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converting cine film



 
 
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  #16  
Old July 3rd 17, 05:17 AM posted to alt.windows7.general,microsoft.public.windowsxp.general
VanguardLH[_2_]
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Posts: 10,881
Default converting cine film

J. P. Gilliver (John) wrote:

VanguardLH WROTE:

the Costco photo center will do conversion from reel to DVD


I don't _think_ either of those have branches in the UK.


I just did a Google search to find those. Google probably used
geolocation on my IP address to skew search results to those in my area.
If an online search doesn't find you any local stores to do the
conversion, the search will point you at mail-in service centers. I
already noted one of those but seems pricey to me.

Pointing a digital camera (to record video) at a screen where you
projected the film would be the worst way to convert. The conversion


But - with various refinements - is what most people seem to do, some of
them with results they're happy with. The main problem seems to be what
they mostly call "flicker", which I take to be the sync.ing problem.


The flicker is because the film halts a frame in front of the light and
behind the lens. The shutter on the projector blocks out the black area
between frames. Your eyes meld the frames (24 per second). The video
recording device has its own frame rate which likely does not match that
of the projector. Also, even if the video recorder has a 24 frame/sec
frame rate, it would not be sync with the projector. You won't get the
projector's frame rate in sync with the frame rate of the video recorder
(they'll be different rates) nor would you get the framing of the
projector to sync with the framing of the video recorder (if the
recorder framed at the same 24 frame/sec rate).

They mainly seek a variable speed projector, so they can set to 16 2/3
(EU) or 20 (NTSC). I'd have assumed there would still eventually be a
sybc/flicker problem.


Hadn't thought about changing the frame rate on the projector. Do you
have one of those?

https://www.videomaker.com/article/c...eo-tape-or-dvd


Pity it's a long sheet of black when viewed in my preferred browser.


Sounds like a problem with an adblocker or the blacklist(s) you
configured it to use. I can view that site using Firefox and Google
Chrome and both have uBlock Origin along with uMatrix (configured only
to block off-domain scripts). I have uBlock Origin configured to use
its own very short list of blocks along with the Fanboy Ultimate
blocklist which is EasyList+EasyPrivacy+Fanboy. I deselected all the
precompiled 'hosts' files in uBlock since those are way too aggressive
or too often off-target and cause too many problems at good sites.

I'm in the USA. Sometimes a site will restrict content based on
geolocation of IP address; i.e., they allow viewing only within their
preferred region. I know some BBC videos (usually sports) are off
limits to me from an USA-based IP address. Maybe the site doesn't want
UK folks reading their content - except you said Google Chrome worked.
Presumably you aren't using a proxy in one of your web browsers that
makes it look like it is in-region or, at least, not in a restricted
region blocked by the site.

Tis a problem with your preferred web browser and appropriate for
inquiry in a newsgroup or web forum that discusses that web browser. If
it's for Firefox, its newsgroup is mozilla.support.firefox on Mozilla's
server (news.mozilla.org, port 119).

Views OK in Chrome, but doesn't really tell me more than I had already
figured out, combined with a touching faith that if you contact the
professionals to ask them technical questions about their process,
you'll get a sensible answer. (In UK in 2017, you'd most likely get no
answer at all; if not that, you'd get an answer full of platitudes
written by someone who has no clue technically; if not that, you might
get a rude answer.)


They probably point at the "professionals" because those are document
processing centers that can afford that super-expensive equipment to do
such conversions. All the home-brew solutions end up looking home
brewed hence crappy.
Ads
  #17  
Old July 3rd 17, 08:17 AM posted to alt.windows7.general,microsoft.public.windowsxp.general
J. P. Gilliver (John)[_4_]
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Posts: 2,679
Default converting cine film

In message om, John
Dulak writes:
[]
JP:

(John, by the way)

While I've never done this there IS a product that claims to do what
you want in a dedicated package for $300 US.


This looks most interesting. I've had good feedback from Wolverine on
their slide "scanners" (they actually answered my questions in a
sensible manner, re cropping and how to change it), though I've not
bought any so far.

