RetroScan Universal

[OneIron]

The playback speed seems a little fast, at least at certain times. 1930s amateur 16mm film had no standard filming speed. If you get film from the 1920s, much of it was "hand-cranked," so the speed can change quite a bit. I sensed that this film was speeding up and slowing down, so this might have been taken with one of those older cameras. You just have to use your judgement as to whether a slower (or faster) average speed will work better. I have set some of my transfers to play at speeds as low as 12 fps. Here is one such example:

1928 Backyard Kids Football in Oak Park, Illinois
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1YekFxBYKNM

I think you will agree that, even at this super-slow playback speed, it is not too slow (i.e., it doesn't look like slow motion).

John,

What editing software are you using? I'm thinking about taking a step up from Premiere Elements to Premier Pro.

Also, as I watched your 1928 film, it struck me how far we've come with technology. I'm kicked back watching an almost 90 year old film across the Internet on an iPad. Incredible!

Mike

[JVRaines]

I agree, John. I struggled with the playback speed, finally deciding to leave it be. It kind of gave it that silent film look. I may go back and try a slower version just to see how it looks.

Unfortunately, we have all been conditioned to expect "old movies" to look like the Keystone Kops. There are some deliberately undercranked films, but for the most part, this is an artifact introduced by telecines that only run at 24 fps. It's just plain wrong. I previewed every film I scanned on the Retro-8 in VirtualDub at different frame rates until I found natural action. Many of the regular 8 mm films were shot at 12 fps.

[johnmeyer]

John, What editing software are you using? I'm thinking about taking a step up from Premiere Elements to Premier Pro.

I use Sony Vegas Pro. I use it to do all my grading and color timing. I then feed this into a heavily modified version of the script originally created by "VideoFred" that is posted over in doom9.org. My version runs 3-4 times faster, has far less sharpening, and more aggressive dirt removal. He developed his script to improve modern movies that were just shot and developed and which are pristine. I developed my variation of his script for movies that are almost a century old and full of dirt and other artifacts. If you run his script on my old material, it often makes it look worse because all the sharpening and grain removal creates a mess.

As for subscribing to my YouTube channel, thank you for that. However, my channel is a weird collection of all sorts of stuff I've done including: weddings; film transfers; and various oddball restorations where I've developed software to remove some sort of problem. So, if you want to skip all those other things, and are interested primarily in my amateur film transfers and restoration, here's a link to just the film transfers:

John Meyer Film Transfers

You will discover some amazing stuff, like the 1929 Cubs/Athletics World series; Bobby Kennedy campaigning in Oregon just two weeks before he was killed; Flint Michigan when it was a thriving city, before they razed the entire downtown; all sorts of Midwest ephemera (like the 1928 backyard football game); various parades, both immediately before and after WWII; and lots of football and cheerleader footage, including some taken of me and various people I knew which I licensed to Sony Pictures for use under the opening credits of their recent movie, "Concussion."

[edit]P.S. Only the films posted in the past 2-3 years have been subjected to the restoration script. The earlier transfers are simply transfers, with nothing more than a little grading and color correction.

[OneIron]

John, What editing software are you using? I'm thinking about taking a step up from Premiere Elements to Premier Pro.

I use Sony Vegas Pro. I use it to do all my grading and color timing. I then feed this into a heavily modified version of the script originally created by "VideoFred" that is posted over in doom9.org. My version runs 3-4 times faster, has far less sharpening, and more aggressive dirt removal. He developed his script to improve modern movies that were just shot and developed and which are pristine. I developed my variation of his script for movies that are almost a century old and full of dirt and other artifacts. If you run his script on my old material, it often makes it look worse because all the sharpening and grain removal creates a mess.

As for subscribing to my YouTube channel, thank you for that. However, my channel is a weird collection of all sorts of stuff I've done including: weddings; film transfers; and various oddball restorations where I've developed software to remove some sort of problem. So, if you want to skip all those other things, and are interested primarily in my amateur film transfers and restoration, here's a link to just the film transfers:

John Meyer Film Transfers

You will discover some amazing stuff, like the 1929 Cubs/Athletics World series; Bobby Kennedy campaigning in Oregon just two weeks before he was killed; Flint Michigan when it was a thriving city, before they razed the entire downtown; all sorts of Midwest ephemera (like the 1928 backyard football game); various parades, both immediately before and after WWII; and lots of football and cheerleader footage, including some taken of me and various people I knew which I licensed to Sony Pictures for use under the opening credits of their recent movie, "Concussion."

