Home movie transfer to DVD

[Nymrod121]

(Mods, the following enquiry may be considered as straddling several areas of the Forum so please assess / re-locate as you think fit)

Can anyone advise me if it's possible to transfer Super8 home movie footage to DVD?
Thanks in advance,
Best regards
Guy

[Nicklyons2]

Yes, there are many firms just check on the internet. Depending on what you want to pay, some clean the film, repair bad splices etc and 'grade' the print as it goes through, cheaper services will just run the film through. If the film is very valuable and short it may well be better to go for the 'Rolls-Royce' service, but if you've got miles of stuff and it's just a case of laughing at the kids eating ice cream greedily at Skegness, go for the cheaper service. One thing to note, if the film is 'dense' i.e. dark & contrasty the best service is probably the only one which will give you the results you want. Film shot at 24 fps generally looks & transfers better than that shot at 18 fps but I realise most people used 18 and with modern equipment it can look remakably good.

[terrybull]

If it just some home films you want to do yourself then it is simply a matter of taking a video of the film. You can do this projecting the film and with a standard camcorder, videoing the screen in a dark room or you can buy quite cheaply a purpose made 'box' to make life easier. I have done many and the results are better than you may imagine. No problems with flicker etc. then you just save your video to DVD. I found manually setting the exposure on the camcorder helps as you often get the odd bright blank frames in the film which sets off the auto exposure which has to then recover so you yoyo between bright and dark.

[Nickthedentist]

The other thing, which I'm sure you know Guy, is to retain the original film after you've transferred it, as it's quite possible that it will outlast the DVD in spite of it being 40+ years older.

N.

[cheerfulcharlie]

Many of the 8mm transfers you see in TV programmes are blurred flickery images, these do the format no justice at all and were probably done with the Heath Robinson method of clapped out projector firing against a wall with a camcorder angled to pick up the image.

This YouTube user has made his own very cheap telecine and you can see the potential locked up in the images

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9xAlzArG3bA

So if it's worth doing its worth doing well, look up some transfer houses which have modern equipment and ask to see some samples. They might cost a bit more but obviously they might give you years of pleasure as well.

[Boom]

If you decide on a cheapo DIY job you need to keep the camera as near as possible to the projector or you will end up with all sorts of picture distortions.

[KeithsTV]

And use manual focus as the flickering image can confuse the auto focus system.

Keith

[Nymrod121]

Many thanks for all your replies - very helpful.

Some of my relatives were asking me about this yesterday. We were attending a funeral service and as always, conversations afterwards turned to family trees, family photos, videos etc. At one point someone mentioned that her late father had made many cine films (but taken few photographs) and this prompted the subsequent discussion/question.

I'll collate all of your suggestions and send them on.

Thanks again,
Guy

[julie_m]

If you have lots of film to transfer, try a cheap DIY camcorder job first - the results may be surprisingly good. If some of the original material warrants it, you can always have just that footage transferred professionally.

Usual advice applies for preservation: Keep the originals, make multiple backups on separate media based on different technologies (magnetic, optical, solid state) and check them regularly for deterioration. Avoid proprietary file formats with inherently limited readability; stick to formats that Open Source software can read and write.

[Nymrod121]

Thank you
I've passed on all feedback received.
With grateful thanks to all,
Regards
Guy

[dave walsh]

Only had a couple of reels myself [5min] and these were done by a local firm.
However, I read about a chap who transferred a great deal of film himself-not just for cheapness [it is expensive] but to overcome the dense [dark] footage mentioned in post2*. He projected a small image onto a sheet between two chairs and lit it from behind with a table lamp. He claimed that this improved the quality a great deal for filming on VHS but I've never done this myself of course!
Dave W

[terrybull]

I transferred my 1974 wedding 8mm film to DVD myself. There was a section taken indoors which was very dark, almost un-watchable on the film. When I transferred it to video I used a stopwatch and at the appropriate moment turned the manual exposure on the video camera up and the finished result was a 100% improvement. If you have a decent projector the results you can achieve are more than acceptable. Also even modest video editing software can have some quite sophisticated options to improve your footage. If you use the search term 'video transfer kit' online it may give you some ideas although a small screen in a dark room works fine.

[SiriusHardware]

How about this for a suggestion:

Ingredients:
1) Original projector with the lamp assembly removed.

2) Replace the lamp with a high quality, compact webcam or proper video camera mounted inside the projector where it can get a full-frame view of the film.

3) Place a strong wide-area (not point source) white light where the projector lens can focus on it: Use this to illuminate the film from the outside. Doing it this way around (light outside, camera inside) makes the image on the film the right way around when seen by the webcam, or so I'm guessing.

Run the film, use a PC video capture program to record what the webcam is seeing.

[Nymrod121]

Thank you; I've passed on all additional feedback.
With grateful thanks
Regards
Guy

[Gulliver]

I have done a fair amount of home transfer, being a super 8 buff myself and also custodian of my late grandfather's standard 8mm films.

There are issues with simply pointing a camcorder at a projected image. The three blade shutter in 95% of projectors will generate strobing which your camcorder may well not deal with well. You will also have a hotspot near the centre of the image from the projection lamp. It can be done, and bear in mind that some of the companies advertising cine to DVD services are doing just the same.

