Also Dynapel.com sells a program called Steady Hand which will steady up
a lot of the jerky's. Super sampling is supposed to do magic if you can figure out
how to use it.

JJK

You can stretch to extend out scenes. My method (I do it all the time) is to chop up the short scenes you wish to expand into seperate events. Then while holding down the Ctrl key drag the right edge which will introduce a ziz zag line across the middle to indicate the event is time stretched. You can easily add a value of 50% without destroying the continuatity. In other words a scene that is 8 seconds long can easily be stretched to 12 seconds and still not appear as slow motion. While you can add time to be more precise, I simply eye ball it, resulting in a more natural look. You could also use a envelope, but probably not necessary.

Another trick for pans or zooms that were done too qucikly (most people do when filming, don't be so hard on your dad) is add the missing motion. For example if the scene only has pan, add some zoom. If only zoom, also pan. This was you can really stretch out the event maybe doubling its length even more and it will look much better. Don't forget to set resample if you're not using version 4 which adds it automatically when it detects a change. By using keyframes the process is really very simple once you do it a few times. If you want to pause, probably best to use a envelope, slowly slow down, then pause, then slowly build up to normal speed again. You see varations of this on the history channel all the time where they bring old photos to life with careful panning and zooming. It just takes a little practice to get the hang of what works and what don't.

I'm not 100% certain about this but I think 8mm ran at 18fps and I don't think there's anyway to do pulldown to 25 or 30 fps from that speed, if anyone knows better I'd be mighty interested as I'm about to do a whole heap of 8mm transfers.

If there is no way to get the telecine to correct the frame rate then I imagine technically you should slow it down just to get the frame rate to match real time. Come to thing of it that would explain why it looks jerky!

Last year I converted about 4 hours worth of home 8mm film. Fortunately, my wife's grandfather, who shot the 8mm film, did a pretty good job of keeping the camera steady. However, here are some tips from what I learned.

I matched the playback speed to look authentic. Because my conversion system takes a "picture" of each 8mm frame and saves them into a single AVI file, I could make the playback speed exact using simple math. [BTW, I use a "Workprinter" to do transfers]

I cut out blurred or fastly panned scenes from the original. You can't see anything anyway, so why keep it. In some instances, I paused a few frames so that viewers could get a good look at family members that only showed up in the scene for a second or two.

I did a LOT of color correcting and brightness/contrast adjusting. A lot of old film had a brown tint to it, now the grass is green and the sky is blue. Usually the same settings applied to an entire roll of 8mm film, but would have to be readjusted for the next roll.

My suggestions for a really poorly shot film would be to capture pictures from the film and show them in slideshow fashion. If each scene only holds for a second or two before the camera blurs to the next, I would just capture a picture while the camera was steady and be done with it. Viewers won't realize that something is missing from the film, but they will realize poorly shot video.

Lastly, I grouped events together and made them scene selectable on the final DVD. Viewers liked the ability to skip past some events and view & review the cherishable moments.

Hope this helps,
The Rhino

I have a question. If all you have is Super 8 tapes, a super 8 projector and a Sony TVR 350 Digital 8 camera, what is the best way to record the projected super 8 movie to the camera and reduce the flicker if any? Should I project it on something other than a regular "slide screen"?

Thanks

Yes, 8mm had an 18 FPS frame rate (I think this was the amatuer frame rate..super8 was able to be shot with variable frame rates and projected at either 18, 24 or 25 fps). One reason it's probably fast is that it was probably telecined at 24fps then a pulldown was added. The secondary color correction should be a huge help when correcting old 8 mm since most of the stuff was shot on reversal stock. It will still require a lot of work though...

James Green

Thanks for all the suggestions. I appreciate the help. I know what I'll be doing all summer!

I am invovoved in a very similar project and without a doubt the best way to transfer your film to video is to talk to Roger Evans at Movie Stuff, http://www.moviestuff.tv/
You will get perfect insynch transfers every time.

The guy is a wealth of knowledge and really stands behind his products.

The challenge I'm having is color correcting in Vegas 4 the footage that has turned red. I was hoping that billyboy or the rhino could offer some suggestions. I see in a previous post that the rhino was able to make the corrections necesary.

Thanks for any help,

no_dogma@hotmail.com

Here's my 2 cents.

On the speed issue. If it was either 8mm or Super 8 and shot silent it was probably at 18 fps. (if it was shot 'super 8 sound' than it was more than likely shot at 24 fps.) The transfer was probably done not at 18fps but probably at 24fps. And then onto the DV...so we are into this whole 30i > 24p conversion thing with VV...but in this case it would be 18p...which really doesn't exist. So I would first suggest to, at some point - probably at final render, do a conversion to 24p with one of the templates. That will probably get you a bit closer back to the look of the 18fps. Keep in mind that because it was probably shot at slower than what most people today consider "normal" it will always have a 'slient movie' look to it. But IMO that is the groovy thing about home movies anyway. And if you want to get creative do what a lot of the documentary shows do - they play up the old movie look. They slow it down beyond the 18fps and than play it back in super slow motion so you get a dreamy kind of feel to it. A lot of time you will even see lots of motion blur or time delay (Easy to get with the Spice master plug-ins).

