Home Movie Film Scanning Help To DVD (MovieStuff 2K RetroScan Universal)

[rsabean]

I have the MovieStuff RetroScan Universal 2K. I upgraded to the 2K from the 1.3 HD camera recently. I bought the machine and software so I could learn and have control over the output of my inherited film. I did a lot of research in late 2015 and decided on the RetroScan Universal with two gates, one for 16mm and one for 8mm/Super 8mm. I initially worked on 8mm film from the late 30’s and early 40’s. I output to HD in 1080. I made a DVD in Adobe Encore for my family and relatives. This is how I did:

1. I exported from Adobe Premiere Pro to MPEG2-DVD
2. Chose NTSC
3. Dolby digital
4. Bitrate I set to VBR 1 pass
5. Then I exported the file

A bit of an overview on how the Universal software and RetroScan Universal work if you are not familiar: With the Universal you don’t scan to a standard video file. Each frame of film is scanned to an individual high quality digital still frame numbered sequentially in a folder. The Universal software plays back those numbered stills fast enough to see motion. The original capture files are proprietary and cannot be imported into any known edit system. The Universal software exports the scan captures into a file for export. The types are .mov, .avi and numbered image sequences all in SD, HD or 2K resolution. The camera resolutions are: 1.3 MP (1296 x 964, 4:3), full HD (1920 x 1080, 16:9), 2K 4:3 (2048 x 1536) and 2K 16:9 (2048 x 1152). The files can be compressed or uncompressed.

Now I am practicing with the new 2K camera and doing different tests and reading online to the point of confusion! I need some direction on what to output the film scan to for the best picture quality from the resolutions above. Do I export to 2K and then down sample, use compressed or uncompressed or use the same setting as before (1920 x 1080, 16:9)? The 2K camera difference is a big difference in itself. The colors are brighter and I do not have to do as much post work in Adobe Premiere. I am still going to output to DVD because that is the most straightforward for my relatives to use. I will probably author in Adobe Encore unless I can find a program similar. Wish Adobe still supported it.

Any help or suggestions are greatly appreciated.

[johnmeyer]

1. Keep everything at HD resolution until you render to MPEG-2 for the DVD burn. Also, for 16mm keep the HD video. For 8mm and Super 8, I don't think you'll be able to tell much different between your original HD captures and the SD 720x480 version.

2. Use two-pass VBR, if your MPEG-2 encoder has it.

3. Make sure you know what you're doing when you convert 15, 16, or 18 fps amateur film to DVD which (for NTSC standards) has only two frame rates at which you can encode: 23.976 and 29.97. You will have to add some sort of pulldown (duplicated fields) when you encode, and if you do that wrong, you'll degrade the result quite a bit.

4. If you are encoding to DVD simply because you want to put the film on a format which has the best chance of lasting a long time (DVD is still king of the hill in that department IMHO), you might want to consider rendering using a high-quality modern format like H.265 or H.264. That way you can avoid any degradation from adding pulldown fields. You can even keep everything at 1920x1080 progressive at 15, 16, or 18 fps. You won't be able to play the resulting DVD on any traditional standalone DVD player, but it will play just fine on any computer, and you can then put it on a thumb drive and play that on your current-day 1920x1080 (or higher res) smart TV set.

5. You will get the least degradation of your capture if you edit using a near-lossless codec like the free, but very professional, Cineform codec (download it for free from the GoPro site). Use that through all your editing stages (you can re-render multiple times with very little degradation), and only do your render to the delivery format (MPEG-2 or h.264/5) as the very last step.

6. Consider showing a draft of your footage to family members who will actually know what they are watching. Record the audio of what they say and then add that as the sound track. I transferred all of my family's 8mm and Super 8 film using Roger's first frame-accurate transfer system, the Workprinter. I then designed and built my own 16mm transfer system. Here is the result of showing my late father and mother the results of those transfers:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hmf0SSneJUU

[JVRaines]

It's been a few years since I used Retroscan software, but the workflow I developed for highest quality was to export frames from the proprietary database as numbered PNG files, then compile them with FFmpeg into ProRes-HQ videos at the appropriate frame rate. (ProRes was a request from the client; these days, I would encode them losslessly using FFV1 codec.) These become archival masters from which are prepared different encodings for DVD-Video, casual viewing, etc.

[rsabean]

Thank you johnmeyer for the help and suggestions. I like your comment on adding audio. I watched your video and that adds a nice touch.
JVRaines thank you also.
I am also thinking about trying out AviSynth after reading some posts. It seems to be a powerful program. Is the learning curve high?