Super 8 film, eliminating "pull down" effect

[Khaver]

Thanks David.

It would be nice to hear if anyone besides myself used it successfully. Let me know how it goes.

The projector I used is basically a piece of junk (Goodwill bargain) put it does have a slow-motion switch on it that slows the film down to 6fps. I cut the shutter fins off with a dremel and had to rig up a halogen light because the bulb burned out and I couldn't find a replacement handy. The image is a little dark but I don't have to project if far and I had to white balance in the camcorder. If I had a good projector and could rig my camcorder to record directly from the film gate (which I enlarged a bit), then I would probably get much better results.

[2Bdecided]

My problem in that respect (apart from being packed up to move house!) is that my camcorder won't zoom into the film gate to make it fill the screen (or anything close). I wonder how people manage this. Greater zoom isn't necessarily the answer, since the focus might still not match (i.e. you can fill the screen with the zoom, but not focus when zoomed in at the close distance that allows this).

Cheers,
David.

[Khaver]

They use extension tubes with lenses. Kind of like shooting through a microscope. There are other ways with lenses that "project" an aerial image that a camera can focus on.

I used one of those boxes with a lens, mirror and back projection screen made for cheap telecining with a camcorder, but with the shutterless projector and my processing utility you get away from the dark rolling bands and flicker you usually have to deal with.

[Khaver]

Here's a new version of FilmExtractor. A few additions and some bug fixes. I also included the full autoit3 script for your use.

FilmExtractor v1.1 - Used for extracting progressive frames from a camcorder capture of film projected at a slow speed using a projector without a shutter (aka, the poor mans telecine).

An updated command line version of this utility can be found HERE.

[johnmeyer]

Since this thread has been resurrected after all these years, I have two things to add.

1. Long before this thread was started, I invented my own frame-accurate film transfer using a shutterless projector operating at full 24 fps speed. I have transferred many miles of film using this, and it works perfectly. You have to set the "shutter speed" on the camcorder to 1/750 or faster (I use 1/1000). I use software derived from TFM/TDecimate to detect and remove the redundant or blurred fields. I have posted about this many times over at doom9.org.

Recover image from shutterless 16mm projector capture

2. The original post in this thread was about trying to get a better result from the DIY film-transfer process most people try initially, namely pointing a video camera at the screen while projecting the film. This results in flicker, because the shutter is opening/closing while the video is being captured, and also results in some frames of video which contain multiple frames of film. Again, over at doom9.org, this problem was discussed, and one of the gurus, Didée, came up with a clever script to address the problem. The person whom he helped then put together a tutorial and complete script and posted it here:

The power of Avisynth: salvaging "botched" transfers of old 8mm films to DVD