8mm film capture via pros, feedback on process needed

[AVMiii]

I have about 5000ft of 8mm film home movies to be digitized. I -think that I will go the Hi Def 1080p route. It might be overkill, but I only want to have this done once. I want at least an archival copy in AVI and optionally blurays.

One company lists their HD transfer:
"Our editing process includes color correction and adjustment of contrast and balance. We also delete any blank scenes (including leader footage) and do not charge you for those portions. Our process for all film transfers includes cleaning the film, placing on 7 inch (400 feet) archival reels, capturing to your selected resolution, and then editing the footage.
Our cleaning process is performed using a custom built machine that runs the film through soft cloth and a film cleaner / lubricant. This is preformed while we are splicing the film to the new archival reels we provide.
The bitrate for our HD transfers to AVI is 73mbps, or 9.1 megabytes per second. This usually means that a 50 foot reel of film comes to roughly 2.1GB total." Capture is frame by frame, but I don't know details of the hardware or process that is used.

I'd receive these 1080p transfers on a 500Gb Hard drive, not sure if a folder per reel or what. How would I play back AVI on my computer?

This place doesn't offer encoding the AVIs to H.264, titling chapters and burning to bluray, so I'm interested in a brief outline of this process and how difficult it would be. I would likely not really be editing, just titling some chapters for blueray.

There are a number of other services that will capture to SD and burn to DVD, but I'm thinking for a few extra bucks that the above HD process might be better.
Any suggestions or opinions would be appreciated.

[Acımasız]

Check out Capturing and restoring old 8mm films, might have some useful info

[newpball]

I have about 5000ft of 8mm film home movies to be digitized. I -think that I will go the Hi Def 1080p route.

1080p for 8mm is definitely overkill, 720p should be more than sufficient.

[creakndale]

AVMiii,

I detailed my 8mm and 16mm film transfer saga in this thread:
https://forum.videohelp.com/threads/279366-8mm-film-to-dvd-and-which-video-transfer-system-to-use

creakndale

[AVMiii]

Creakndale, thanks for the reference. Seems like you were happy with the MyMovieTransfer.com place. Their 1080p is pretty pricey at around 42 cents a foot, but I'll have to investigate the 720p version. I was a little confused by the posts in this thread after yours, but I guess I'll just ignore them. I'm also considering a place called Digmypics who clock in at about 30 cents a ft for 1080p. Dig does not claim to use the same scanner as MyMovietransfer, but rather a frame by frame capture which sounds like a level lower than the film scanner. Just not sure how much to spend on this project as I really don't know the quality of the film --my father in law shot them.

[AVMiii]

newpball, others have commented that 1080p is overkill. Just8mm.com doesn't even scan in 1080p claiming that 720 x 480 SD is quite enough. Many of the other sites do offer the HD service and claim that many 8mm file transfers can benefit from this resolution. It's hard to separate the fact from hype. I can believe that my analog Hi8 video tapes won't magically give better resolution if scanned at 1080p, but I'm not so sure about 8mm film as it is not quite as straightforward from what I read here to relate film grain to actual resolution.

[sophisticles]

Have a look at this:

http://www.streetdirectory.com/travel_guide/159094/technology/8mm_film_transfer_guide_...d_to_know.html

In a similar way, your old 8mm movie films have a maximum resolution. The maximum resolution for an 8mm film transfer is limited by the film grain size and the size of the frame. Research has shown that 8mm film has the equivalent of 700 lines of horizontal resolution. So, a standard definition 8mm film transfer will only be able to capture 480 out of the 700 lines of resolution on your film. A high definition 8mm film transfer will be able to capture all 700 lines of resolution on your 8mm film since it is a 1080 line video format.

I would say 1080p is the way to go.

[newpball]

Have a look at this:

http://www.streetdirectory.com/travel_guide/159094/technology/8mm_film_transfer_guide_...d_to_know.html

In a similar way, your old 8mm movie films have a maximum resolution. The maximum resolution for an 8mm film transfer is limited by the film grain size and the size of the frame. Research has shown that 8mm film has the equivalent of 700 lines of horizontal resolution. So, a standard definition 8mm film transfer will only be able to capture 480 out of the 700 lines of resolution on your film. A high definition 8mm film transfer will be able to capture all 700 lines of resolution on your 8mm film since it is a 1080 line video format.

I would say 1080p is the way to go.

I would say the writer of that article is mistaken.

There is no way in a million years a crummy old 8mm film can resolve 1440x1080

[AVMiii]

Hmm, at the end of the article above is:
"About The Author, Ron Wicker

Video Conversion Experts have been involved in 8mm film transfer and restoration since he opened his company in 1980. Video Conversion Experts is one of the premiere 8mm film transfer and restoration labs in the United States today."

So, as the Hi Def transfers are more expensive one can not rule out a possible bent by the author to favor the process that feeds his company more money.

Wicker writes "Research has shown that 8mm film has the equivalent of 700 lines of horizontal resolution."

