I've been doing it myself for my parents & in-laws old family moview on a good-but-not-professional basis.

You need to have a projector that has a variable speed adjustment knob on it to account for the different frame rates -- otherwise you'll get a very noticeable flicker.

I place the projector about three feet from the wall where I have a piece of 8.5 x 11 paper taped. I set the DV Camera to the left of the projector, but have both the projector and the Camera angled inward slightly toward each other.

Turn off auto-focus and place something with text on it on the wall before-hand to focus the camera. Also turn off any motion stabilizing feature if your camera has it. I'd leave white balance alone unless you find it helps to adjust it.

My goal is to preserve high quality by storing on Digital 8 tapes but also burn to VCD for easy access and viewing on DVD players. Over the next year I'll be creating a video with all the bells and whistles for my in-laws 50th wedding anniversary. This way I'll be able to view the VCD's (which I'll keep for historical purposes), identify what scenes I want for the wedding video, then go back to the Dig8 tapes and recapture to VV3 just those scenes, at higher quality, for the wedding video.

As a matter of interest, if you don't have a variable frame rate projector and you do finish up with flicker, is there anything in Vegas to 're-process' the captured footage in order to minimise this?

Actually, I'm not even sure how a variable frame rate would help me, even if I had one. The 8mm is filmed at 18 fps and PAL video is 25 fps - that's nearly 40% different. I'd finish up with a Keystone Cops movie.

-Pete

Boy! Am I glad someone brought this up! I, too, have a few old family 8mm and Super8mm films I had wanted to capture. I saw on another forum (but I have forgotten where it was)that there is some sort of professional 'box' that you can purchase for this purpose. The poster has mentioned that the results are best if you can slow down the shutter speed on the DV cam during capture to eliminate the flicker. I looked in my book for the Sony TRV30 and there are four settings but I haven't tried it yet. I was going to just project the old films on the original 'silverized' screen that came with it. Do you think I would get better results with a white background? I can't slow down the old projector, do you think the shutter speed will do the trick? Thanks for starting this thread.

Bob

I've found that plain "bright-white" copy paper seems to work better than a movie screen. It may not look as good to your eyes, but the video camera picks up a better image.

The camera shutter speed is quite important. My camera defaults to 1/80 second and the flicker is very bad. I set it to the longest speed, 1/60, and the flicker nearly disappeared. The project i've been using is fixed at 18fps. The important thing is that at 1/60th, the camera is continuously recording (since each field lasts just about 1/60 of a second), rather than grabbing discontinuous images.

I have looked all through the TRV30 camera manual and cannot find the default shutter speed. However, the slow setting choices are: 1/30, 1/15, 1/8, and 1/4. What do you think?

Bob

There is a very simple way to do this...although the equipment might be kinda difficult to find. I work at a Video Duplication place...and we also do film transfers. We run the film in to what is called a mirror or light box...Then you run the projector in to one end...and your camcorder in to the other end. Gives really great quality whtn you use a DV Camcorder....3CCD's give great quality. The best place to find one of these boxes is probably on e-bay. I just found one you can go look at here
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=1342041806

Bob, try them all and see which one works best           ;)

My guess is that 1/30 will be best image quality. 1/15 will be a little less flicker, but the frames may blur together. Take your pick and see which one looks better.

Am I missing something here? Is everyone confusing shutter speed with frame rate?
Surely changing the shutter speed has no effect on the number of frames per second. Isn't the object to sync the frames?

What I was hoping for in my earlier posting was that someone would know how to get VV to interpolate and thus create 25 frames from the original 18 (I'm using PAL). Perhaps I'm being naive and that's what these mega dollar telecine things do..? <g>

-Pete

Right. Exactly. And in a perfect world .... *sigh*
The point is not anything to do with Vegas or frame rates, but that the video camera must see something to be sent to Vegas. Adjusting the shutter speed can help increase the chances that the camera is actually "looking" at the screen while the projector is displaying a frame of the movie. Faster shutter speeds increases the chances that when the camera captures a frame, it will be getting the dark period between movie frames more often.