This sounds good: frame-by-frame scanning, and it makes a video file for
you. (Pity it's to SD card _only_ [max. 32G], but that's they way they
prefer.)

http://secure.mm5server.com/merchant..._Code=WD&Produ
ct_Code=F2DMM100&Attributes=Yes&Quantity=1


_Somewhat_ confusing: "Image sensor: 3.53 Mega pixels (2304H x 1536V)
1/3" CMOS sensor", but "Resolution 720P"?!? In theory 720p is perhaps
the only downside I can see, in that good 8mm film is capable of better
than that, but in practice it probably wouldn't matter to me.

http://www.wolverinedata.com/videos/...ieMaker_V1.pdf


I see they've blanked out the "Resolution: 720p" line in the .pdf.

No idea what the quality is like.


Workmanlike, I expect. Their slide "scanners" are in reality little
cameras, as are most but the really top-end ones from whatever name; I'm
curious to know whether this is a camera or a line scanner (I see no
sprocket feed in the pictures). Interesting that it goes at 30 fps; I
presume most software can slow down the result to the required (in my
case) 16 and 18. (I generally use Virtualdub, but have never had
occasion to see if it has a frame rate changer.)

HTH & GL

John

Thanks; I wasn't aware of this device.
--
J. P. Gilliver. UMRA: 1960/1985 MB++G()AL-IS-Ch++(p)Ar@T+H+Sh0!:`)DNAf

Science fiction is escape into reality - Arthur C Clarke
  #18  
Old July 3rd 17, 12:43 PM posted to alt.windows7.general,microsoft.public.windowsxp.general
John Dulak[_2_]
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Posts: 61
Default converting cine film

On 7/3/2017 3:17 AM, J. P. Gilliver (John) wrote:

Workmanlike, I expect. Their slide "scanners" are in reality little cameras, as
are most but the really top-end ones from whatever name; I'm curious to know
whether this is a camera or a line scanner (I see no sprocket feed in the
pictures). Interesting that it goes at 30 fps; I presume most software can slow
down the result to the required (in my case) 16 and 18. (I generally use
Virtualdub, but have never had occasion to see if it has a frame rate changer.)

HTH & GL

John

Thanks; I wasn't aware of this device.


John:

A 1/3 inch CCD would be just about 8mm. Perhaps this device uses the CCD to make
what amounts to a still image of each frame without using a lens. If they used
"edge finding" firmware they may not need sprockets. Some flatbed document
scanners can do this to find the edge of documents. This would yield a series of
still digital images that could be sequentially presented as a video. Since you
must set the controls to either 8mm or Super-8 the firmware probably knows what
the canonical frame rate is and may be able to use it in constructing the MP4.

A YouTube comparison of the results;

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vj9rApV_Yx4

John


--
  #19  
Old July 3rd 17, 02:42 PM posted to alt.windows7.general,microsoft.public.windowsxp.general
none
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Posts: 11
Default converting cine film

According to J. P. Gilliver (John) :-
... What experience have people had with converting old cine film? ...


One of my friends tried to use a small screen and a camcorder to copy
his 8mm cine film, but could not get rid of the flicker no matter
how hard he tried.

Eventually he paid a business near Chester (England) to convert his
film to DVD, and edited from that.

I can find out about the business if needed.

--
Jim Hicks

  #20  
Old July 3rd 17, 07:11 PM posted to alt.windows7.general,microsoft.public.windowsxp.general
Paul[_32_]
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Posts: 11,873
Default converting cine film

none Jim Hicks wrote:
According to J. P. Gilliver (John) :-
... What experience have people had with converting old cine film? ...


One of my friends tried to use a small screen and a camcorder to copy
his 8mm cine film, but could not get rid of the flicker no matter
how hard he tried.

Eventually he paid a business near Chester (England) to convert his
film to DVD, and edited from that.

I can find out about the business if needed.


You can DIY with a flatbed scanner.

