How To Capture(?) 16mm Film?

[monoxide77]

I know this may seem a little off the wall and I've never seen it discussed in this forum, but I was wondering if anyone has experience converting 16mm to a digital format or even (god-forbid) VHS for that matter.

[housepig]

Mono -

the only ways I know are :

- pay a telecine house to perform telecine on your 16mm (actually runs the film over a scanner made to scan film... prices I've heard hover around $300/hr)

- project your 16mm onto a clean surface and set up a camcorder to record the projection. Not as high quality, but a lot cheaper.

- there is a piece of software floating around called 8mm2avi - it apparently lets you put 8mm film on a flatbed scanner (one that can scan transparencies or film slides or negatives) then converts the scanned images into .avi files - you might see if the developer is working on a 16mm version, or if it can be used for different film sizes.

good luck. hope this helps.

- housepig

[The village idiot]

OK, if you don't have hours of it to do, here is what I might try before shelling out the money to have it transfered.

Use a high resolution scanner that is meant for transparencies, just like what was mentioned about. I might go so far as to build a device to feed it automatically, then you could setup a batch process to crop the frames. Then play the movie through a projector to get the sound, and "record" it to my computer. Then use some software to put the jpeg stills of each frame into a movie (tmpgenc or editstudio, etc). then combine the sound. There you have your finished movie.

It will take an enormous amout of time to do what I described, but it will be cheap if you have the scanner and projector.

The best way would be to send it out.

[Nelson37]

I have actually done both, though the cost was more like $95.00 per to get a VHS tape.

Quality comparison between Pro and Homemade very close, also shooting from camera and encoding to XSVCD I could add music and Menus.

Set projector low, slight up angle to screen, use a good screen, clean the lens. Set camera on Tripod above projector and behind, slight down angle to compensate so picture is square, use low-light mode and fixed focus if available, adjust focus on both projector and camera VERY carefully. I cabled to PC direct and captured that way, or you could go to VHS.

If these are old movies I would strongly suggest either no editing at all or making an extra, unedited copy. It is often the seemingly unimportant details in the unwanted shots that add so much to the overall video.

[fravel]

You can use a multiplexer. It's an L shaped equipment with two openings and mirrors inside. A 16mm projector is placed at one opening and a video camera at the other opening. It has some sort of a gate to avoid flickering. Try some used movie projection equipment site in the net, if any, and maybe you can get one for a cheap price. Some collectors of old movies use them for their transfers to tape. There are cheaper versions for 8mmm that Radio Shack and other stores used to sell.
Good Luck!