Transfer 8mm to video

[ellicott_city]

Hi everybody
I have a 8 mm old movies. I recorded them to a camcoder
and then to a computer to make a video format file.
But when I paly movie it's flicking (I guess because of different speed) Does anybody know how to solve this problem?
Thanks in advance.

Dima

[shardison]

Yes, capture or process in VirtualDub and run an anti-flicker filter. The anti-flicker filter can be found at:

http://sauron.mordor.net/dgraft/

[Thurbs]

I have tried to do the same, with not too good of luck in Tmpge there are some setting you can play with to take the flicker out. There is also a filter for VDub to do the same.
8mm is 24FPS (I think) from what I have been told. If you are looking to get excellent quality to preserve 4 ever I would almost pay somebody to do it. In reality it isn't too expensive to change to DV. I have been quoted about 150 dollars to do almost an hour of footage by a local company. That price includes cleaning the film and saving to DV. Email me and I can walk you through TMPGE's settings.

[Shannafey]

8mm runs at 24 fps for sound, and 18 fps for silent if memory serves me correctly. I second that motion to have it transferred professionally if it is important to you. Have them transfer to SVHS if you can use it, or at least use a SVHS tape or as Thurbs said, to DV, if you can use it. You can't get a camcorder to run at the right frame rate to transfer properly.

[muddyshooz]

Funny I should find this post ...

Although I knew there would be gnarly frame-rate/flicker problems in capturing DV from 18fps 8mm footage, I thought I'd try last night anyway. Yikes! 'Worse than I expected. I tried the dgraft anti-flicker filter in VirtualDub and it worked -much- better than I expected. However, what I -really- want to do, now, is apply the filter to the DV AVI that I captured, but output to a non-lossy (or relatively non-lossy) format. Of course the DivX output looks okay , but I don't really want to use that in TMPGEnc or anything. And the MainConcept appears to only allow 320x240 frame size on output.

Any ideas or suggestions?!?!?!?

[DJMAGIC]

When i capture from 8mm, the Digital Cam have problem white the "light flicker". especial when i zoom in a bit. I try with diffrent "profiles" but i got perfect result with the low lux profile in cam. BUT then the cam taking only every 5 frame..

[ironman61]

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On 2001-11-14 12:47:59, Shannafey wrote:
8mm runs at 24 fps for sound, and 18 fps for silent if memory serves me correctly. I second that motion to have it transferred professionally if it is important to you. Have them transfer to SVHS if you can use it, or at least use a SVHS tape or as Thurbs said, to DV, if you can use it. You can't get a camcorder to run at the right frame rate to transfer properly.
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Just to let you know, 8mm film is silent and runs at 18fps, Super8 is silent and Sound depending on what raw stock and the super8 camera you use. Also, you need a special shutter to use to transfer it correctly. Such as an Elmo TransCine projecter. I have used these sucessfully, and have transfered countless of feet of film to VHS, SVHS and 3/4" tape. If anyone is interested, you can e-mail me directly and maybe we can work somthing out

[Lamont Cranston]

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Just to let you know, 8mm film is silent and runs at 18fps, Super8 is silent and Sound depending on what raw stock and the super8 camera you use.
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ironman61 we need to go back one more format. Regular 8mm, prior to super 8, framed at 16 fps. I have had very good luck transferring 8mm. super 8, and super 8 sound @ 18 fps to video using a Sony TRV120. I set the shutter speed at 1/30 sec and capture with AVI_IO 720 x 480 using MainConcept's DV codec from an ATI AIW 128 Pro. I remove what little flicker there is with VirtualDubs deflicker filter and resize to VCD (320 x 240) using the precise bi-linear and frameserve to Ligos LSX35 encoder, author and burn wiht Ulead's DVD Movie Factory.

[muddyshooz]

Lamont, isn't setting shutter speed at 1/30 of a second the same (or very nearly the same) as the default of 29.97 fps for the DV cams? (I've got the TRV510, a couple of years old). Or have my math skills completely eroded? It seems like the 29.97 in relation to the 18 fps is what's causing all the trouble.

I've seen posts where people suggest using a variable shutter speed camcorder (very expensive if you can even find one, I thought) to try to adjust to -whatever- the projector was putting out. That would certainly be my preference, but the 510 doesn't do that.

