, would shoot home movies and try and make short films and well, basically what I and many others here do now as well, except they were on 8mm film! So, we have 30 year old film that's beginning to lose its colour and becoming kinda brittle and it really needs to be transferred in some form that will stand the test of time longer then 8mm! So to digital we say! I have an HD camcorder and dad was able to acquire a projector some months back. The projector needed some maintenance done to and of course, you can't just hop to your local 8mm Film Projector shop (cause they don't exist, at least not here anyways!) and pick up parts, so it was an interesting project of repairing old parts with various items (like replacing one of the belts with an elastic band...crossing our fingers it lasts long enough to survive this project!) So project ready to go, it's time to start capturing! Dad and I just finished running some tests trying to find the best balance of colour, frame rate, exposure and shutter speed to record the film with minimal flicker (we amazingly were able to remove almost all of it!). So the goal is to not just capture the footage...but remaster it as well! At least to a degree. I've been learning a lot about post via After Effects by working on a project for some folks in Georgia so I guess the stars just lined up right for this project to take place! There's at least a dozen reels of film and if each one is around the length of our test one (which was maybe 6-8 min) then there's a fair bit of footage to go through! But this is an exciting project that is full of challenges and exciting learning opportunities for bridging the gap between film and digital! I do hope to post pics and video when I have them because this is one project I definitely wanna have some record of! The one unfortunate aspect is that this projector is only a very basic model. It only does one frame rate (18FPS) which my camera can't match (too low). But I was able to correct like 95% of it by playing with the Shutter priority feature of the camera! The real downside of the projector is that it has no audio capabilities, so any footage that has audio is currently gonna remain silent. But still, better than nothing! Also, a long term aspect to this project that I'm crazy enough to try, is to get dad to pick his most precious reel of film and then over coming months (or years...) do a frame by frame restoration, by removing as many scratches and dust and just cleaning up the image as much as possible. That should be quite the undertaking but an interesting one at that! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
largento Posted September 17, 2012 Share Posted September 17, 2012 There are companies that do this, just a quick Googling showed one that would do a 50' reel for $10. They do it as a frame-by-frame transfer and even do color correction. Once you've gotten the files from them, you can go to town with cleaning 'em up. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Darkwing Posted September 17, 2012 Author Share Posted September 17, 2012 Why go through a company when I can do it myself?! That takes all the fun out of it!! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hash Fellow robcat2075 Posted September 17, 2012 Hash Fellow Share Posted September 17, 2012 The biggest problem is synching the projector blade with the video frame. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
johnl3d Posted September 17, 2012 Share Posted September 17, 2012 I took a lot of small 8mm home movies recorded them with a camcorder using a device that projected the them to a small screen that the camcorder was aimed at then after getting it together burned onto a dvd these where old ones without sound. Took along time but the result was greaet Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
John Bigboote Posted September 17, 2012 Share Posted September 17, 2012 I'd like to figure out a way to use a scanner to scan maybe a foot of film at a time, then- if it's registered properly(always an issue with 8mm sprockets) I could use a photoshop action to place each frame on it's own layer, and then export a Quicktime from Photoshop. After Effects (newer versions) has a GREAT 'stabilize motion' feature that could take away a degree of misregistration. I want to do it this way because my 8mm is too brittle to project in a projector. Stuff is 60 years old. It's all just time... I bought a USB turntable figuring I would be able to digitaze select tracks off my LP's... never happened. My life is WAY too much a whirlwind anymore. EDIT: It's GREAT that you are doing this with your Dad, mine passed away and I wish I could have had his old movies digitized so he could see one last time. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Simon Edmondson Posted September 17, 2012 Share Posted September 17, 2012 My older brother has transferred a number of 8mm and Super 8 films to video and digital. I can find out his working method if interested ?, although it sounds like you already have it arranged. regards simon Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Darkwing Posted September 17, 2012 Author Share Posted September 17, 2012 I'd like to figure out a way to use a scanner to scan maybe a foot of film at a time, then- if it's registered properly(always an issue with 8mm sprockets) I could use a photoshop action to place each frame on it's own layer, and then export a Quicktime from Photoshop. After Effects (newer versions) has a GREAT 'stabilize motion' feature that could take away a degree of misregistration. I want to do it this way because my 8mm is too brittle to project in a projector. Stuff is 60 years old. It's all just time... I bought a USB turntable figuring I would be able to digitaze select tracks off my LP's... never happened. My life is WAY too much a whirlwind anymore. EDIT: It's GREAT that you are doing this with your Dad, mine passed away and I wish I could have had his old movies digitized so he could see one last time. Yeah, that's too bad. When we finished our first test reel, he quick got on the phone with his parents all super excited that this was happening! I tried a couple years back to scan in a bit of film and was able to make it move, the problem was the scanner scanned it as being, well, 8mm in width, so it was kinda tiny and quite dark. Those are two problems that would need to be fixed before scanning would be a viable option (course maybe some piece of technology exists for this purpose, I don't really know. My older brother has transferred a number of 8mm and Super 8 films to video and digital. I can find out his working method if interested ?, although it sounds like you already have it arranged. regards simon Well I got something that's pretty good, but I'll always take tips or pieces of advice on this project! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Simon Edmondson Posted September 18, 2012 Share Posted September 18, 2012 Well I got something that's pretty good, but I'll always take tips or pieces of advice on this project! I asked my brother, and it sounds as though the process you have already identified, may be more comprehensive and controllable than the one he used. This was his response. "When Harry and I converted the old 8mm cine to video I simply "videoed" from the screen. I don't think it's the highest quality way to do it but it seemed to work reasonably well. It was a long time ago now but I think I set the camera on manual focus, exposure and white balance and just shot the screen image while monitoring on Harry's TV. Harry may have manually adjusted the film speed to eliminate any "beat" effect from the interaction of the differing frame rates of the cine and camcorder. It is important to have both the projector and camera orthogonal to the screen centre. As this is clearly impossible it was necessary to have the camera between the projector and screen and just low enough to prevent its shadow appearing on the screen." Pardon my diversion regards simon Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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