I have a Retro-8 and have captured about 2 miles of R8 and S8 film with it. Previously I'd been using a WorkPrinter, built by the same company. If you want a simple machine that runs smoothly with a minimum of effort and captures excellent footage then buy the Retro unit. My only complaint (?) is that it captures too much detail so you have to use something like Neat Video to remove the excess grain. And the noise reduction requirement opens up a subject that's been batted around the forum for a long time.

So how good is the capture? Obviously much depends on how good the film is and what kind of additional processing you do. My experience is the typical R8 film comes out just shy of DV and way better than Hi-8 footage. IMHO the film "look" makes the footage better than typical DV video. Excellent S8 footage can approach 720p HD.

I'm currently working on a 44 minute S8 short film from the 70's, shot at 24fps with a high end Bolex on a tripod, using Kodachrome II. The exposure was perfect in most places, the processing first rate and the film was stored in metal cans on large reels. The only strike against it was the storage was in a high heat, high humidity environment. After capture with the Retro-8, clean-up with Neat Video and a bit of Vegas curves and CC, the film could easily pass for something recently shot on 16mm. When viewed on an upscaling DVD or Blu-ray player it is very nearly like a commercial DVD movie.

This is certainly the best you could expect and not representative of the average home movie footage but even typical S8 film has a depth and richness that puts it between average DV and HD footage, in my opinion.

The RetroScan Universal film scanner does a great job in transferring film. I own the 8mm gate, 16mm gate, and 9.5mm gate. It is a well built scanner and provides a great picture. It can be a bit complicated the learn how to run, with having to adjust the camera lenses for each type of film. Make sure the focus is right and the cropping is correct. That means setup can take a bit of time. The Reto 8 unit is much simpler to use. There is no focus to adjust. Just put the film on and go. The picture quality is comparable to the RetroScan Universal. The problem is this unit is no longer in production so you would need to find a used one. The only reason I switch I need the ability to do all the different formats without have to have 3 different transfer machines. I will be selling my Retro 8 unit which will be updated by Moviestuff and carry a full warranty. You can contact me directly if interested. The units are very well built and Moviestuff is great to work with if you have a problem. I have purchased almost every machine he has built. They have been very dependable and work day after day. I have been transferring film for many years, there are a lot of companies doing this. In order to get business you have to offer something other companies do not.

Thanks for all the answers guys. I'm highly encouraged to buy the RetroScan as I do need the different gates.

One more question. I have a number of 16mm answer prints to transfer. In other words, single perf release prints that include an optical sound track. RetroScan will transfer the image -- but what choices would I have with transferring and syncing up the sound? Any one run into this?

I transfer 16mm sound film with the RetroScan Universal all the time. You need a sound projector, transfer the film from the sound projector along with the audio. I do this in Vegas all the time. The video does not need to be perfect since you are only going to use the audio. After rendering the RetroScan film place it on the time line along with the film from the projector that has the sound track and match the 2 up. Sometimes you are lucky and they will match perfect other times you will need to do some splitting and use stretch to make it match. You will want to check about every 3 to 4 minutes. Especially if you have voice that makes it easy. There are lots of tricks to matching it. It only comes with experience. I can usually match the sound in about 5 minutes or less.

Other than trimming the start and end points to match, you shouldn't have to do any splitting at all. Speed difference should always be done by using stretch only, and set the audio's pitch change to match stretch.

I know a lot of people disagree with both of these points, so i'll give the very brief and obvious explanation why this is the only right way. If there is a speed difference it's because one device was running at a different speed from the other, and speed is equal to pitch. Using stretch with locking the audio undoes this capture error.

1 - If you adjust the speed by splitting out little bits then you haven't corrected the speed or the pitch so it's still wrong.

2 - You end up with gaps in one track that aren't in the other, so one track will slow down slightly compared to the other, then suddenly jump head, then slow down again, repeatedly as the video progresses.

What i do is find some easily seen/heard momentary event near the beginning and line up the tracks on that event. Then find something near the end and ctrl-stretch the audio so that the event at the end lines up too. After that you'll have near perfect sync, assuming of course that both devices run at a consistent (though not necessarily the same) speed. This process usually takes me somewhere between 10 and 20 seconds.

