Converting 8mm film to MiniDV

[KeepItSimple]

Hello I'm sure transfer tecniques have gotten a lot better since I had old 50's 8mm films transferred to VHS in 1981.
Does anyone know how or where I would get those films transferred again, this time to MiniDV?
Also what's the bestest highest tech method I should look for? I'm in Sacramento, CA.
Thanks.

[DereX888]

Any professional studio should be able to help you.
"Bestest tech" is still the same: scanning each frame of your reels separately, this hasn't changed. However the machines are much faster today, and yield better quality too - you won't tell the difference from your original reel print and the digital copy.

And for the future, have your reels scanned to a hard drive(s) as uncompressed instead of using any current 'compression of the day' (like DV codec), that way you will have it ready for any future formats too.

[KeepItSimple]

Thanks for the info. I'm sure the quality is now 10 times better than that grainy overscanned Fotomat transfer from 1981.
I hope the films have held up. It's been 27 years since they were last played.

Great idea about the hard drive. What format would it be in on the hard drive if not DV?

[DereX888]

uncompressed
(raw audio video interleave, aka series of bitmaps with wav )

[jagabo]

uncompressed
(raw audio video interleave, aka series of bitmaps with wav ;) )

Keep in mind that's about 112 GB/hr.

[2Bdecided]

That's just silly, almost no one uses that. Some people use lossless HuyyYUV or Lagarith while they're working on the files, but not for long term storage.

Some people use M-jpeg for working files and archiving, but most use DV. It's usually more than good enough.

Some people even go for more compression - to MPEG-2 (DVD quality) or MPEG-4.

A first rate transfer to DV will be 100 times better than a second rate transfer to lossless/uncompressed/raw.

Cheers,
David.

[DereX888]

uncompressed
(raw audio video interleave, aka series of bitmaps with wav )

Keep in mind that's about 112 GB/hr.

That's just silly, almost no one uses that. Some people use lossless HuyyYUV or Lagarith while they're working on the files, but not for long term storage.

Some people use M-jpeg for working files and archiving, but most use DV. It's usually more than good enough.

Some people even go for more compression - to MPEG-2 (DVD quality) or MPEG-4.

A first rate transfer to DV will be 100 times better than a second rate transfer to lossless/uncompressed/raw.

Cheers,
David.

1 - OP ask for "bestest tech". Do you know better quality than uncompressed?
2 - Those old 8mm films were like only few minutes per reel (they couldn't physically fit more into small home cameras back then).

I doubt OP has more than few hours of combined footage (unless he really has tons of it, then of course I agree and suggest going with low compressions like DV and such).
As for "no one uses that" argument - you'd be surprised how many people regret not using it, specially when original reels have already faded away and they stuck with the "bestest tech of yesterday" on VHS, VCDs and such... storage is no problem nowadays, but imagination is still in short supply (as always).

[vhelp]

DereX888, that's a good point, and (often) over looked. So, for a few minutes of
video, even uncompressed is perfectly do 'able. I would prefer it over anything in this case,
but still, even for that small size, Huffy/Lagarith would do fine for quick and dirty double-backup
purposes, therefore having best of both worlds.

When I have a tone of video to process, it becomes very easy to deminish one's HDD space
during those episodes. And, I found that with my latest (March/2007) mobo update and with
XP Home, I no longer need to capture in Huffy, though my cpu % is roughly 40% on average.
But, now, after several tests, I've gone all-lagarith capture, though it tax's my cpu % min
95%, max 100% +, but as long as I don't do/run anything else to my pc, no ill'effect is noticed
and no frame drops, either.

The downside to using the lagarith codec in this case is when I use it in VirtualDud, where
the picture is 'dithered' (degraded) beyond reason during play. I would supose that that issue
is a reflection with my computer/coded setup but the end results (after filter/editing) is not
effected. So I guess it doesn't really matter all that much, I guess.

Uncompressed is always the better way to insure maximum quality without loss, hence the term,
lossless. But, several factors muse be considered ahead of time when presented by this choice.

--> HDD space; source qaulity; priceless origin; video preporation requirements; flexibility; more..

But, whatever the choice, (uncompressed or lossless codec) your end result will be successful.

-vhelp 4504

[JohnnyMalaria]

The only valid argument for using an compression is lack of storage space. When it was an expensive commodity, it made sense. The luxury of uncompressed storage is very affordable - especially for those things of priceless origin.