I have just spent many hours on a pet project of mine with limited success at this stage. I am in PAL land so 25fps is my standard. The analog output of the camera has the vertical synch separated with a tv chip. This triggers a circuit to drive a 48 step/rev stepper motor through 4 steps. The motor drive a 12 tooth sprocket to drive the film. However at this stage I am only getting pics of the film moving (blurred). If I divide the synch pulses by two so that film drive is 12.5 fps I get one blurred frame and one very good one. The TRV320 doesnt seem to have any manual control of shutter speed and I cannot find any info on just when during a video frame the shutter operates, does it operate twice for the two fields?
I think some cameras have the ability to shoot at different frame rates?
For the image part I intend to use the system advertised by a device called "workprinter" see their web site. http://www.afterimagephoto.tv/workprinter.html
The quality of the image in the condenser lens is really great.
With the 12.5 fps I have to work out a way to automatically delete every second frame (maybe a keyboard macro and then it is just a matter of stretching in VV (ctrl-drag) to get correct display speed.
email me if you want to be kept up on my "crazy" scheme, Brian

Chienworks,

Thanks for the helpful information.

Bob

How timely, I am preparing to transfer my father's and uncle's films to DVD using DV as intermediate. For a total of a little over USD$100 I purchased on Ebay a Bell & Howe 8mm variable speed projector and an Ambico V-0652 video transfer box. Here are a couple of good links I found:

http://www.super8filmmaking.com/s8vid.htm

http://www.bealecorner.com/trv900/filmtrans.html

PLEASE keep us posted as to your successes and failures with this project. These tapes that I have are over 50 years old and I only want to do this one time as I am afraid that they won't take much handling. Thanks.

Bob

BW has gone the Mad Scientist route and his setup might actually work- I am very interested in hearing more!

For the rest of us, please allow me to speak from experience:

I'll be shocked if ANYBODY can get a home film transfer to work with anything other than barely acceptable results.

One of many issues will be the consistency of the projector framerate- is it locked to a master clock? If not, it'll drift like mad. Is the camera also genlocked to the same clock? Throw in frame rates that are not 1:1 and it becomes almost impossible.

Can you get a cool effect by doing this? Yes- but it is just that- an effect.

If you need a good film transfer, save yourself the headaches and have it done professionally.

I don't want to completely discourage the adventurous: if you have a CNC machine, an EE degree, and 120 spare hours you MIGHT be able to pull this off.

How could I find a skilled person in Southern California to transfer a 56-year-old, 8mm home-movie color reel to miniDV? This film is my only memory of my father, who died 53 years ago.

(My sister had mailed me a VHS copy, but it is very dark.)

Thanks for the feedback and suggestions. I didn't realize this subject would generate so much interest. Looks like I have my work cut out for me. Before I get too frustrated "counting flowers on the wall", I plan to explore possible options with the George Eastman Museum in Rochester, NY. I will keep the forum posted regarding my successes and failures.

From my own experience, I sadly concur.

Unless the footage is of extreme sentimental value (or of Kennedy's third assassin) it scarcely seems worth the enormous cost of doing it professionally.

Project onto a good white surface and try and get the camera and projector lenses as close as possible to the same axis, and that's it. Time, tiny frames, grain and optical inadequacies will all conspire against you. You might be happy, but I doubt it.

-Pete

(Dave - there may be a niche here. How about an 8mm to video filter <g>)?

Well, considering my uncle projected onto his wall, and shot it with a VHS videocamera, this approach will be certainly more acceptable and finally digitally archived. This material does have major sentimental value. I am wealthy enough to afford these computers and video equipment that I use for different projects. But I am not wealthy enough to afford to outsource all of this transfer for optimal results. Since I am only spending about $100 on additional equipment I won't lose too much except perhaps valuable time--I probably won't ride the exposure control on the projector as suggested. My only regret is that I don't have a 3-CDD camera.

I have used the varible speed projector, white paper on wall, and camcorder in dark room method with decent results. There is flicker, but not much more than with the original footage. The bigest problem that I had was resplicing the 8MM film. The old glue splices just kept falling apart. I also ran into the problem of warped film. The film had bowed and would not lay flat as it went through the projector. This created a focusing nightmare. My suggestion is to get the film transfered as fast as you can. It may not be the greatest quality, but at least you will have it. If the film is getting bad, you may lose any chance of getting it transfered.

"...My only regret is that I don't have a 3-CDD camera."

Well don't regret it. In these circumstances those three CCDs would bring nothing to the party. Since the sharpness of the original is constrained by the size of the 8mm frame, and the grain and colour constrained by the same thing plus time and old colour technology, you wouldn't see any improvement.

The sad fact is we've all become spoilt by video. We look at those old spools of film and fondly imagine that they were a bit like VHS quality with 'interesting' sixties colours. When we project them we realise that our memories were considerably fallible.

-Pete