This article is humorous. The guy makes
a device for cranking the film through
the scanner. And any project you can walk
away from, while it does the capture,
is a "good" project :-) I can see Rube Goldberg
looking down from heaven and smiling.

http://jiminger.com/s8/index.html

And you really do need 4800DPI (real resolution,
not interpolated). My scanner is only 1200DPI
real resolution, and even though it came with a
transparency adapter, the low resolution meant
the provision of an adapter was a cruel joke.
You couldn't actually work with film, because the
resolution was too low. A scanner with 4800 DPI is a
better starting material, even if 4800 DPI is approaching
the grain limits of the film stock itself. I tried
to pull one 35mm negative, using my scanner. The
KodaChrome setting did an excellent job of inverting
the colors - I liked the colors (after the scan, the
colors are positive). But the grainy nature
of the resulting image, wasn't good for anything. I
wouldn't waste the inkjet paper trying to print a copy.

*******

Regarding your camcorder method, it might have
been interesting to do a frame by frame analysis
of the camcorder footage. Some camcorders allow
capture over Firewire, for transferring the recording
to a computer. Some newer ones might have HDMI output,
and you can get HDMI capture cards for computers
as well. You might find a mixture of "good" frames
and "not so good" frames, and by selecting the good
frames you could make a movie. The film projector
could be 16 to 18 FPS, and then it might depend
on how the camcorder is capturing (60p ?) as to
whether intact frames could be recovered.

But in terms of kookiness, the flatbed scanner
idea is a sure bet. It's just slow though.

*******

And the kind of recording device you use, can make a difference.
This camera, for example, uses a global shutter rather than
a rolling shutter. And can do proper motion capture. And
at 162 FPS, would be able to find the occasional picture
on the wall that would be suited for inclusion in the movie.

https://www.ptgrey.com/grasshopper3-usb3-vision-cameras

GS3-U3-23S6C-C Color 2.3 MP Sony IMX174 CMOS, 1/1.2", 5.86 µm
Global shutter 1920 x 1200 163 FPS 995.00 USD

https://www.ptgrey.com/support/downloads/10146

This short video, shows a global shutter camera recording
a rotating fan blade.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature...&v=nguv9lOkmXI

So for $1000 plus a few bucks for a C-mount lens or whatever
mount that thing has got, you can make recordings over USB3.

Before buying a product like that, I'd want to double-check
the part number...

Paul
  #21  
Old July 3rd 17, 08:19 PM posted to alt.windows7.general,microsoft.public.windowsxp.general
NY
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Posts: 586
Default converting cine film

"J. P. Gilliver (John)" wrote in message
...
The recent thread (in the W7 'group only) about converting VHS (to DVD was
in the title of that thread, but to disc file equally) made me wonder:

What experience have people had with converting old cine film? (Or new for
that matter! But I can't imagine many people are still shooting it.)

I have a certain amount of standard and super 8 film; fortunately not
sound, so that's one less thing to worry about. I _think_ I still have the
projectors (-:!

I'd be interested to hear others' experiences in converting these: do you
just set up the projector and point a video camera at the screen?


You *can* project onto a screen and point a video camera at the screen, but
there are a number of problems:

- parallax (getting the camera and projector looking along the same axis
with no horizontal displacement so you don't get a parallelogram picture)
- unless you use a completely matt screen, you get hot spot
- poor contrast

It's rather akin to recording from a record or CD by playing the sound
through the speaker and holding the tape recorder microphone to the speaker
rather than connecting a cable between the two.

I can't think of any other way, but can see lots of problems: not only
optical (getting things lined up, do you use a large or small image, do
you actually shoot from the opposite side of the screen, do you even do
something odd like projecting directly onto the sensor), but matters of
sync: IIRR (silent) standard 8 used 16 frames per second and super 8 18 [I
think 24 for sound film], which don't map well to the 24 or 25 of "PAL" or
the 30 of NTSC which the video camera is likely to be (I'm in
"PAL"-land) - especially as most projectors actually cut the beam twice
per frame to reduce flicker?

What experience do people have of the (usually rather expensive) high/main
street shops which offer such conversion facilities: do _they_ just use a
projector/camera setup? I can see that the best possible method would use
a telecine machine like the broadcasters use (which does not use
intermittent-motion), but I very much doubt most shops offering
"conversion" services have anything like that.


