transfer film to video - anyone, anyone?

J

John_S

New member
I was refered to DVXUSER, by technical support at Panasonic. They recommended I check this site for information. Hopefully someone can give me a bit of help.

I am looking at purchasing a high quality miniDV camera for multiple tasks. One reason I liked the DVX100A was that I will be transferring a large number of personal movie film in Standard 8, Super 8, and 16mm formats. Some sound, some not. As the frame rate of these formats varies from 18FPS to 24FPS. I’m hoping that the DVX100A will offer a way to eliminate flicker through the combination of the various frame rates and shutter speeds that the DVX has to offer? Obviously, a video using a standard 30FPS video camera will produce flicker without adjustments but I'm trying to work around adjusting the film speed of the movie projector if possible.

I will be using an optical multiplexer (Aerial image) to improve the quality of the projected image from the projector to the DVX camera, and dump directly into the computer, then edit with Vegas 5. Note that Sony told me that they offer a "deflicker" feature in Vegas, but said that it would only help with, but not totally fix the issue.

Has anyone used the DVX to transfer film to video? Any help here would be much appreciated.
 
Re: transfer film to video - anyone, anyone?

I am also interested in transferring Super8 and editing in Vegas5. So I'll be watching this thread.
Super8 is, I think, running at 18 fps? Recording at 60i seems the better choice to me since I only have an old consumer grade projector. I think it will do 24 fps, but synching would probably drive me crazy (that would be a short drive BTW :) )
 
Re: transfer film to video - anyone, anyone?

I had a friend that wanted to transfer footage from his super8 (24fps) and wanted to use my camera. I set it up at 24pn and then adjusted the shutter speed via the flicker adjust settings (I think i ended up with like 46.8fps being the best with his projector. So yes 24p does work well for this type of video transfer, and you don't get interlace artifacts. If I was going to be doing 18fps transfer, I would shoot at 30P and then adjust from there.
 
Re: transfer film to video - anyone, anyone?

Scharky:

If I shoot the 18fps film (silent super and standard 8) at 30P, and it doesn't work, is it a viable option to adjust the film projector to 24 fps using the settings that worked for you, and adjusting the video speed through the editing software? What does that do to the quality of the video?

Also, do you feel that the quality of your transfer at 24p was good enough to pull single frames, in case I want to make a photo print of one frame?

Thanks for the input.
 
Re: transfer film to video - anyone, anyone?

Super8 was commonly shot at either 18fps or 24fps.  Usually 18fps for silent, 24fps for sound, but you could choose either.

The problem with this method (of projecting the film and videotaping it using 24p) is that there are very, very, very, very few projectors that actually run at 24fps.  They run at *about* 24fps, or *approximately* 24fps. Even if it's 24.1fps, you'll get flicker on the video transfer.  You need a specially-engineered "telecine" projector, usually with an AC Synchronous motor (the predecessor to "crystal sync") to get a reliable, accurate 24fps speed.  If the projector is slightly off speed, the footage will flicker and drift.  You can try chasing it with the shutter speed (like scharky recommends) but that depends on the projector running at a *consistent* speed, which is not a given by any means.

If you want flicker-free transfers from a home projector system, you need to either get a telecine projector (like the Elmo ... er, the Elmo ... ah, heck, I can't remember the model number!) or the... what was that other thing, that used the spinning prism -- oh, yeah, the Goko.  Or, you can get one of the projectors from http://www.moviestuff.com... Roger Evans over there is a one-man band trying to preserve Super 8 by engineering modern retrofits to older projectors to make them more accurate and useful for video transfers.  His CineMate has a synchronous (or crystal, don't remember) motor, and his WorkPrinter guarantees absolutely flicker-free transfers (although they don't run at real time speeds).
 
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