[edit]P.S. Only the films posted in the past 2-3 years have been subjected to the restoration script. The earlier transfers are simply transfers, with nothing more than a little grading and color correction.

That's some beautiful work! The 1930 San Francisco footage is amazing.

I'm still on the front end of the learning curve but I'm loving every minute. It also makes me feel good to save this old footage for posterity.

I really appreciate your recommendations!

Btw, I think I figured out the speed issue on the last video I posted. The project presets in Premiere Elements do not include a 17 fps preset so I used 24 fps. When I slowed it down to 80%, everything looked much more natural.

Mike

[johnmeyer]

Btw, I think I figured out the speed issue on the last video I posted. The project presets in Premiere Elements do not include a 17 fps preset so I used 24 fps. When I slowed it down to 80%, everything looked much more natural.

You probably already know this, but here are the "normal" playback speeds:

Pre-1929 film: No standard speed: it can be anything. Usually 16 fps or slower (12 fps is common)
16mm film, 1929 - 1950s: 16 fps
8mm film: 16 fps
Polavision (Polaroid's instant film): 15 fps
Super 8 film: 18 fps (this one is a standard, and is one of the few things you can count on)
16mm film: 1950s to present: 16-18 fps
Sound film: 24 fps

Many silent amateur film cameras had "film saver" modes that ran at slower speeds. A few, especially Super 8, had slow motion modes where the camera ran at a higher speed. On my old Bell & Howell this was engaged by pressing the on/off button all the way down, and was easy to accidentally engage. If this happens, and you don't want your transfer to play at slow motion, you need to make adjustments in your NLE.

P.S.

That's some beautiful work! The 1930 San Francisco footage is amazing.

Thanks! I re-uploaded that a year ago, and added lots of additional frames using motion estimation in order to get rid of the judder during pans. I also did lots of restoration and added some music that no one has ever heard (it's from a private 78 rpm collection). The motion estimation breaks down quite a bit (which is why I seldom use it), but without it, the street car scenes, with the violent fast pans (which I slowed down) were unwatchable.

Pretty neat seeing the Golden Gate entrance to San Francisco's harbor before the bridge was built.

[OneIron]

Btw, I think I figured out the speed issue on the last video I posted. The project presets in Premiere Elements do not include a 17 fps preset so I used 24 fps. When I slowed it down to 80%, everything looked much more natural.

You probably already know this, but here are the "normal" playback speeds:

Pre-1929 film: No standard speed: it can be anything. Usually 16 fps or slower (12 fps is common)
16mm film, 1929 - 1950s: 16 fps
8mm film: 16 fps
Polavision (Polaroid's instant film): 15 fps
Super 8 film: 18 fps (this one is a standard, and is one of the few things you can count on)
16mm film: 1950s to present: 16-18 fps
Sound film: 24 fps

Many silent amateur film cameras had "film saver" modes that ran at slower speeds. A few, especially Super 8, had slow motion modes where the camera ran at a higher speed. On my old Bell & Howell this was engaged by pressing the on/off button all the way down, and was easy to accidentally engage. If this happens, and you don't want your transfer to play at slow motion, you need to make adjustments in your NLE.

P.S.

That's some beautiful work! The 1930 San Francisco footage is amazing.

Thanks! I re-uploaded that a year ago, and added lots of additional frames using motion estimation in order to get rid of the judder during pans. I also did lots of restoration and added some music that no one has ever heard (it's from a private 78 rpm collection). The motion estimation breaks down quite a bit (which is why I seldom use it), but without it, the street car scenes, with the violent fast pans (which I slowed down) were unwatchable.

Pretty neat seeing the Golden Gate entrance to San Francisco's harbor before the bridge was built.

I'm printing out your "speed chart". I was looking for something like this the other day and couldn't find it.

Man, I have lots to learn!

[OneIron]

Just thought I'd share a couple of RetroScan Universal frame grabs from a 16mm film...


[Attachment 36423 - Click to enlarge]


[Attachment 36424 - Click to enlarge]

I gently processed in Lightroom...

[OneIron]

Latest update...

I just finished my first project for a client. It's about 500' of high school football from 1962. The team won the State Championship that year.

It contains footage of a couple of Hall of Fame players, a state representative, the county physician, and the deceased brother of my client. My client has shown it to her family and many friends of the players. They are absolutely ecstatic. They're able to recognize players, coaches, and cheerleaders that weren't recognizable before. The film had a significant amount of damage but the RetroScan handled it all without a hiccup.