I'm not sure what technique most shops use. I would have thought some sort
of telecine where the camera sensor looks at the image projected from the
film without an intermediate screen. In theory, you can make a telecine with
a "1 x many" pixel sensor if the film is moved continuously past at exactly
the right speed in relation to the clocking of the sensor, but any dust on
the sensor produces vertical lines.

My dad got all our Standard- and Super-8 films converted to DVD by a
professional (mail-order) company, though it wasn't cheap. But the
conversion seems to be flawless in that there is always exactly one film
frame per video frame (for 24 fps film) or else A, A/B, B. C, C/D, D (ie
alternate video frames have a mixture of two video frames) for 18 fps film,
with everything running the standard 4% fast because video is 25 rather than
24 fps.

There was one film where I didn't want them to do this: we'd filmed a
journey around town from a camera in the car window, at a rate of 1 fps (so
it's very speeded-up). The firm treated this as 18 fps so you got the
recurring mixed frames. When I came to slow this down a bit by replicating
each video frame, the merged frames were very intrusive, so I had to find a
way of dumping the raw video to lots of separate still images, delete every
third frame and then convert the resulting pictures back to a video file in
Premiere Elements. This gave slightly more jerky results but not marred by
the visually jarring merged frames.


P. P. S: At least when well lit, cine film - even 8mm, especially super 8
(which used more of the film width) - was capable of better-than-SD
resolution, though I'll probably not worry too much about that.


I've found that 8 mm always looks very soft (and grainy) compared with SD
video, though it's possible that video uses edge-enhancement to make the
picture *look* sharper. Ironically, some of the sharpest film (of Pickering
Steam Fair in the mid-sixties, in a field with Castle Howard's dome in the
background) was on Standard 8, The grain is horrendous, but it looks sharper
than any of the Super 8 from the later 60s and 70s. And that's not just the
grain making the picture look sharper, because it doesn't happen with one
roll of Ektachrome 160 Super 8 from the early 80s which has even more
pronounced grain. Maybe Dad's original Standard 8 camera had a better lens
than the later Super 8 one.


I remember Dad had a 1000W photoflood light with a cylindrical bulb and a
U-shaped reflector that he mounted on the camera for shooting indoors, and
we all look like rabbits caught in the headlights because we are dazzled by
the light and there are very stark shadows. Think of the problem of red-eye
and stark shadows on a still photo, and imagine a whole film like that! On
one film, the results are better, so maybe he tried bouncing the light off
the ceiling. Film was so grainy in those days that it had to be very
insensitive in order to keep the grain under control, whereas nowadays you
can shoot with a video camera in normal room lighting so you don't suffer
from lighting by one point source.

  #22  
Old July 3rd 17, 08:37 PM posted to alt.windows7.general,microsoft.public.windowsxp.general
Mayayana
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Posts: 6,438
Default converting cine film

"J. P. Gilliver (John)" wrote

| What experience do people have of the (usually rather expensive)
| high/main street shops which offer such conversion facilities: do _they_
| just use a projector/camera setup?

For what it's worth...

A friend recently had some 8 mm converted. It was
probably about an hour's worth, put onto DVD.
I thought they did a good job. The reels were 50-60
years old and not carefully stored. The total cost
was about $200. (Probably about 6 billion British
pounds in your economy... plus the VAT tax.

On thing that struck me (besides paying $200 to
see childhood moments that will probably never be
watched again) was that the movement was choppy
(low frame rate) and the event was a novelty. Filming
was so novel that the films were mostly comprised
of people taking turns waving and grinning at the
camera.


  #23  
Old July 3rd 17, 09:03 PM posted to alt.windows7.general,microsoft.public.windowsxp.general
NY
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Posts: 586
Default converting cine film

"NY" wrote in message
o.uk...
"J. P. Gilliver (John)" wrote in message
...
The recent thread (in the W7 'group only) about converting VHS (to DVD
was in the title of that thread, but to disc file equally) made me
wonder:

What experience have people had with converting old cine film? (Or new
for that matter! But I can't imagine many people are still shooting it.)

