Transfering 8mm footage into Digital Media

mochouinard

mochouinard

Well-known member
Ok, I just found a old 8mm projector in my house... Now would filming it off a white wall with my HVX200 be ennuf to transfer them without loosing much quality ?

I know it will work, and it will produce an image, but is there any special thing to take in consideration when doing 8mm transfer this way ?

Thanks
 
My projector have a simple variable speed control. Not FPS setting, just gussing ;)
It a old projector. from 1980 and older...
 
I'm doing the same thing right now with about 100 8mm reels from 1970-1980.
I tried the synchro-scan but that didn't worked for me, I had to speed up the footage a little bit to get rid of the strobing. I first started with a silverscreen for projection, but you could see the structure in the background, so I'm using a simple 20x30 cm sheet of paper in a distance of 1,5 meters which works pretty well.
 
From, what I recall, the 8mm and Super 8 projectors had a 3 blade shutter. When the film is running at 20 Frames Per Second through the projector, you get 3 x 20 FPS = 60 pulses of light per second. This is faster than 16 FPS (8mm) and 18 FPS (Super 8), but will not produce any flicker in the image. I modified my old Super 8 sound projector to play at 20 FPS whens set to the 24 FPS setting. This really screws up the sound (wrong speed), but does stop the flicker.

For PAL users, the speed shoud be 16.666... FPS.

The transfer isn't ideal, but it does work. If you have a slight amount of light in the room, the extra light on the screen helps to lower the contrast in the image.

One problem is that any grain pattern on a paper OR pattern on the wall will be picked up in your video.


Bob Diaz
 
This site is reading my mind waves, SCAREY! I was asked about doing this by a friend two days ago & here is an answer before I even get around to asking the question.
 
Hi,
I got over 50 xfers from old 8mm to digital recently. I chose to pay a guy with the right telecine gear to do it and the results are great. His telecine plays back the originals at 6fps capturing progressive scan and saving as AVI type 2 files in original 18fps - which I can smooth out in FCP.
Anyway I'd go this route if the footage is old and of sentimental value it is worth the cost of €10 per roll xfer, the slower playback speed helps prevent further damage to sticky reels where emulsion is peeling.
But I guess the HVX would do a good capture job with a good quality projection set up - can't beat direct capture from the original film surface, also the ratio is different so maybe you will lose some image when cropping in unless go for specialist telecine.
 
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