Thanks guys for the encouragement and detailed discussion.

I do have a 16mm projector. Hopefully the prints will run without problems through the projector. I would take it that doing the video scan first would be recommended. They have not been projected in decades. Storage conditions were problematic too. I guess you just do the best you can. I think the projector has an "audio out" jack -- for speakers or an amp? -- Hopefully I can feed that into an H1 recorder or something (if the impedance is right) -- likely the result will be a decent fidelity

I'm certainly going to try Kelly's suggestion on stretching the audio to maintain sync throughout the piece. In fact I will try it later today as if I can find some track and video I did years ago (the video is just an "optical" transfer shot off a screen -- but the idea would be the same regards the track which I think was recorded separately off the projector. Either way of syncing -- sounds like it can be done using the RetroScan for the image.

One other question about Retro Scan. How much space is needed to set it up? In other words, what size area is needed.

The photographs i've seen look very much like a medium size reel-to-reel deck. Probably 18"x18" of table space is well more than enough.

Thanks Kelly ... I tried the "stretch" audio and it worked beautifully on a piece about 11 min long. I'm very encouraged that the Retro Scan would be worthwhile even if I decide to sell it after doing all my own stuff.

We got our RetroScan Universal in on 21 Jan .. While it was not a walk in the park to get going, it was, in RetroSpec, fairly easy and very doable for anyone with some experience in handling movie film stocks. Only took one phone call into Roger at MovieStuff to help us along.

First tests were on 16mm footage that was shot in 1944 by my father-in-law. Here's the results. I used Vegas to Render for upload to Vimeo but did not do any CC or pan/crop. This is how it came out of the RetroScan. Nothing done to it. All default settings except for the "Light Grain" setting.

RetroScan Univ Test 16mm .. 1 1/2 min.
https://vimeo.com/152902769

Looks great.

The Credit goes to Roger at MovieStuff ... good equipment if an old guy like me can do it. Reg 8 stuff was more problematic. Has to do with the Sensor setting and edge not being dark. But most of the Super 8 stuff is running just fine Very cool that you can just change gates and run different formats.

xberk

Did the camera actually shoot 24fps? I thought those days it was more like 15fps or 16fps.My fathers Eumig C3m shot at 16fps and I used a Retro Pro 8 to convert his films and it turned our nice too.
I left the projects and handbrake at 16fps and also uploaded it at 16fps to YouTube and that looks really good.

Good catch. Likely my father-in-law's camera was at 16fps or maybe 18fps the most. His was amateur equipment. Likely Kodak consumer model. I"m going to try to do an export at 18fps and 16fps. Later on when I used 16mm cameras, even silent cameras shot at 24 fps. I think most 16mm projectors would do 18fps or 24fps for sound films. But all of what I ever shot on 16mm was at 24fps. RetroScan just does a frame-by-frame capture. It doesn't worry about fps until you export the file.

I'm doing some Super8 now. That stuff was all 18fps I'm fairly sure.

Looks great, but, yeah, frame rate is too fast.

Super 8 was generally shot at 18 fps, although some higher end cameras (like my Nikon R8) shot (and still can shoot) at 24 fps.

I recently shot some footage at 24 fps; had it scanned at a well known west coast facility. I explicitly noted that I shot it at 24 fps and wanted it scanned at that rate. Of course, they scanned it at 18 fps so it's all mucked up.

Wish I had the dollars to drop on a Retro Universal!

The Eumig can shoot at 16,24 & 32fps but the higher fps eat a lot more film and there isn't much to begin with on a double 8 roll.

I would love to take the C3M for a spin, it's still in great shape but getting color film here in the US is almost impossible, development even worse I think. But would make for a good challenge. No autofocus, not auto exposure and no zoom, just a revolver head with 3 lenses.

Back in the day, I shot a lot of 16mm cameras. Beaulieu, Bolex, Auricon, CM16, Filmo, Arriflex, and Eclair. I loved those days but have no desire to go back and load up one of those cameras and do it again. Been there done that. Nor would I like to have my old editing room back with the upright Moviola, rewind bench, trim bin etc. -- but -- I wouldn't mind being young again, knowing what I know now.

RetroScan .. appropriate name. Nice equipment.