As for your second question part of it was already answered above - slow motion with blur would be nice, although I dunno if an hour of it would work. Unless you are planning on doing a home movie version of Woman in the Dunes or something. ;) Going back to the history doc's you can get a lot of good ideas from watching them - if you think out of the box with your stuff you may see you don't want to color correct in the reality sense, you may want to add a sepia tone look or maybe even dirty up parts of the video. Maybe keep all of the 'chaos' shots and use those as transitions. Add dirt and scratches (old film look in the presets of VV) and maybe toss in some severe overexposure effects. Than toss in something like...I think it is Paul Anka..."Times of your life" is the name of it? It is the sappy song that became a HUGE hit in the states when Kodak used it in all their commercials. ("Do you remember the times of your life?")

Have fun with it - think out of the box and if you 'cut to music' it would probably help a lot. And as always - hope some of that helps.

I also have a project like this. My first step was a lot of study to find someone I trusted to handle the movies for the original transfer. Along the way I learned that the original film was its own best archive in most cases so keep it in a dark, climate controlled part of the house (a first floor closet is the most recommended spot) in breathable containers. Many 50 year movie films if they are okay so far are good for another 50 years. This is good because there is no real digital solution yet available for ordinary families that will fully capture the quality that is present in many 8mm home movies. (This is a long post but if you have old family movies on film or analog video I hope you have time to read through this.)

If anyone has films that smell vinegary or don't look okay more immediate and aggressive action is probably indicated. Post with a subject pertaining to degenerating home movies and I (and hopefully others) will provide some links to help. (No, they won’t be to my own sites.)

If the family films seem okay then the next principle is to do no harm when you get the transfers done. I am persuaded, in my own families case, that we made the right decision to do an updated Rank telecine transfer with a professional house that was friendly in dealing with families with small gauge films and who had experience with color reversal a.k.a. color positive films and who had experience in handling archival a.k.a. old, unique and priceless, films. For example, their telecine exposed the film only to dim light from a CRT tube generating the flying spot scanning and their film transport only had one sprocket. (A sprocket that jumped registration could be a film shredding disaster.) I was not comfortable passing our families film through anything that resembled a projector. Finding a house to do the transfers that I was sure would not harm the films wound up taking over two months of study.

Once the decision was made and an appointment made, I drove the film to the studio and was present while the transfers were done. I snapped a lot of pictures and asked a lot of questions but did relatively little "supervising" even though this kind of arrangement is called a supervised telecine transfer. The house had incorporated a low tech but very effective innovation that I would say removed the visibility of more than 98 percent of the scratches available on the film. About those scratches, where did they come from? From being projected. What could happen if someone runs a film through a projector to transfer the images? More scratches. This same wet process that seemed to “magically” remove the visibility of scratches (but which left no permanent chemicals on the film, I am not in favor of treating films with rejuvenators but some transfer services may use them) also removed a great deal of grime and grease from the films. This was everything from atmospheric gook to cigarette smoke dating back to 1951. These movies were mainly shot by my grandfather. I am about 8 years old in the earliest scenes.

Here is something to watch out for when selecting a transfer service: In cases where film is transferred projecting light directly through the film and into a camera lens conditions are ideal to get a lot of speckle. Speckle is a strange creature. If one doesn't know what to look for and how it manifests speckle can masquerade as other things. In high resolution displays and on a viewing screen of a large format camera it can look like graininess in the viewing screen. In film transfers it can look like film grain. Rather than a lot of it being proof of a good quality transfer (because you can “plainly see the film grain proving that the ultimate resolution has been achieved”) it really is only proof of a less than satisfactory transfer.

In DV form our transferred films to video look outstanding. When viewed using a good deck and a small but high quality monitor the images look better than they looked when the films were first projected. The colors and contrast were corrected during the process so that was a big help. Some of the film was Ecktachrome though and those segments had turned blue (but the colorist / timer / telecine operator was able to correct that out).

Some day we will want (and my own great grandchildren) will want to watch these movies on much larger and much higher resolution displays. Already now today $2000 LC projectors can project high resolution quality images to 8 feet and more screen width. Tomorrow brings even better displays. Someday to be fully satisfactory video transfers that are more compatible with HDTV formats (and successor formats) will be needed. This is why it is so important to preserve the film until they day arrives that HD transfers are available and affordable and more practical means to store the large digital files involved are at hand. I cringe when I hear stories of people who had family movies transferred to VHS and then, knowing that they were no longer needed, tossed the films. Today's DV quality is yesterday' VHS quality. Tomorrow, we need better and it will be available.

Why then are we bothering to get these transfers made today? It is for family access. In my view it is not safe or practical to project unique and original films--the risk of harm is too great. But families would like to watch these things so what's a family to do? In my view the best thing today is to (1) get DV transfers and (2) to have the DV working copy edited and converted to whatever is currently good access for family. Today that access might be well met by DVDs. Some families will have DV decks, a.k.a. the family camcorder, and for those families having a mini-DV-cassette copy of the working DV digital master could be an appropriate choice.

