Archiving converted 8mm cine

[spingo]

I'm about to have transferred (professionally) 50 years of 8mm cine film to DVD that I can view unedited and also to a digital format that I can edit. Advice is require from forum members as to the best, and future-proof format (codec) to use. I will be editing the resulting outcome in iMovie '09 or iMovie HD on my Intel MacBook Pro or Premier 6.5 (sorry guys on my PC, can't afford it for my Mac).

[edDV]

8mm film is usually ~18 fps. It doesn't encode nicely to 25 fps MPeg2 DVD.

A better approach is to use a service that scans the film frame by frame and delivers the frame sequence on a flash or hard drive. That way you can crop, filter and edit before encoding for display. 8mm can be scanned at 960x720 or above for easy conversion to 720p or at 768x576 for 576p.

There are various tricks that can be tried to convert 18fps to 25 or 50 fps. I'd go for frame repeats something like 332332 which would produce about 0.96 speed for 720p or 576p 50 fps. 3x frame repeats would produce 8% fast speed.

Programs like Premiere Pro or After Effects can handle odd frame rates. You could also do it in Virtualdub/AVISynth. Premiere 6.5 will probably do fine at 18 fps. You can then use AVISynth to process the frame repeats.

[spingo]

Ed thanks for your reply. Should have said that the film will be processed professionally frame by frame and because I have a lot of footage decided to transfer direct to DVD unedited for viewing now, but also have the footage archived in AVI?, Mpeg1234?, DV? for editing at my leisure. But which format is best.

[Herve]

But which format is best.

The service (french) I used made some great conversions: not too more dust, convert to 25fps with duplications of frames and re-interlacing for smoothness. The result was on DV tape & DVD-VIDEO

This post just to say: use a buying service, my home made conversion was far worse than their one.

about formats: avoid AVI if you can, prefer a standard format for editing (like DV). Notice: if your television standard is NTSC, avoid DV (color/luminance is not so cool in NTSC), and prefer a DVD (you could convert it later in AIC wth MpegStreamClip for editing in iMovie)

bye

[rumplestiltskin]

You're not converting first to DVD (MPEG2), are you? That would seem to be at odds with what you intend to do with it later.

[spingo]

Rumple, I have roughly 4000ft of 8mm film, in 50ft, 100ft and 200ft reels covering 50 years, so you can imagine how many occasions are covered over that period. The biggest charge is for this professional convert to DVD, which can be viewed straight away on TV, and for only a few pounds sterling per reel more, they will render an archive disc to a format of my choice so I can edit the footage at my leisure. Whats the best file format for this?

[edDV]

MPeg2 will be viewable but difficult to get back to frames. The resolution will also be 720x576 max.

I'm suggesting a sequence of Tiff or at least JPeg frames. You would then create your own playable MPeg2 DVD as I suggested above.

The services here will give you frame sequences on a hard drive plus encode a viewable DVD if specified. You would do your work from the hard drive frames, not the MPeg2 encoded DVD.

I'll try to post a link to a service for reference.

[rumplestiltskin]

Depending on the quality of the source material (and the quality you will demand later on), DV-Stream is probably the best compromise of quality and compression. It also permits frame-accurate editing because it doesn't use temporal compression. IIRC, isn't it 15GB/hour of footage?

4000 ft * 80 frames per foot = 320,000 frames
320,000 / 16 frames per second = 20,000 seconds
20,000 / 60 = 333.33 minutes
333.33 minutes / 60 = 5.55 hours
5.55 hours * 15GB per hour = 82.5GB

So even a small HD can hold it all if you do DV (which iMovie HD must have as it only works with that and will convert anything it's provided into DV during the import process).

iMovie'09 can work with AVC (MP4) footage so that might be an option.

Will the service capture as DV or MPEG2 or what?

[edDV]

Here are some examples of frame by frame 8mm scans. You need to talk to them about hard disc delivery.

http://www.mymovietransfer.com/scanning_process.html
http://legacydigital.net/8mm-and-16mm-film-to-dvd-conversion-services/how-we-transfer-...m-differently/