No reference to this research, which would be more convincing.

[Cornucopia]

There is lots of disagreement about the whole film vs. digital pixel resolution comparisons, but even with disagreement, you can see what people are relying on (putting their money where there mouth is).

Taking what is generally accepted by the industry as a benchmark, ~6K is the "best" that one can normally get out of a Super35mm negative. That means ~6144x4096 (3:2 DAR) of a full, usable image (not cropped for video) which encompasses the, say, ~25mm x 16.66mm area of the negative.

That works out to 245.76 pixels/mm.

Since Super8mm (the most common existing stock) has a negative area of ~ 5.79mm x 4.01mm, that works out to a possible (max?) resolution of 1423 x 985 (which is still a ~3:2 or 4:3 DAR).

So it makes sense to capture at equal or greater resolution than that.

I'd recommend 1440x1080, with pillarboxing, added after the fact, to provide a consistent 1920x1080 image.

It's probably not going to be as good as that for a variety of reasons (gate irregularlities, worse lens optics, cheaper/less fine filmstock), but it's a good likelihood that THIS would be your upperbound.

I guess a million years came alot sooner than expected.

Scott

[newpball]

It's probably not going to be as good as that for a variety of reasons...

No kidding.

It is surreal, we have people on this forum questioning whether 35mm commercial film actually warrants 1080p because in many cases they deem that 720p is more than enough, while here we talk about mom and pops 8mm films which should be scanned at 1080p.

Oh well, call me an idiot!

[sophisticles]

There is no way in a million years a crummy old 8mm film can resolve 1440x1080

Never in a million years? How about in a quick google search:

http://www.genesismuseum.com/8mm/8mm.htm

You can see a visual representation of 8mm film digitized to different resolutions, tell me again how SD is enough for 8mm transfers.

[newpball]

There is no way in a million years a crummy old 8mm film can resolve 1440x1080

Never in a million years? How about in a quick google search:

http://www.genesismuseum.com/8mm/8mm.htm

You can see a visual representation of 8mm film digitized to different resolutions, tell me again how SD is enough for 8mm transfers.

I did NOT say that SD is enough, I said 720p is more than enough!

[Cornucopia]

I don't know anyone here or in the general Film/Video community (who knows what they're talking about) who would ever seriously say 35mm<=1080p. If there is someone here, they still have some learning to do.

Scott

[creakndale]

AVMiii,
I had an 8mm projector so I knew the quality of the old 8mm film. There was a lot of debris and scratches as the film had been viewed a few times over the 50 odd years and the projector wasn't exceptionally clean prior to each viewing. The film cleaning process is a very important step in preparing for the best quality transfer.

There might be enough theoretical detail in an 8mm film frame that 1080 "might" be able to resolve but in practice you are never going to see it. My 50 year old 8mm film was all amateur shot footage. Combine that with all the tiny vibrations of the whirring internal mechanics inside the camera and the camera being hand held. Were the camera lens or lenses cleaned frequently? Was the focus always set properly? I decided 1080P was not worth the additional cost. I could maybe see spending extra if the film was professionally shot using tripod, dolly moves, perfect lighting and aperture, stored for 50 years in a climate controlled environment, never run through a projector, effectively a pristine 8mm copy. I found that each time the camera trigger was pulled, the initial 3 to 5 frames were a little blurry because as the internal mechanisms began functioning the camera moved the operator's hand ever so slightly. I removed these individual frames during editing.

If the companies you are considering don't have full resolution sample footage for you to download, I'd suggest contacting them and get a few seconds of sample footage in their resulting conversion format. That way you can attempt playback on your computer and gain insight on playability.

I labeled each of my 8mm film reels (both the outer case and the reel itself) with a incremental number knowing the film would be spliced together. The 8mm came back on a 13" reel and the 16mm came back on a 7" reel.

I provided my own spare 120GB hard drive in a USB enclosure for the converted files. There were ten .MOV files for the 8mm and three .MOV files for the 16mm. Each file was a different size but wasn't broken up on a per-reel basis. For example, of the 10 .MOV files, the smallest file was 1.6GB and the largest was 35GB. Each file started and stopped at a scene boundary but the 35GB file contained multiple reels.

I know you don't plan on extensive editing but someday you might. I spent multiple winter months editing 3 hours of raw footage down to under 2 hours. Then manipulating the footage buy doing some of my own color correction, stabilization and adding sound effects. My final output was 720 x 480 (standard definition) but having the files in 720P gave me the option of "flying the camera" simulating the pan and zoom Ken Burns effect with little degradation. I also had 50 year old black and white photos that I scanned at high resolution just so I could do various camera moves during editing. All was incorporated into the project to tell a chronological story.

creakndale

[AVMiii]

Here's a link to SD (20 cents ft) and 1080p (30 cents/ft) samples of 8mm film digitized by Digmypics. I wasn't able to post the zipped files.
Difference is not night and day, but I guess I'd go with the HD.
Any other opinions. (300mg download).

http://www.digmypics.com/CustomerFiles/Sample_Reels.zip

[AVMiii]

I downloaded the above and just clicked on the SD and HD files and they opened in my default JRiver app. Not sure if it was the best app to use, but it worked.