For those families who have all or some of the family movies on VHS and similar analog tape formats, arrangements should be made to get the VHS copied to DV. In this case the DV master becomes the family archive of the VHS tape because the original tape may never again yield as good a transfer as it possible today to DV. Why? Analog to digital video transfer equipment and methods may be getting better but the original tapes are aging and beginning to lose their ability to produce a good result. I have heard suggestions--and passed them along--that an older family analog video tape that has not been played in possibly 15 years should not be played again--not even to be sure that there is something on it. Why? Because the next play will be its best. This is why that “play” should happen when the tape is captured to digital video.

Whew. I have gotten through that discussion so finally I can comment on this thread. The movies I watched transferred were slowed down during the transfer. Many segments actually look like slow motion. With the unsteadiness at times and the brevity of many of the scenes that my grandfather had shot this was probably a good way to have things turn out (even though it raised telecine transfer costs, we were paying by the hour of telecine studio time).

The family films filled two 1 hour mini-DV cassette tapes. As soon as I get my Sony DSR-11 DVcam deck delivered (less than two weeks now) I will transfer those tapes to DVcam cassettes. From what I have learned I feel that DVcam is just a more robust if larger package to hold the same amount of information. Had I known six weeks ago what I know now, I would have had the transfer done to DVcam to begin with.

Another member of the family has created about 18 two DVD sets of DVDs from these DV tapes. The family members wanted them in that format and were willing to pay $25 per set to get that many. Better practice would have been to have had master DVcam tapes copied to mini-DV cassette tapes and then those used to produce the DVDs. A family reunion next week didn’t provide enough time to do it right. However, the original films are the real archive at this point so we are not without a backup original should anything have happened during this process.

From what we have read on this thread, it sounds like Vegas 4 NLE based processing is capable of producing in "post-production" some of the benefits that we got during the transfers--slowed down scenes. I am sure that it is exactly what you need to realize a more pleasant viewing experience from these films.

There is no doubt that some day frame by frame processing will be available that can remove most of the "jitter" from camera movement, whether during "stationary" shots or pan shots and that will add another layer of improvement on the originals. But underlying all is that these are unique and priceless family films >> family movies made by your dad (and your own grandchildren's great-granddad). If you could wave a wand and have replacement films that were shot by a professional cinematographer on 16mm film you probably would rather start with what you have. It is part of the story and a part of the family lives that are celebrated every time a family member (and better a group of family member, bowl of popcorn passing around) watches the family movies.

I have some questions to ask about DV that are very basic and I will be posting some of those this evening. When I ask I will be the student hoping and needing to learn more by the community here. First I took time to write-up and get out this information--the best I have available. This was my best understanding of prudent and responsible things to do with family films. I have posted it in the hope this will be helpful in aiding some families in making wise and informed decisions.

Best regards,
Ralph
July 11, 2003

As you know, it's hard to make a silk purse out of a sow's ear. So the panning and quick shots are more challenging. For controlling the speed and flicker, I use a separate variable speed control and a Waveform monitor. As you dial in the speed of the projector, you will notice on the WFM that the bouncing lumanence graph (flicker) will stop bouncing when you get the projector speed lined up with the camera. This sometimes has to be re-adjusted if you are using larger reels and the resistance changes over the running of the film. Speed adjustments after the fact will not correct the flicker introduced in the film capture process. I have used this setup on about 17,000 feet of 8 and super 8 film in the past year. The results are superior to watching the original film and are great for home movie transfer use. If you're looking for broadcast results, then the Pro-telecine service with corrections is the route to go but VERY expensive. I had some 16mm film of Amelia Earhardt transferred to DV at $250.00 per hour with no special corrections.

mrready, to answer your question about color correcting 8mm films . . .

It's been a few months, but I think all I had to do is apply Vegas' Color Corrector FX to the captured AVI files. In fact, one of the reasons I upgrade from 3.0 to 4.0 was to be able to color correct my 8mm film footage. The color wheels Vegas provides make the whole process pretty easy once you get the hang of it.

Each film required slightly different corrections. Some were red and brown and some where over/under exposed. I tried to manually adjust my Canon GL1 during the transfer so that the film would have the right brightness/focus, but the rest was done in Vegas. On a couple of really bad films, I simply removed the color and made the video play back as B&W. It was better in B&W then some washed-out brown look.

I know my results are better than sending my film away.

The great thing about the Workprinter [see "MovieStuff" info above] was that it only captures footage at about 6 fps. This gives me plenty of time to manually adjust the video camera while the footage is being transfered via firewire to my computer.

I do 8mm and Super8 conversions using the Workprinter. I do telecine from 18fps to 29.97 fps using AVISynth. Here's a copy of the script I wrote to do the pulldown. It works perfectly (if you know how to use AVISynth):

AVISource("c:\my documents\my videos\film\soph_01.avi")
AssumeFrameBased
SeparateFields
SelectEvery(12, 0,1,0, 3,2,3, 4,5,4,5, 6,7,6, 9,8,9, 10,11,10,11).
Weave
AssumeFPS(29.97, true)