I have a certain amount of standard and super 8 film; fortunately not
sound, so that's one less thing to worry about. I _think_ I still have
the projectors (-:!

I'd be interested to hear others' experiences in converting these: do you
just set up the projector and point a video camera at the screen?


You *can* project onto a screen and point a video camera at the screen,
but there are a number of problems:

- parallax (getting the camera and projector looking along the same axis
with no horizontal displacement so you don't get a parallelogram picture)
- unless you use a completely matt screen, you get hot spot
- poor contrast

It's rather akin to recording from a record or CD by playing the sound
through the speaker and holding the tape recorder microphone to the
speaker rather than connecting a cable between the two.

I can't think of any other way, but can see lots of problems: not only
optical (getting things lined up, do you use a large or small image, do
you actually shoot from the opposite side of the screen, do you even do
something odd like projecting directly onto the sensor), but matters of
sync: IIRR (silent) standard 8 used 16 frames per second and super 8 18
[I think 24 for sound film], which don't map well to the 24 or 25 of
"PAL" or the 30 of NTSC which the video camera is likely to be (I'm in
"PAL"-land) - especially as most projectors actually cut the beam twice
per frame to reduce flicker?


I think you have to accept that for PAL video you play the film at 25 rather
than 24 fps and pitch correct the audio (if any) - that's what broadcasters
do, and if they'd found a way of playing the film at 24 fps, they'd do it.

I recently had to produce a video DVD from a 24 fps video. Video DVD (as far
as I know) can only be 25 or 30 fps. I was using Premiere Elements. At first
I tried the sledge hammer approach: let Premiere do the 24-to-25 conversion
by blending frames. The results were almost unwatchable if the camera panned
or someone moved across the frame. So I got Premiere to treat the original
video as 25 fps - perfect motion rendition, but the voice of the subject was
slightly too high-pitched, though she may have been flattered that her voice
sounded a touch more girlish! So I copied the soundtrack to a WAV file, used
the pitch-correction feature of CoolEdit or Audacity and then added it back
to the pictures again. A 4% speed-up of movement isn't really noticeable but
a 4% shift in pitch alters the characteristics of someone's voice slightly,
hence the correction.

My dad got all our Standard- and Super-8 films converted to DVD by a
professional (mail-order) company, though it wasn't cheap. But the
conversion seems to be flawless in that there is always exactly one film
frame per video frame (for 24 fps film) or else A, A/B, B, C, C/D, D (ie
alternate video frames have a mixture of two video frames) for 18 fps
film, with everything running the standard 4% fast because video is 25
rather than 24 fps.


All this part of my explanation assumes PAL rather than NTSC video -
apologies, I hadn't realised at first that this was a worldwide rather than
UK-specific newsgroup :-)

The blurring caused by blending frames (such as you'd get with 3:2 pulldown
when showing 24 fps on 30 fps TV in NTSC land) isn't too noticeable until
you slow everything right down by replicating each video frame multiple
times, as in the 1 fps film that I described.

For those that are interested, see
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f3eZB2QNvtM. It's an interesting social
record of the town where I lived in the mid 70s, because of all the changes.
The road at https://youtu.be/f3eZB2QNvtM?t=1m56s was pedestrianised soon
after we filmed and is now terraced into long flat steps. And the road
between https://youtu.be/f3eZB2QNvtM?t=2m37s and
https://youtu.be/f3eZB2QNvtM?t=2m43s no longer exists - all the buildings
around there were demolished and rebuilt and the replacement road was
diverted. The bit beginning at https://youtu.be/f3eZB2QNvtM?t=2m53s is a
camera fault: the light meter only worked on that camera if the normal-speed
shutter release was half-pressed, whereas I was firing off frames at about 1
fps with a cable release, so we rigged up an elastic band to half-press the
filming button to make the meter work and stop down the lens by the correct
amount. And at this point in the film, the elastic band fell off and so all
the frames were overexposed until we noticed. Some time I need to shoot a
modern-day version with my dashcam, following the route as accurately as
modern-day changes in one-way streets and pedestrianised roads will allow.

