8mm film copying help please

[Captain315]

Hope this is the right forum. I've been trying to copy some old 8mm film to video for Christmas but I get copies that looks like someone keeps turning a lamp on and off all the time. I'm trying to record it to a digital 8 Sony 240 camcorder and have tried everything I know to do. Am VERY new at this stuff and really need some help with this. I don't know if this is the "flicker" I've heard about but it sure is aggravating. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

Tom

[lennyt]

I had the same problem with flicker till I located an old 8mm projector that had a control to ajust the speed. Its not perfect but it corrected alot of the flicker.

[Riccardom]

I did the conversion 8mm -> DV with my camcorder.
I tried with a small device, the one with a mirror and an opalescent screen, but it causes problems with white zones, so i preferred a normal screen.
I projected films on the screen and captured it with camcorder, trying to minimize parallax problems.
In order to minimize the variation of light, i used one of the presets of white balance settings that my camcorder offers, the one for internal light.
In this way the variation, visible on PC during editing, is reduced to minimum on TV.
I had more troubles with the focus, difficult to obtain with an ever changing frame.
The resulting movie wasn't as sharp as the original, probably because of low light that tend to blur the image.
Another tip: use a TV as a monitor, connected to analog output, to check all the settings (focus, white balance, shutter, ecc.) assumed that in your camcorder you can set them manually.

If you do a research on Internet on the subject, you'll find dozens of pages.
Hope it helps
Riccardom

[arcorob]

Just curious, are you guys using the LENS to LENS (black box) approach or the shine it on a screen and film method ? I am curious because I am about to do some and was going to use method 2. Don't think that provides flicker or does it ? I gather it is also less crisp though.

Any thoughts ??? THANKS

[Captain315]

Have tried the black box and projecting on the screen but both give the same results for me. The camera is brand new and I've not learned how to use all the "whistles and bells" it offers but I will check on it and find out what is available. Sure hope this helps my problem and I apprciate any advice I can get.

Thanks,
Tom

[arcorob]

VERY interesting !! I had heard that the black box method was tougher because of frame rates. Your digital is recording at a fixed 29.97 frames per second. So on a fixed source, there is no issue.

But the Projector is some other frame rate (especially if it is adjustable) so what the camara sees (very quickly) is an image changing at some other rate. I THINK the projector runs at 24.1 (close to film)

I had THOUGHT that by projecting on a screen that would be eliminated as it would record what it saw...But I guess it is seeing alot more than I thought.

You may want try (don't know if it will help) encoding with TMPG using NTSC film instead of NTSC and see if it changes.....Just a thought. I will be going through this shortly

[Nolonemo]

Check out his thread on the Vegas Video forum (address should all be on one line):

http://www.sonicfoundry.com/forums/ShowMessage.asp?ForumID=4&MessageID=138076