Capturing old 8mm reel-to-reels

[PapaDoc]

Morning,
Does anyone have any ideas on what equipment to use to capture very old 8mm reel-to-reels? Mostly without sound, but some do have an audio track as well. I expect to have to do this in multiple steps, like maybe to VHS first, but I'm still not sure where to begin hardware wise.

Thanks!

[Nolonemo]

Do you mean 8mm films? One person reported great success filming the projected films with a DVcam (he had to tweak the projection speed a bit). Then you can firewire into computer.

If you mean 8mm video, I didn't know there was reel to reel -- what's the story?

[Innershield]

I have used my digital 8mm to capture old reel to reel and it looks very nice. The only bad part about it was that the color was washed out compared to the film, but this is easly corrected using the filters in tmpg when you encode. The other thing that you will have to do is hook up the camcorder to a tv with the video out. Then you can adjust the speed of the projector while you are looking at the tv so you can get rid of the flicker.

[BJ_M]

what they have said is correct -- works pretty well .. using a true matt white screen or by using a rear projection screen can help with the colors.


other than that you would have to do a in projector telisync .. elmo and others make such a unit . but you have both 8mm and super 8 it sounds like and they are different units required ..

dont make the projected image to large or it looks washed out ..

[Digifreak]

I'm getting ready to do this very same thing, 8 and 16 mm. I just got a mini DV camcorder and I'm using one of those reflecting projection boxes. I have read that flickering is common due to shutter sync between the video camera and the projector, I hope to be able to eliminate most of this tinkering with the camcorder shutter speeds.

[mp3superfreak]

I'm getting ready to do this very same thing, 8 and 16 mm. I just got a mini DV camcorder and I'm using one of those reflecting projection boxes. I have read that flickering is common due to shutter sync between the video camera and the projector, I hope to be able to eliminate most of this tinkering with the camcorder shutter speeds.

I've been told the flickering is due to the FPS (frames per second), not the shutter speed. I've been looking for an 8mm/super8mm projo for a while to convert my old videos, and I recently contacted a rental video shop (who did not have one of the projos ) and their tech guy told me it would be better to have them professionally converted. He said those 8mm videos are shot in 24fps and the camcorder does 30fps. I would think you could correct that in TMPGenc, but I'm not certain. If anyone out there has an 8/super8mm projo they want to sell (reasonable = $50 or less), contact me mp3superfreak@yahoo.com.

We converted some to VHS (via camcorder) around 10yrs ago, and the resulting videos look pretty good. If you have the equipment, I see no need to pay a professional. However, some pros use a "direct transfer" method. I've found a few places online that perform this technique.

http://www.oldhomemovies.com/
http://www.homemoviesoncd.com/8mmfilm.htm
http://www.videographics.net/transfer/

[Lamont Cranston]

I transferred both 8mm and super 8mm to DVD. In my case the shutter speed of the projector was fixed. I projected the image on a sheet of paper at one end of a box I had painted with flat black paint. I used my Sony Digital 8 camcorder to capture the image. I place camera and projector as close as possible to minimize keystoning. I used manual exposure on the camera to eliminate burn-through when the scene changed from dark to light. Yes, I had to start and stop the camera to adjust the exposure when it went outside of acceptable limits. I captured the image using virtual-dub NTSC 352 x 480 using the Pic-Video codec with the chrominance at 6 to help the faded colors. You can also adjust the brightness, contrast, and hue to help the color. Next I removed the flicker with the virtual-dub flicker fliter http://shelob.mordor.net/dgraft/. I then added a blur filter (reduce the noise and help the encoder video data rate requirements), resize using a precise bilinear to 352 x 240 and frame serve to TMPGEnc or Panasonic. This is from memory but I think I hit on everything. The results were great considering the source.

[Nolonemo]

I'm planning to do this with my dad's home movies. The plan is to tape the films with a DVcam set to 12-bit audio, and then to have dad narrate what's happening on screen onto the tape with the cam in audio dub mode while it's being played back on the TV. Then cap and burn!

[dvbr]

Hi,

Did somebody think about a PAL DV Cam ? It FPS is 25, so it's very close to the film 24 FPS.


Regards

[Lamont Cranston]

Nolonemo, you will be compressing twice. First, when you capture the image on tape, and again when you capture the tape on your computer. Each capture is a lossy and you want to minimize the number of compressions. The image is bad enough to begin with.

I did all editing with Ulead's MSP V6.5 where I added the narration and music tracks to final product. The editor lets you do things like freeze frame where you can hold the image until all the people in a group picture can be verbally identified. I did this with about 50 hours of old movies and I am now working on transferring ~10,000 slides and photographs.

[Lamont Cranston]

Hi,

Did somebody think about a PAL DV Cam ? It FPS is 25, so it's very close to the film 24 FPS.


Regards

Here in the USA old 8mm was photographed at 16 fps. Super 8 was 18 fps. Super 8 sound was also 18 frames with the option to go to 24 fps. Typically projectors blank and show each frame 3 times giving you a effective frame rate of 48 fps or 54 fps to minimize flicker. Bet you did not want to know all that.

[Nolonemo]

Lamont: firewire from DVCam to computer so no recompression. (Except for final render to mpg for burning).

The audio dub, as I understand it, is placed on the DV tape while the tape is being played back in the DVcam (dub is placed on what would be the second stereo channel in 16 bit more).

I thought about recording the narration separately and importing to VV3 to match with video, but I don't have anything that will record anywhere near as good audio quality as the DVcam.

Your idea of freeze framing to fit narration of complicated parts is really great, though! I wish I had more time so I could do more than just a straight track commentary. Thanks for sharing.

[Toogy]

I'm thinking about doing the same thing. My question is, I only have a hi-8 camcorder, will this be good enough to capture the image without making a mess out of it?