  #24  
Old July 3rd 17, 09:33 PM posted to alt.windows7.general,microsoft.public.windowsxp.general
J. P. Gilliver (John)[_4_]
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Posts: 2,679
Default converting cine film

In message , none
writes:
According to J. P. Gilliver (John) :-
... What experience have people had with converting old cine film? ...


One of my friends tried to use a small screen and a camcorder to copy
his 8mm cine film, but could not get rid of the flicker no matter
how hard he tried.

Eventually he paid a business near Chester (England) to convert his
film to DVD, and edited from that.

I can find out about the business if needed.

Thanks, but I don't _think_ I'll be sending it out to a third party:
it's the sort of thing I _feel_ I should be able to do for myself.

The Wolverine looks interesting.
--
J. P. Gilliver. UMRA: 1960/1985 MB++G()AL-IS-Ch++(p)Ar@T+H+Sh0!:`)DNAf

Science fiction is escape into reality - Arthur C Clarke
  #25  
Old July 3rd 17, 09:36 PM posted to alt.windows7.general,microsoft.public.windowsxp.general
NY
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 586
Default converting cine film

"Mayayana" wrote in message
news
"J. P. Gilliver (John)" wrote

| What experience do people have of the (usually rather expensive)
| high/main street shops which offer such conversion facilities: do _they_
| just use a projector/camera setup?

For what it's worth...

A friend recently had some 8 mm converted. It was
probably about an hour's worth, put onto DVD.
I thought they did a good job. The reels were 50-60
years old and not carefully stored. The total cost
was about $200. (Probably about 6 billion British
pounds in your economy... plus the VAT tax.


Haha. You may well be right about the value of our pound, post-Brexit. I'm
staunchly pro-Europe but equally staunchly anti-EU - in other words I want
the trading relationship that we agreed to in the 1974 referendum but not
the political union "United States of Europe" that the Maastricht agreement
of the 1990s allowed, requiring us to take any EU citizens (especially from
poorer eastern European countries) who want to live/work here. I wish we'd
been able to go back to pre-Maastricht Europe, where it was a Common Market
but where Europe couldn't interfere politically or foist their legislation
on us, ie to be able to choose an in-between state, rather than fully out or
fully in. Sorry, got waylaid into a political rant there :-)


On thing that struck me (besides paying $200 to
see childhood moments that will probably never be
watched again) was that the movement was choppy
(low frame rate) and the event was a novelty. Filming
was so novel that the films were mostly comprised
of people taking turns waving and grinning at the
camera.


Agreed. And of course everything looks a bit surreal when it has no sound
and is jerky - and everyone was self-conscious because a cine camera was so
rare and unnaturally bright lights were needed for anything indoors. And
everyone over-acted for the camera. When my infant school got an adventure
playground (telegraph pole of varying lengths to walk over, tunnels made out
of concrete drainpipes etc) the headmistress asked my dad, who had a cine
camera, to film the children playing on it, to keep for posterity (*). And
he said that he went there for several days at playtime, but only on the
last day did he have any film in the camera, because he wanted everyone to
get used to the camera so they'd got past the self-conscious
mugging-at-the-camera stage :-)


(*) I wonder if that film still exists in the school's archives somewhere...
I bet kids who were in that film, who would be in their fifties now, would
be interested to see it. I know I would. I'd have been about 5 or 6 at the
time in 1968 or 1969. My hair was almost white in those days, rather than
light brown (or dark fair) as it is nowadays. I also had a great deal *more*
hair than I do today ;-)

  #26  
Old July 4th 17, 07:52 AM posted to alt.windows7.general,microsoft.public.windowsxp.general
Paul[_32_]
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 11,873
Default converting cine film

J. P. Gilliver (John) wrote:
In message , none
writes:
According to J. P. Gilliver (John) :-
... What experience have people had with converting old cine film? ...


One of my friends tried to use a small screen and a camcorder to copy
his 8mm cine film, but could not get rid of the flicker no matter
how hard he tried.

