Video the Image on the Screen

papaterry33 wrote on 9/16/2010, 10:35 PM

I have old 8mm film projected on the wall via an equally old Bell and Howell projector and my camcorder wanting to record the images so I can get it on computer and then burn to dvd. Problem: the image in the camcorder flickers, or rolls, like we see when a camcorder is aimed at a tv sometimes . I suppose it has to do with frame rate. Anyone have advice for me? How can I get rid of the flicker and capture a good image?

Thanks,

Terry

Comments

ushere wrote on 9/16/2010, 10:51 PM

what camera are you trying to capture with?

papaterry33 wrote on 9/17/2010, 12:50 AM

Have tried Panasonic HDC TM700, Sony SR1, SR11 and Sony TRV17 (mini dv).
All have the flicker when the focused on the image on the wall/screen.

ushere wrote on 9/17/2010, 1:07 AM

if you want a 'serious' copy, best take it to a specialist, otherwise:

http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,1618829,00.asp

i'm sure there's many here who can perhaps suggest better methods, but this is the article i give to my students wanting to transfer home movies.

good luck

farss wrote on 9/17/2010, 6:19 AM

The best method involves literaly taking a 'photo' of each frame directly from the film. There are people who have built their own film scanners using a simply modified projector, machine vision camera and macro lens.
Many other alternate ways exist and another way to avoid the flicker if simply videoing the proected image is to replace the 3 blade shutter in the projector with a 5 blade shutter. If you're machanically handy it shouldn't be too hard to make your own. I have seen 5 blade shutters for some projectors for sale on eBay and there's vendors selling already modified projectors as well.
You can also buy ready made 8mm telecines from Roger Evans here: http://www.moviestuff.tv/moviestuff_home.html

The most important thing really is to exercise great care with old film.By now many things may have happened to it that'll make it harder to get a good result from and easier to damage. It is amazing what can be done to restore old film, even brittle film can be made supple again however once the emulsion is damaged it is damaged. There's techniques to repair missing bits but they can be expensive and/or very time consumming. If you don't really know what you are doing you can do a lot of damage.

Bob.

baysidebas wrote on 9/17/2010, 9:59 AM

If this is silent 8mm, many projectors have a speed control. If you're lucky enough to have access to one, very the projection rate to minimize flicker. If the action is noticeably affected by the adjustment you can vary the resulting footage's speed on the Vegas timeline.

reberclark wrote on 9/17/2010, 10:09 AM

I've used these guys on old Super 8 and Regular 8mm transfers:

http://www.digitaltransfersystems.net/

RalphM wrote on 9/17/2010, 10:16 AM

I've found five bladed shutters to be more useful with 24 fps 16mm than with 8mm. Unless you want to go the route of the Workprinters from Roger Evans (very good units), then an adjustable speed projector is your tool.

A camera with adjustable white balance, saturation and F-stop is very helpful as home movies usually have wide ranges of exposure even in a 50 ft reel.

Of great importance is that you clean and lubricate your film. It was lubricated at the lab, but that lubricant dries out over decades. Try Urbanskifilms.com for all the supplies you may need.

If all this is more than you want to deal with, email me. (shameless plug)

RalphM

rs170a wrote on 9/17/2010, 10:50 AM

MovieStuff
One of the best transfer guys around.

Mike

papaterry33 wrote on 9/17/2010, 11:25 AM

Thank you, my friends, for the great input! I will study and decide and then post again later.

Terry

John_Cline wrote on 9/17/2010, 11:57 AM

If you don't have the budget to have it transferred correctly then you might try the "deflicker" filter from Donald Graft, it is a filter for Virtual Dub and works amazingly well. Both Virtual Dub and the Deflicker filter are free.

http://www.neuron2.net/deflick/flick.html

http://www.virtualdub.org

MSU also has a free Deflicker filter for Virtual Dub, it's available here:

http://www.compression.ru/video/deflicker/index_en.html

Richard Jones wrote on 9/18/2010, 3:37 AM

Reberclark and rs170a have suggested two companies in the USA who will do this sort of high quality transfer. Can anyone recommend similar companies in the UK?

Ricahrd

papaterry33 wrote on 9/22/2010, 10:51 AM

I downloaded VirtualDub and Deflicker, then rendered a clip to avi for experimenting. Deflicker doesn't show up in the filter selection list, so I don't know where to go with that for now.

Would anyone like to take a shot at cleaning up one of these short clips? Tell me how best to get it to you and i'll send a 10 second clip your way and you can test your skills and maybe help me out.

Terry

John_Cline wrote on 9/22/2010, 12:04 PM

"Deflicker doesn't show up in the filter selection list"

Did you unzip the Deflicker file into the "Plugins" folder of the Virtual Dub install? All Virtual Dub plugins have the extension ".VDF" and they must be in the plugins folder to work.

papaterry33 wrote on 9/22/2010, 1:13 PM

John, I'm trying to figure how to do that. Can't work on it further today. Will get back to you hopefully later. May be tomorrow. Appreciate your help!

Terry

rs170a wrote on 9/22/2010, 4:49 PM

Terry, after unzipping the file.copy it to C:\Program Files\VirtualDub\plugins
When you run VirtualDub, go Video - Filters - Add, click the deflicker filter and then click OK.
Adjust parameters as desired.

Mike

papaterry33 wrote on 9/23/2010, 12:51 PM

Mike and Other contributors,
I try to resolve things on my own, but I'm apparently doing something wrong and not seeing in my installation of VirtualDub (VDub) and DeFlicker what you are describing. I'm wondering if I'm getting a proper install of VDub. I
I look at VDub folder in Prog Files and there is no plug-ins folder, Mike and John. I see these 8 files and no folders:
vdub64,
Veedub64,
vdremote64.dll,
vdsvrlnk64.dll,
VirtualDub (a help file),
copying,
frameserver64 (a registry entry)
and Veedub64.vdi

(I'm running Win7 64bit by the way and installed the proper version for my OS)

It's puzzling when I look in Control Panel>Programs&Features and I don't see VirtualDub listed.

When I open VDub>Video>Filters>Add, deflicker is not in the list, so I click Load and navigate to Deflick.vdf and try to load it I get error message "Cannot load" . . . blah blah, "not a valid Win32 application." Hmmmm....
Is Deflicker only for 32 bit OS? I didn't get that impression when I was able to choose 64 bit for VirtualDub. I don't remember seeing the option of two different versions of Deflicker.

But I think I need to find out why you speak of a "PlugIns" folder in the VDub directory and I don't have such a folder in my installation.

It's a tantalizingly good looking app and I hope I can get it working here!

Appreciate Ya,
Terry

farss wrote on 9/23/2010, 2:04 PM

Ages ago when we were doing a lot of 8mm and 16mm transfers I did have a go at using VD and the deflicker tool. We found there's more than one type of flicker.
1) From projector shutter not being in sync with camera shutter. We never actually had this problem as we were using slightly more sophisticated gear than a projector, a wall and a camera.

2) Slow speed flicker in the camera original. This seemed to come and go. Probably the cause was the very basic exposure control systems in the camera hunting.

I can't directly say how well the VD filter works on 1) as we never had that problem, others seem to have great success with it so I think I can say it works just fine. It doesn't work on 2), that I can say.
You can pretty easily tell which problem you have. 1) you will not see on the screen showing the projected film. 2) You will see on the screen or even holding a length of the film upto light.

Bob.