If you go this route, get a projector with continually variable speed. You're going to want either 25fps or 16 2/3 FPS in the UK for 24 and 18 or 16 fps material in order to get a stable picture. I have found that projecting onto card or very thick paper from a distance of 6 feet works well.

There are firms who will transfer your films using more complex machinery. THere are a couple of devices on the market designed to get close to professional telecine quality and you can buy these but they run into a few thousand quid. A genuine pro telecine setup is out of the reach of the home user but some companies can do genuine pro wet gate transfers of 8mm - in which case on a well mastered DVD it can look as good as TV material. Bear in mind that reversal film designed for projection is quite high contrast and films designed for telecine were low contrast so there are quite a few issues to overcome.

Try the filmshooting forum at filmshooting.com for more advice. I can personally recommend one UK company for near-pro results at a reasonable price...they will output to DVD or mini-DV if you prefer. I can even put you in touch with the manufacturers of two of these 'near pro' telecine devices but cannot guarantee any kind of discount.

[Gulliver]

Originally Posted by Nickthedentist

The other thing, which I'm sure you know Guy, is to retain the original film after you've transferred it, as it's quite possible that it will outlast the DVD in spite of it being 40+ years older.

N.

Absolutely. Especially if the film is Kodachrome. It's possibly got a shelf life of 300 years if it is.

My late grandfather's first films from 1964 look like they were shot yesterday in terms of quality of the image. The colours are rich and the grain tight. Whereas some stuff I shot 22 years later on cheaper Agfa stock has begun to fade already.

Fortunatley most home movie film *is* Kodachrome....until 2009 when they scrapped it, anyway.

[TIMTAPE]

There are multiple problems with just videoing the image off the projector screen.

Projector lenses have large apertures for maximum image brightness. The trade off is weaker brightness at the edges of the frame and less sharp focus than in the centre.

The same goes for the projector's original lamp which opts for maximum brightness on the screen, which usually results in uneven illumination which seems to be accentuated when videoing.
Also, the very direct light source used maximises contrast. It looks impressive on the screen but can be far too much for a video camera to handle.
In a proper telecine, a diffuser like a piece of frosted glass is placed between the lamp and the film gate. It gives a lower contrast and an even illumination across the image.

Speaking of contrast, Kodachrome film looks great partly because it exaggerates contrast in the real life image. But this creates extra problems of simultaneous under and overexposure when capturing.

Really good telecine transfers use a proper diffused light source, a custom enlarged film gate to reveal extra image at the edges normally cropped by the projector's own film gate, a macro lens camera looking straight onto the film plane, "frame by frame" capture, and a seriously good video camera with large dynamic range and probably HD video.

I've been experimenting myself for some time with telecine to transfer my own family home movie collection and still am not satisfied with the result. Some of the examples shown on websites are stunningly good and make me realize how far I have yet to go!

I think this is the link for a good one:

http://www.super-8.be/s8_Eindex.htm

Cheers Tim

[arjoll]

I did most of dad's with a borrowed semi-pro Sony DV camera from one of my clients (can't remember if it was the VX2200 or PD170), and a basic "transfer kit" which involved projecting onto a mirror which reflects the image onto a frosted rear projection screen.

The results were quite good - certainly nowhere near as good as a transfer with the proper gear, but acceptable for rough home movies. It would have been better if dad's projector had variable speed, but even at whatever its fixed speed was we managed to find frame rates for regular both 8mm and Super 8 on the camera that minimised flicker.

It goes without saying that the original film is in safe storage so if we ever want a better transfer it won't be a problem.

[Nicklyons2]

I refer to my post #2. I think if you look at the messing about (particularly post #13) for results which many of the above admit fall into the 'quite good' and 'better than expected' categories and are sometimes rather speculative, you may well waste hours of time for something you're not going to be pleased with. Additionally, there is the fact that messing about using old, borrowed and often poorly maintained projectors may ruin your precious film - ripping the 'perfs', scratching the emulsion etc. If the film is really that precious get it done properly; I have no axe to grind, I don't do it myself and have no connexion with firms who do BUT I have seen lots and lots of 'camera to screen' transfers. Would you transfer your vinyl collection to CD using a microphone in front of a record player's loudspeaker? I think not.

[TIMTAPE]

I agree. But the fact is that no matter who you pay to do the job, unless you have a clear idea of what your footage actually looks like before it is sent to the vendor, you are flying blind and have to act on trust that the vendor will both look after your film and make a solid, workmanlike transfer. For where is your benchmark?

Sadly too, doing such transfers as a daily job can be intolerably boring to perform, and I suspect that often juniors with limited skills and on low pay are employed to do the work.

I have occasion to service some of the equipment used by such vendors for their work (audio, not film gear, but they also do film transfers) and I am sometimes appalled at how poorly they maintain it, and often only bring it to me when it completely fails to work, rather than when it shows the very first signs of dropping in performance.

Even a simple 8mm home projector in otherwise perfect condition should have its film path meticulously cleaned before running a film reel through it, to reduce the risk of adding permanent scratches to the image.

Compare this with the very best film preservation and restoration personnel in the world like Robert Harris and Bob Katz. They can carefully slave over mere minutes of damaged, irreplaceable film for a whole day just to get it to scan optimally without further damage. It's worlds apart.

Sure, you get what you pay for, but either way, you still have to act on trust.

Cheers Tim