Eventually he paid a business near Chester (England) to convert his
film to DVD, and edited from that.

I can find out about the business if needed.

Thanks, but I don't _think_ I'll be sending it out to a third party:
it's the sort of thing I _feel_ I should be able to do for myself.

The Wolverine looks interesting.


If there's some motion in it, why not scan about
72 frames of it, with a flatbed scanner, and experiment
with the capture and see what you can make of it ?
You don't have to digitize the whole thing, to decide
whether an extended project will be "fun" or not.
You'll need a good scanner though (because it's a relatively
small piece of film).

Paul
  #27  
Old July 4th 17, 08:22 AM posted to alt.windows7.general,microsoft.public.windowsxp.general
J. P. Gilliver (John)[_4_]
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 2,679
Default converting cine film

In message om, John
Dulak writes:
On 7/3/2017 3:17 AM, J. P. Gilliver (John) wrote:

[]
Thanks; I wasn't aware of this device.

(Wolverine Moviemaker)

John:

A 1/3 inch CCD would be just about 8mm. Perhaps this device uses the
CCD to make what amounts to a still image of each frame without using a


Interesting; the digital equivalent of a contact print, i. e. the film
directly in contact with the sensor; interesting idea. Would have to
have a good compromise between ensuring good contact and not scratching
the film.

lens. If they used "edge finding" firmware they may not need sprockets.
Some flatbed document scanners can do this to find the edge of
documents. This would yield a series of still digital images that could
be sequentially presented as a video. Since you must set the controls
to either 8mm or Super-8 the firmware probably knows what the canonical
frame rate is and may be able to use it in constructing the MP4.


Ah, I'd wondered about the 30 fps. Maybe that's just how fast it
processes, but the MP4 files are correct rate (i. e. it scans at nearly
twice real time).

A YouTube comparison of the results;

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vj9rApV_Yx4


Thanks, I'll have a look at that this evening,

John


John
--
J. P. Gilliver. UMRA: 1960/1985 MB++G()AL-IS-Ch++(p)Ar@T+H+Sh0!:`)DNAf

Diplomacy is the art of letting someone have your way.
  #28  
Old July 4th 17, 09:47 AM posted to alt.windows7.general,microsoft.public.windowsxp.general
NY
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 586
Default converting cine film

"Charlie+" wrote in message
...
The flicker problem - I was using a Sony Hi8 tape analog camera in that
era and by setting the apertures, speeds etc. this problem was
minimised, these films always flickered a tiny bit anyway! C+


The flicker would be caused by the fact that the film image is being
refreshed at 18 or 24 fps (nominally, +/- some tolerance) whereas the camera
is recording at either 25 or 30 fps (PAL or NTSC). This means you get a
"beating" effect between the two, similar to the effect of spoked wagon
wheels in Westerns sometimes appearing to run backwards. Some cameras tend
to reduce the shutter speed in bright light, which makes the effect even
more noticeable, though I doubt whether an image projected onto a screen
will be bright enough cause that problem.

The way this problem is solved by professional broadcast equipment is to
synchronise the projector and camera:

- for PAL, both run at exactly the same speed (25 fps) and then pitch
correction is used to correct for the 4% increase in pitch on the audio
track

- for NTSC, the projector is run at exactly 24 fps, tied to the camera's 30
fps. Google for 3:2 pulldown for details of how 24 fps film matches to 30
fps video - it's a neat arrangement whereby alternate film frames are shown
for either two fields or three fields; this causes motion to be slightly
uneven but avoids flicker. OK, I know that NTSC isn't exactly 30 - it's
29.97 for various obscure technical reasons - but the principle is the same
and the ratio between video and film is still 24:30 or 4:5.

  #29  
Old July 4th 17, 08:17 PM posted to alt.windows7.general,microsoft.public.windowsxp.general
J. P. Gilliver (John)[_4_]
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 2,679
Default converting cine film

In message , Mayayana
writes:
[]
A friend recently had some 8 mm converted. It was
probably about an hour's worth, put onto DVD.
I thought they did a good job. The reels were 50-60
years old and not carefully stored. The total cost


Hmm, that age would definitely be standard 8! Probably some of them
black and white, too.

was about $200. (Probably about 6 billion British
pounds in your economy... plus the VAT tax.