This is the reason I got into this. Makes me smile.

Here's the finished footage...

http://youtu.be/RKvDA8h6Ojk

http://youtu.be/BQlPUBMXJ7k

[johnmeyer]

I looked at a few seconds of the first film transfer. The first half of that transfer is in serious need of gamma adjustment. The contrast is way out of whack. I'm not sure why you chose not to correct that because it is a very simple thing to do in most NLE programs.

I also didn't understand why there is so much dirt still on the films. Yes, it is true that RemoveDirtMC will make footballs in flight disappear (I do football film restoration for a "big time" football film collector, so I am well aware of the problem, and have not found settings that will still remove the dirt, but not remove the ball). Fortunately, the problem can easily overcome by spending about five minutes in your NLE switching between a restored version that includes dirt removal, and one that doesn't, using the dirty version for times when the ball is in flight.

====================

As for everyone being ecstatic, I know exactly how they feel. I too was lucky enough to be a starter on a high school team that won the Illinois D1 football "state championship" (it was done by a poll back then, not via playoffs, hence the quotes). About ten years ago one of our teammates thought it would be a great idea to have a reunion for the football team. My dad had taken Super8 films of some of the games, but had gone on vacation during the week that we played the team who we hadn't beaten since 1948 (this was 1969). They had been state champions many times. Well, we beat them, coming behind from 3 TDs down, all in the 4th quarter after we unveiled an offense that Joe Krupa, who had just retired from the Pittsburgh Steelers, had created for us.

We too had many players go on to bigger things, including quite a few who played in the Big Ten, and one who had a ten year career in the NFL with the Cleveland Browns.

So, with all this history, and with no way to relive the highlight game from my brief sports career (I chose not to play in college), I spent twenty years looking for that footage, including searching every inch of our old high school (three city blocks, four stories high, 4,400 students), with the help of the AD. While we found all the films from 1938 onward, the films from our year were missing.

As the reunion started to come together, and we reconnected with teammates via email, I eventually found a teammate who had "borrowed" the films, but never returned them. They had actually been better stored than the films that I did find at the school, so it was fortunate he had kept them at his house. He sent them to me, I transferred them, and created a few short "promos" that I posted on YouTube, including this one showing the spectacular come-from-behind catch in our first game of the season (with only 0:45 to go), without which our undefeated season would not have happened:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gRtzdSl-7c0

It may not look like much at first blush, but when you see it frame-by-frame, as I show in the second half of the clip, it is actually quite amazing. I cannot believe how many lives were forever altered by that one play.

This clip was so overexposed that the film almost looked transparent, and because of the "thinness" of the exposure, the dirt and scratches became far more predominant, and were overwhelming. So because of the exposure and dirt issues, while I could have bumped up the contrast even more, that would have made it look almost like old Kodalith film, and the dirt issues would have been worse. So in the case of this one reel (the others were well-exposed), I had to compromise. (BTW, I re-posted this six years ago, even though the original posting was a decade ago, because it was several years after the reunion before I figured out how to do all of this nifty film restoration).

Because of this film clip (and a few others that I posted back then), we ended up getting over thirty of our team members, as well as three of the cheerleaders, to come from all corners of the country to Chicago. Two of the cheerleaders came from Texas and D.C., and the players came from even further away.

And here is a really nifty kicker, from almost a decade later.

Eighteen months ago I got a call from Sony Pictures who had seen some of the other film from that season (the Super 8 that my dad had taken, and which you may see as the next clip after the one posted above -- it has 5th Dimension music playing in the background) and wanted to use four clips from that footage under the opening credits of their upcoming Will Smith movie entitled "Concussion." You'll see four of those clips at the beginning of the film.

[OneIron]

I looked at a few seconds of the first film transfer. The first half of that transfer is in serious need of gamma adjustment. The contrast is way out of whack. I'm not sure why you chose not to correct that because it is a very simple thing to do in most NLE programs.

I also didn't understand why there is so much dirt still on the films. Yes, it is true that RemoveDirtMC will make footballs in flight disappear (I do football film restoration for a "big time" football film collector, so I am well aware of the problem, and have not found settings that will still remove the dirt, but not remove the ball). Fortunately, the problem can easily overcome by spending about five minutes in your NLE switching between a restored version that includes dirt removal, and one that doesn't, using the dirty version for times when the ball is in flight.