Only compress when you have to or you have no control over pre-compressed material.

[2Bdecided]

But it means you spend money on HDD space (and back up) which could be better spent elsewhere (better quality transfer - much more important - loss garbage = garbage!).

Or, more likely, it means that what you have is too large to back up conveniently, so you have one beautiful lossless copy - which you then lose when your HDD dies.

That said, for some sources, lossless is only about double DV, so a good option.

I say again though, the transfer itself is far more important. 1mm change in the focus will make more difference than all these extra GB of lossless!

Cheers,
David.

[DereX888]

But it means you spend money on HDD space (and back up) which could be better spent elsewhere (better quality transfer - much more important - loss garbage = garbage!).

Or, more likely, it means that what you have is too large to back up conveniently, so you have one beautiful lossless copy - which you then lose when your HDD dies.

That said, for some sources, lossless is only about double DV, so a good option.

I say again though, the transfer itself is far more important. 1mm change in the focus will make more difference than all these extra GB of lossless!

Cheers,
David.

Mere $200 for few hours of *BEST POSSIBLE* uncompressed quality is still too much in your opinion? WTF...

And if you would think for a second before posting, you would have found out how funny are all your other arguments... bad quality transfers, off-focus transfers may apply as much to any transfer regardless of use or lack of compression, ya'know?

ANd BTW - the transfer in modern scanmachines cannot go off focus even by a milimeter. Do some research how it is done, there are no 'projectors' like in the old times. Professional 'transfer' process is akin to scanning (digitizing) photographs (or more like slides) on your home scanner. Have your scanner ever go off focus? I know, impossible Now imagine scanning each reel's frame that way, but very fast, much faster than you could do it in years. Thats what the 'digital transfer machine' does.
It has noting to do with ancient 'analog transfer' process where there was tv camera on one end, screen in between, and reel projector on the other end

Anyways:
UNCOMPRESSED IS BEST POSSIBLE QUALITY. (don't forget: you can always do the DV or any other compressed backups off of it if you want, so whats your problem? - while you never can restore any compression back to the pristine perfect quality of uncompressed format, obviously).
End of discussion.

[KeepItSimple]

What mac software would I need to edit the uncompressed raw video?

[2Bdecided]

Mere $200 for few hours of *BEST POSSIBLE* uncompressed quality is still too much in your opinion? WTF...

If you have a small amount of content, it may be OK, as I already admitted.

Myself, with about 300 hours of home movies to archive, DV is already a challenge to back up. The idea of going lossless is insane for me. YMMV.

Living in the real world, I understand that when an enthusiastic novice comes along saying "I want the bestest possible", maybe they don't know what they're asking. Come back with a quote for a Spirit or Rank Cintel transfer, taking the raw data to a HDD, and they might decide on something that's not quite "the bestest"! Still, prices for this kind of thing are now lower than I realised, so maybe not...

http://www.mymovietransfer.com/8mm_Pricing.html

... if it was something better than 8mm (e.g. 16mm), then I'd be arguing for compression rather than lossless again: HD lightly compressed would be better than SD uncompressed!

And if you would think for a second before posting, you would have found out how funny are all your other arguments... bad quality transfers, off-focus transfers may apply as much to any transfer regardless of use or lack of compression, ya'know?

ANd BTW - the transfer in modern scanmachines cannot go off focus even by a milimeter. Do some research how it is done, there are no 'projectors' like in the old times. Professional 'transfer' process is akin to scanning (digitizing) photographs (or more like slides) on your home scanner. Have your scanner ever go off focus? I know, impossible

Not a flat bed scanner, no - but slide scanners can, since you ask. For common cardboard mounted slides, it's quite a challenge to get the entire slide in focus. I've never used a professional transfer machine, so have no idea what controls they have. I know that a good operator of one of these things can get more than a bad one (I've seen demos to this effect) so there is still an argument for getting the job "done right".

UNCOMPRESSED IS BEST POSSIBLE QUALITY. (don't forget: you can always do the DV or any other compressed backups off of it if you want, so whats your problem? - while you never can restore any compression back to the pristine perfect quality of uncompressed format, obviously).
End of discussion.

What a charming person you are. I do hope videohelp.com are taking note - it seems they're wasting their time having a discussion forum when you can give definitive answers on everything.