As sort of a side comment, I have been thinking that the end project must be transferred to probably bluray not DVD, for ease of use by some of my relatives, but I'll probably stick with separate files on a Hard drive and use JRiver or something like that to play for myself. I could probably organize separate files multiple ways, like in playlists or something of the sort giving me greater control than multiple Blurays with chapters. I'm thinking that I will have about 5000 ft or over 6 hours of video which seems to translate to about an hour or so of video per bluray.

Oh and another question. One on-line place mentions capture "•Image sequence capture in uncompressed 24bit BMP format". Should I be asking if other places offer this format, or is some alternative (8 bit?) ok?

Yet another question. One site claims to give me back uncompressed video with no pulldown, meaning I guess that if the 8 mm film is shot at 18fps, that they don't adjust to 30fps for my playback. Another site says "•Proper film to video re-timing for smooth flicker free operation" Does this mean that they do pulldown? If the first site doesn't do pulldown do I have to do so to play videos on computer or transfer to bluray? What's the best way to proceed?

One site lists their capture rate as "The bitrate for our HD transfers to AVI is 73mbps, or 9.1 megabytes per second. This usually means that a 50 foot reel of film comes to roughly 2.1GB total." Is this sufficient? Should I be asking what format the AVI file is in? Not even sure this is the correct nomenclature. AVI can have .mov, or some other extension? Are their different or preferable ones for playback or editing? I realize that I would have to encode to H.264 to make a bluray, but I'm just referring to the AVI that I would get from them.
Enough questions (maybe too many) for one post.

This just seems to get more complicated, the more I look into pro services. yikes!

[poisondeathray]

As sort of a side comment, I have been thinking that the end project must be transferred to probably bluray not DVD, for ease of use by some of my relatives, but I'll probably stick with separate files on a Hard drive and use JRiver or something like that to play for myself. I could probably organize separate files multiple ways, like in playlists or something of the sort giving me greater control than multiple Blurays with chapters. I'm thinking that I will have about 5000 ft or over 6 hours of video which seems to translate to about an hour or so of video per bluray.

Unless you plan on cutting/editing it, 6 hours is 6 hours. The more you put on a fixed medium, like BD or DVD, the lower the quality . You're going to have to re-encode it for DVD or BD. 6 hours is usually too much for either

Oh and another question. One on-line place mentions capture "•Image sequence capture in uncompressed 24bit BMP format". Should I be asking if other places offer this format, or is some alternative (8 bit?) ok?

24bit BMP is 8bit per channel, the standard windows bitmap. 8 red + 8 blue + 8 green

Yet another question. One site claims to give me back uncompressed video with no pulldown, meaning I guess that if the 8 mm film is shot at 18fps, that they don't adjust to 30fps for my playback. Another site says "•Proper film to video re-timing for smooth flicker free operation" Does this mean that they do pulldown? If the first site doesn't do pulldown do I have to do so to play videos on computer or transfer to bluray? What's the best way to proceed?

There is no "best".

There are pros/cons to any method

Usually the "best" is to get a 1:1 transfer. So 18 fps = 18 fps, no duplicates. That gives YOU the options to add pulldown, interpolate etc.. whatever method is necessary to get back to "legal" framerates for DVD or BD. For example, you can add soft pulldown for DVD, instead of physical duplicates (hard pulldown), which will yield higher quality (fewer physical frames are encoded, thus more bitrate can be used).

1:1 transfers are usually better for filtering purposes also. If you need to clean it up, use temporal filters, duplicate frames can impair the effectiveness. 1:1 transfer will give you a smaller filesize also when they use image sequences like BMP. For formats that use a set bitrate, the quality per frame will be increased (if you have duplicates, you can think of it as spreading a given bitrate over more frames thus lowering the quality of all frames)

On the other hand, some people don't want to be bothered by these intricacies. Ease of use is more important to them

One site lists their capture rate as "The bitrate for our HD transfers to AVI is 73mbps, or 9.1 megabytes per second. This usually means that a 50 foot reel of film comes to roughly 2.1GB total." Is this sufficient? Should I be asking what format the AVI file is in? Not even sure this is the correct nomenclature. AVI can have .mov, or some other extension? Are their different or preferable ones for playback or editing? I realize that I would have to encode to H.264 to make a bluray, but I'm just referring to the AVI that I would get from them.
Enough questions (maybe too many) for one post.

The example above used MJPEG for the HD version, DV for the SD version. Whether or not it's "suffcient" depends on what you are doing with it, and your expectations. Those are both I-frame formats, so those are the preferred types for editing. Some places provide higher quality delivery format like prores, but the bitrates and filesizes will be larger and the difference for your average consumer on typical 8mm content won't be that noticable