(-: [Some US states have purchase tax too.]

On thing that struck me (besides paying $200 to
see childhood moments that will probably never be
watched again) was that the movement was choppy


Yes, that's a property of home cine: standard 8 was 16 frames per second
(80 frames a foot, so 5 seconds; a 50 foot reel therefore being in
theory 4 minutes 10 seconds, though you tended to lose some at the ends,
which included turning over half way through, unless you loaded and
turned over in a bag).

(low frame rate) and the event was a novelty. Filming
was so novel that the films were mostly comprised
of people taking turns waving and grinning at the
camera.

Indeed: it was either the novelty effect, or special occasions.

(And one of my bugbears: either the films "comprised", or "consisted
of". "were comprised of" combines two in one sentence!)
--
J. P. Gilliver. UMRA: 1960/1985 MB++G()AL-IS-Ch++(p)Ar@T+H+Sh0!:`)DNAf

"The wish of the lazy to allow unsupervised access [to the internet] to their
children should not reduce all adults browsing to the level of suitability for a
five-year-old." Yaman Akdeniz, quoted in Inter//face (The Times, 1999-2-10): p12
  #30  
Old July 4th 17, 08:25 PM posted to alt.windows7.general,microsoft.public.windowsxp.general
J. P. Gilliver (John)[_4_]
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 2,679
Default converting cine film

In message , Charlie+
writes:
On Mon, 3 Jul 2017 20:19:45 +0100, "NY" wrote as
underneath :

snip
I'd be interested to hear others' experiences in converting these: do you
just set up the projector and point a video camera at the screen?


You *can* project onto a screen and point a video camera at the screen, but
there are a number of problems:

- parallax (getting the camera and projector looking along the same axis
with no horizontal displacement so you don't get a parallelogram picture)
- unless you use a completely matt screen, you get hot spot
- poor contrast

I did this a good number of years ago with all my 1960s to 1980s
Standard8 and Super8 silent films, the parallax problem is easily sorted
by angling both projector and camera to a centreline at the same height
and angled in opposite directions, this corrects the parallelogram
problem and if carefully arranged gets a perfect picture..


I'm not saying you're not right, just that I can't understand how: to
me, such angling would _double_ rather than cancel the keystoning
problem.

I remember a bigger problem was the colour correction depending on the
film type and age (now you would do this digitally probably). Most
Kodachrome came out far too yellow and red with (at least with my old
projector), I got around this by projecting on a cyan coloured (coated
premium matt) paper done in CoralDraw and with an inkjet printer by
experiment, CorelDraw allowed precise makeup setting by % to get the
correct reflected colours.


Interesting! I'd not have thought of using a printed screen to correct
the colour. As you say, I _think_ I'd do it electronically these days. I
always felt the film cast tended to follow the colours of the reels the
companies used! Kodak came on yellow reels, and favoured reds and
yellows; Perutz on green reels, and favoured greens and blues, though I
think less so.

The flicker problem - I was using a Sony Hi8 tape analog camera in that
era and by setting the apertures, speeds etc. this problem was
minimised, these films always flickered a tiny bit anyway! C+


Gives the authentic experience (-:! Though in my case you'd need the
wheezing sound of my old OMO Russian projector, too. But I hope to avoid
any brightness flicker, probably by using something like the Wolverine,
leaving only the low frame rate one which is intrinsic to the medium
(and which I don't really remember being that noticeable when watching
the real films - but maybe the two or more blades per frame had some
effect on that).
--
J. P. Gilliver. UMRA: 1960/1985 MB++G()AL-IS-Ch++(p)Ar@T+H+Sh0!:`)DNAf

"The wish of the lazy to allow unsupervised access [to the internet] to their
children should not reduce all adults browsing to the level of suitability for a
five-year-old." Yaman Akdeniz, quoted in Inter//face (The Times, 1999-2-10): p12
 




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