Of course uncompressed (losslessly compressed, if you have sense) is best possible quality (for a given digital video input). The point is, it comes at a cost, which may not be one that makes sense in many situations. Also, how the video arrives at the digital video input may make a much greater difference to what's seen at the output than the choice between lossless and lossy compression.

Cheers,
David.

[JohnnyMalaria]

Mere $200 for few hours of *BEST POSSIBLE* uncompressed quality is still too much in your opinion? WTF...

If you have a small amount of content, it may be OK, as I already admitted.

Myself, with about 300 hours of home movies to archive, DV is already a challenge to back up. The idea of going lossless is insane for me. YMMV.

Living in the real world, I understand that when an enthusiastic novice comes along saying "I want the bestest possible", maybe they don't know what they're asking. Come back with a quote for a Spirit or Rank Cintel transfer, taking the raw data to a HDD, and they might decide on something that's not quite "the bestest"! Still, prices for this kind of thing are now lower than I realised, so maybe not...

But in the context of the original poster's question - which is what counts - uncompressed IS the way to go because the source material is irreplaceable and - I suspect - of less than 300 hours in duration.

If I had a few hours of 8mm file that was priceless to me, I'd insist on uncompressed capture.

Obviously, if you have 300+ hours then by all means compress the material, especially if the source is VHS or Video8.

[DereX888]

Mere $200 for few hours of *BEST POSSIBLE* uncompressed quality is still too much in your opinion? WTF...

If you have a small amount of content, it may be OK, as I already admitted.

Myself, with about 300 hours of home movies to archive, DV is already a challenge to back up. The idea of going lossless is insane for me. YMMV.

Living in the real world, I understand that when an enthusiastic novice comes along saying "I want the bestest possible", maybe they don't know what they're asking. Come back with a quote for a Spirit or Rank Cintel transfer, taking the raw data to a HDD, and they might decide on something that's not quite "the bestest"! Still, prices for this kind of thing are now lower than I realised, so maybe not...

http://www.mymovietransfer.com/8mm_Pricing.html

... if it was something better than 8mm (e.g. 16mm), then I'd be arguing for compression rather than lossless again: HD lightly compressed would be better than SD uncompressed!

Rarely anybody has more than few hours of family home footage on those.
I honestly doubt you having "300 hours" of home footage on *reels*, do you?
More likely you have analog videos... completely different species if I may say so

Reels weren't expensive in their times, but those (8mm and 16mm) reels were quite a hassle according to my father, thats why he and my grandpa never had as many home videos as I do
Up until japanese-make more/less fully automatic cameras didn't show on the market (when the format actually died out), it was always troublesome to manually adjust the light/shutter speed etc.

But since the reels fade away, IMHO its important to 'transfer' them at best possible quality, since the owner may not have another chance to do it 20-30 years later.
As I said, about $200 will give you nowadays TWO hard drives with storage of about half terabyte each (two because 1 is for backup).
I wish such luxury was possible 10 years ago when I first started my digital video hobby.
Hence my strong suggestion to use uncompressed format.
Perhaps you feel like more 'professional' than me, but my-oh-my how wrong is your rationale on this subject

cheers

Mere $200 for few hours of *BEST POSSIBLE* uncompressed quality is still too much in your opinion? WTF...

If you have a small amount of content, it may be OK, as I already admitted.

Myself, with about 300 hours of home movies to archive, DV is already a challenge to back up. The idea of going lossless is insane for me. YMMV.

Living in the real world, I understand that when an enthusiastic novice comes along saying "I want the bestest possible", maybe they don't know what they're asking. Come back with a quote for a Spirit or Rank Cintel transfer, taking the raw data to a HDD, and they might decide on something that's not quite "the bestest"! Still, prices for this kind of thing are now lower than I realised, so maybe not...

But in the context of the original poster's question - which is what counts - uncompressed IS the way to go because the source material is irreplaceable and - I suspect - of less than 300 hours in duration.

If I had a few hours of 8mm file that was priceless to me, I'd insist on uncompressed capture.

Obviously, if you have 300+ hours then by all means compress the material, especially if the source is VHS or Video8.

Exactly.
I have nothing else to add to what Johnny already said.

[KeepItSimple]

How would I edit my few hours of uncompressed home movie video on a Mac? Thanks.