====================

As for everyone being ecstatic, I know exactly how they feel. I too was lucky enough to be a starter on a high school team that won the Illinois D1 football "state championship" (it was done by a poll back then, not via playoffs, hence the quotes). About ten years ago one of our teammates thought it would be a great idea to have a reunion for the football team. My dad had taken Super8 films of some of the games, but had gone on vacation during the week that we played the team who we hadn't beaten since 1948 (this was 1969). They had been state champions many times. Well, we beat them, coming behind from 3 TDs down, all in the 4th quarter after we unveiled an offense that Joe Krupa, who had just retired from the Pittsburgh Steelers, had created for us.

We too had many players go on to bigger things, including quite a few who played in the Big Ten, and one who had a ten year career in the NFL with the Cleveland Browns.

So, with all this history, and with no way to relive the highlight game from my brief sports career (I chose not to play in college), I spent twenty years looking for that footage, including searching every inch of our old high school (three city blocks, four stories high, 4,400 students), with the help of the AD. While we found all the films from 1938 onward, the films from our year were missing.

As the reunion started to come together, and we reconnected with teammates via email, I eventually found a teammate who had "borrowed" the films, but never returned them. They had actually been better stored than the films that I did find at the school, so it was fortunate he had kept them at his house. He sent them to me, I transferred them, and created a few short "promos" that I posted on YouTube, including this one showing the spectacular come-from-behind catch in our first game of the season (with only 0:45 to go), without which our undefeated season would not have happened:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gRtzdSl-7c0

It may not look like much at first blush, but when you see it frame-by-frame, as I show in the second half of the clip, it is actually quite amazing. I cannot believe how many lives were forever altered by that one play.

This clip was so overexposed that the film almost looked transparent, and because of the "thinness" of the exposure, the dirt and scratches became far more predominant, and were overwhelming. So because of the exposure and dirt issues, while I could have bumped up the contrast even more, that would have made it look almost like old Kodalith film, and the dirt issues would have been worse. So in the case of this one reel (the others were well-exposed), I had to compromise. (BTW, I re-posted this six years ago, even though the original posting was a decade ago, because it was several years after the reunion before I figured out how to do all of this nifty film restoration).

Because of this film clip (and a few others that I posted back then), we ended up getting over thirty of our team members, as well as three of the cheerleaders, to come from all corners of the country to Chicago. Two of the cheerleaders came from Texas and D.C., and the players came from even further away.

And here is a really nifty kicker, from almost a decade later.

Eighteen months ago I got a call from Sony Pictures who had seen some of the other film from that season (the Super 8 that my dad had taken, and which you may see as the next clip after the one posted above -- it has 5th Dimension music playing in the background) and wanted to use four clips from that footage under the opening credits of their upcoming Will Smith movie entitled "Concussion." You'll see four of those clips at the beginning of the film.

The starting footage was so light, it was almost unrecognizable. I maxed out the gamma adjustment. My client said that this was the first time they could recognize each of the cheerleaders.

I had to set the video to private temporarily at the request of my client. It was basically going viral in Saluda and she wanted to roll it out slowly so that her close friends could see it first. Nice problem to have...

I'll check out your video shortly. It's nice to talk to someone with the same interests as myself.

Also, I just got a message from an alumnus of my high school. He has 16mm football films from the 60's. We're meeting up this weekend. Love it!

[OneIron]

The playback speed seems a little fast, at least at certain times. 1930s amateur 16mm film had no standard filming speed. If you get film from the 1920s, much of it was "hand-cranked," so the speed can change quite a bit. I sensed that this film was speeding up and slowing down, so this might have been taken with one of those older cameras. You just have to use your judgement as to whether a slower (or faster) average speed will work better. I have set some of my transfers to play at speeds as low as 12 fps. Here is one such example:

1928 Backyard Kids Football in Oak Park, Illinois
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1YekFxBYKNM

I think you will agree that, even at this super-slow playback speed, it is not too slow (i.e., it doesn't look like slow motion).

John,

I've basically "standardized" my footage at 16 fps. I appreciate your input.

[Andre Pinto]

Hello!

I'm currently working in a place (Videoteca - Arquivo Municipal de Lisboa) that has the RetroScan Universal Scanner, to make digitalization of 8mm and super 8mm.

However, during the time that we had spent on digitalization, we saw a "problem" on the movies. When the machine is on digitalization mode, in the screen preview we can see a small blur.

The problem is that when we turn the knob to change the focus manually the image is still not full focused, usually ONLY ONE of the sides is fine.

What will be the solution? I'm doing something wrong?
Maybe, is because the camera's lens is fish eye?