I'm limited to my camcorder-firewirecard-premiere capture method using the mainconcept codec. What I see when I view the raw DV AVI is absolutely awful until I scrub it with the deflicker filter.

So, enlighten me on your setup a little more. The ATI doesn't have a firewire connector, does it? You're using S-video out? Please expound. I'm very curious.

[Lamont Cranston]

Yes muddyshooz the flicker is the beat frequency between the camcorder and the projector. However, most projectors blank and show each frame 3 times before it advances to the next frame effectively giving you 48 (or 52)fps so you don't see a flicker when you project the movie. It's the same reasoning for having 2 fields per frame with tv. By having the camcorder shutter open for 1/30 sec the light from the image is collected for 1.6 frames of the projector vs 1/60 sec (normal shutter speed) which would be .79 frames. In my twisted way of thinking integrating the light over 1.6 frames swamps out most of the flicker. The experiments I have run shows almost no noticable flicker. With the slow shutter speed there is some chance image blur but that is only for a frame and not notible.

The ATI AIW 128 pro is setup for VFW (video for windows). I like this primarily because I can do some luminance and chrominance correction. I can give the old movies a little increase in the color to correct for fade and reduce the contrast by adjusting contrast and brightness. I capture using S out. Capturing with 1394 in 4G DV type 1 avi files can give you problems. For example, I use the Ligos LSX35 encoder which does not like 4G files or DV type 1.

I should also mention on the old 8 mm movies they are very grainy which looks like noise to the mpeg encoder. This can push up the data rate and cause blocking. To help reduce this I use a blur filter with VirtuaDub.

I am going at this backward but. I project the image on a white sheet of printer paper located at one end inside a box I have painter dull black. I minimize the angle between the camcorder and the projector so the final image is square. Autofocus is off and auto exposure is on. Autoexposure causes one frame to be a little light (no burn through) when going from a dark to a light scene but it is barely noticeable and it beats capturing each scene individually. I am sure I missed something.


<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: Lamont Cranston on 2001-11-16 19:56:48 ]</font>

[muddyshooz]

Thanks for the info, but I suppose some of it's moot for me since the 510 doesn't do the "slow shutter" like the 120. Maybe it's time to consider a newer model. I'm pretty sure I've exceeded my "toy quota" for the year, though. 8(

[Lamont Cranston]

muddyshooz, I made several 8mm video transfers using the Sony TR65 which does not have a slow shutter speed. I found the automatic exposure in the camera was trying to compensate for the image flicker from the projector and it made the flicker worse. If I turned off the automatic exposure the flicker was reduced to the point where the flicker filter in Virtualdub could reduce it to an acceptable level. By using the manual exposure I had to stop and reset the exposure for the scenes that were under and overexposed. If you have manual exposure on your video camera you might want to give it a try.

I see in an earlier post that you use the Mainconcept codec. I also use the Mainconcept DV codec which is one of the best. It's capture resolution is limited to (NTSC) 720 x 480 and the PAL equavelent. If you making a VCD 352 x 240 do the resize with VirtualDub (use bilinear) not the mpeg encoder. Mainconcept's tech support tells me you can recompress up to 6 times with no noticable degradation in the image.


<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: Lamont Cranston on 2001-11-19 16:15:25 ]</font>

[muddyshooz]

Hey, thanks. I just checked my camera ('brought it into work just for giggles) and VOILA! I finally found a "slow shutter" setting under the digital-effects section. I guess that "slow shtr 1" is 1/30 of a second. "slow shtr 2" is 1/15th, etc. So you set yours to 1/30, if I understand correctly. I'll have to go home tonight and try that. I'm guessing that this doesn't change the fact that there are 29.97 fps on the actual tape, right?!?? And DV capture isn't affected either, right?

Also, isn't the correct aspect 352x240 for VCD/NTSC? (that's probably a question for a different forum ...)

[Lamont Cranston]

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On 2001-11-19 15:18:29, muddyshooz wrote:
I'm guessing that this doesn't change the fact that there are 29.97 fps on the actual tape, right?!?? And DV capture isn't affected either, right?

Also, isn't the correct aspect 352x240 for VCD/NTSC? (that's probably a question for a different forum ...)
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Everything worked fine for me. Give it a try. Yes, the VCD resolution is 352 x 240.