[DereX888]

How would I edit my few hours of uncompressed home movie video on a Mac? Thanks.

I saw you asking it previously.
*I* don't use Macs (and seems like others involed in this thread don't use it either) but I'd think any iMovie and such should be able to edit uncompressed videos no sweat... but on the other hand many obvious things on PCs are not so obvious in the Mac world... perhaps you should ask this in our forum's Mac section?

[KeepItSimple]

DV is probably good enough but I'm curious now about this uncompressed and how much hassle/expense it would be.
Plus I'm not sure how I would work with it on a mac. Someone here must. thanks.

[2Bdecided]

But since the reels fade away

The colour may fade, especially with certain processes - but I've seen no evidence that semi-properly stored monochrome safety film is going anywhere within my lifetime.

It'll certainly outlive those two hard drives you're keen to spend $200 on!

FWIW my 300 hours are spread across VHS, S-VHS, DV and HDV. 25Mbps is clearly the limit for the latter two. For the former two, I think the noise does interact with DV compression, but since I want to transfer, and then process, I really am stuck with DV.

I do have material, including home movies, on Super8, 9.5mm, and 16mm, but they're not my home movies, and I don't feel any urgent need to transfer them apart from ease-of-viewing. FWIW film archives are in no hurry to transfer monochrome safety film to anything else either.

Cheers,
David.

[JohnnyMalaria]

FWIW film archives are in no hurry to transfer monochrome safety film to anything else either.

Cheers,
David.

There's a difference between keeping something on a shelf that *may* be needed once in a blue moon and having something you can play frequently and without having to maintain difficult mechanical equipment. If you have precious old film, you don't want to run it through an ailing projector multiple times to share with your friends and neighbours. That's why you make a working copy.

Another benefit of uncompressed is that the resulting video file will be at the same frame rate as the source - you will get every frame as it should be. You can't do that with DV and you'd be foolish to use any MPEG variant for such purposes.

[2Bdecided]

Another benefit of uncompressed is that the resulting video file will be at the same frame rate as the source - you will get every frame as it should be. You can't do that with DV and you'd be foolish to use any MPEG variant for such purposes.

Sound film is 24fps. This is commonly run at 25fps over here (since only the most modern of TVs support 24fps), and of course DV handles 25fps perfectly well. The only possible concern is that the chroma is interlaced, but even Hollywood studios make this "mistake" on their DVD releases.

It's easy enough to encode 720x576 25fps fully progressive MPEG-2 that is 100% DVD compliant.

It's also possible to encode 720x576 or 720x480 full progressive MPEG-2 at most frame rates (including those required for silent film, or an exact 24fps for sound film), and to insert soft pulldown flags to bump it up to a DVD compliant frame rate. That way, you have all the original frames stored as individual frames in the MPEG bitstream, perfectly recoverable, but the MPEG streams will play on any standard DVD player.

http://neuron2.net/dgpulldown/dgpulldown.html
http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?p=762031&highlight=dgpulldown+silent+film#post762031

Cheers,
David.

[JohnnyMalaria]

Another benefit of uncompressed is that the resulting video file will be at the same frame rate as the source - you will get every frame as it should be. You can't do that with DV and you'd be foolish to use any MPEG variant for such purposes.

Sound film is 24fps. This is commonly run at 25fps over here (since only the most modern of TVs support 24fps), and of course DV handles 25fps perfectly well. The only possible concern is that the chroma is interlaced, but even Hollywood studios make this "mistake" on their DVD releases.

That's fine if you have 24fps and are using PAL DV.

But the OP is in California - hence NTSC - and wants to transfer 18 fps 8mm film - not 24fps with sound. If the films are of that importance and the quality needs to be maintained, the best (as request) method is to scan each frame and store it as an uncompressed image. This can be contained within an AVI file for example. You would archive this as your master transferred material. You can then create workable files in DV, MPEG or whatever format as needed.

It's what I would do.

[DereX888]

DV is probably good enough but I'm curious now about this uncompressed and how much hassle/expense it would be.
Plus I'm not sure how I would work with it on a mac. Someone here must. thanks.

Apple's QT player has no problem with uncompressed avis on PC, I assume iMovie on Mac should not have any probs with it either.

[KeepItSimple]

All this assuming is getting expensive.

[DereX888]

All this assuming is getting expensive.

How so - doesn't every Mac come with iMovie?