[john renard]

I'm not sure if this is the correct forum for this query, but here goes anyway.

I wish to copy some old 8mm cine film to DVD.

Many commercial firms offer this service - at a price.

I still have my original 8mm cine projector (a sign of old age ), also a modern digital camcorder and DVD recorder (a sign of keeping up with the times ).

Please can anyone advise me, without being too technical, how these commercial firms copy cine to DVD?

My concern is this: if all they do is play it back on a projector while copying it with a camcorder before transferring it to disc via a DVDR, couldn't I do that myself and save a fortune?

My main concern is to get the best possible result from my old cine film.

Any advice, please?

[senu]

The conversion of cine to Digital can be as simple as taping the projected film under very controlled lighting conditions and capturing audio by means other than just using a microphone to record a speker output.

Even so the Camcorder used would be a high quality one regarding sharpeness and colour reproduction and one whose frame rate can match film to avoid any "flicker".
Some processes even Scan the film by a frame by frame process and then reconstruct it digitally. As you can imagine this requires a separate audio capture process
The captured footage is then "cleaned up" , enhanced and Reconstructed ( they call this "Remastering") before you get to see it
Major re-releases of Old films more than likely use sophisticated variants of these methods.
Also not even all recent movies are shot digitally and yet they get to us in pristine quality

As such the quality you get will vary on your original and the process used by the company.
You have absolutely nothing to lose trying to record your cine film your self ( even if it is just for the fun of trying it out)
You can then "tidy it up in software on a PC before turning it to DVD. I imagine just recording it to miniDV and transferring to DVD via settop may end up looking like some of those cheap and nasty "pirate DVDs" made by recording in the cinema on a camcorder
If however it falls short of what you want.. then you might have to do it commercially carefully choosing who to do it for you based on affordability and VFM

[Dennis Leighton]

I used a Sony VCR-4 telecine adaptor to transfer all my silent cine which I found most suitable. I reside in Shropshire and if you are not too far away to collect it you are more than welcome to borrow it.

[john renard]

Originally Posted by Dennis Leighton

I used a Sony VCR-4 telecine adaptor to transfer all my silent cine which I found most suitable. I reside in Shropshire and if you are not too far away to collect it you are more than welcome to borrow it.

Many thanks for this generous offer, Dennis. I have sent you a PM.

[john renard]

Thank you for explaining the process to me, senu.

I am now wondering whether to entrust this to a commercial firm but I fear there are a few "cowboys" out there who want to make a quick buck while giving an inferior product.

Is it permissible to enquire whether anyone can recommend a firm in the Southampton area?

Regards, and thanks again,
John

[senu]

It is something done very infrequently so I can imagine asking to see examples of thier work may be the next best solution

[chrishull3]

http://www.videostation.co.uk/


i had some done by these,pricey but a great job ,free dvd to check first

[Kopil]

Conrad Electronics, a German company with a UK base in Bedford, sell a Telescreen Video 3 in 1 converter for £47.99 + £5.99 p&p. It looks similar to one that was made by Hama and is, I think, now made by Polestar and seems to be widely available in Germany. I think that Hama may also make one. See www.Conrad.com

[Kopil]

Just bought an old Hama Telescreen Video 3 in 1. Any ideas where I can buy cine film cleaner and lubricant in the UK?

[Dennis Leighton]

Try here They are selling Carnall Cine Film Cleaner for £10. I hope this helps you.

[chrisp]

Hope it's not too late in join in but whilst searching for info came across this thread.

A friend and I want to transfer our old cine film to DVD. He has a GAF 1388Z dual format projecter and I have a Cinematic 1000 dual format cine projector. We both have Canon MV530i camcorders. His projector doesn't have a variable speed option as far as we can see and although mine says the speed can adjusted it looks a bit crude I con't recall trying it over the years.

I recently bought an AMBICO All-in-one Video Transfer Unit Model V-0652 from eBay at a reasonable price. We tried our first transfer yesterday and were a little disappointed with the result which wasn't at all clear or sharp.

We had the usual problem of flicker caused by different frame rates and by luck I found the Spotlight setting on the Canon and this seemed to give flicker free recording.

We aren't sure at the moment if the problem may be due to my friends projector having a bulb blowing and although we got what seemed to be a compatible bulb from our local Maplin http://www.maplin.co.uk/module.aspx?...=17m1#overview we wonder if that could be an issue as the this and the other bulb they suggested http://www.maplin.co.uk/Search.aspx?...source=15&SD=Y have different beam angles and this is something we have no knowledge about. A more compatible bulb for his projector is available from http://www.bltdirect.com/product.php?pid=1346 and this doesn't make any mention of beam angle.

I know you can do the process by projecting the image onto a screen or even a large sheet of white cardboard/paper but we thought the Ambico would be a better option. There was no instruction leaflet with it so we are having to go purely by what is shown on the box, which seems simple enough. I haven't been able to find any manual etc for the Ambico.

Any advice would be appreciated.

PS have't tried my projector yet as I had an intermittent problem with the lamp but think I have cured this now.

[Kopil]

I have just discovered an old (30 years) unprocessed (but paid) Kodak 8mm cine film of the type that was run through the camera and then reversed and the film was cut in two once processed.
Kodak have told me that they stopped processing these in 2006 and have suggested a US firm, Dwayne's Photo. Does anyone know of a UK firm that will process this film?

[Boostrail]

Hi first post on this part of the forum.

I have been reading this thread with interest.

Some years ago I had some 8mm cine that I wanted to copy onto then VHS tape. I bought a video transfer unit made by Vivanco or Hama, This was useless as it resulted in a darker blob in the middle of the picture in the camera. I found that this was a common problem from correspondence in magazines such as What Video? etc.

I eventually got some good results by just projecting an image at a slight angle that was about 24" x 18" and therefore bright. I set the camcorder on a tripod at a similar slight angle to one side at the same height just in front of the projector. I did not get any ficker problems, the result was excellent and the distortion introduced by the angle between projector and camera was indiscernable.

I have now just got a large box full of old family cine films that I need to copy and was wondering whether there are any better devices around now? I shall us a DV camcorder fed directly by firewire to PC HDD at 13GB/hr and then take it away from there.

Any advice gratefully received!

[glesgaguyav]

That's exactly the way I copied my Super8 movies

The trick for Non Flicker is to use a Projector with variable speed and make sure that the Cam is set manualy to a constant 1/50 frame rate

I don't believe that there has been any improvment on copying equipment except for more expensive glass and mirror type boxes. You can pick up a special projector which has AV out connections, I saw one on E/bay which sold for £700 !

Now that I have an HDV cam Iam toying with the idea of copying one of the films to see if it makes any difference but I believe at the end of the day it's down to the quality of the projector

[Kopil]

Originally Posted by Boostrail

I have now just got a large box full of old family cine films that I need to copy and was wondering whether there are any better devices around now? I shall us a DV camcorder fed directly by firewire to PC HDD at 13GB/hr and then take it away from there.

Any advice gratefully received!

From what I have read the way you did it still gives better results than a transfer box but it does, of course, have to be done in the dark.

[Boostrail]

Originally Posted by Kopil

From what I have read the way you did it still gives better results than a transfer box but it does, of course, have to be done in the dark.

Surprisingly not in total darkness! As long as the curtains were pulled and the screen was against the light all that the camcorder saw was the screen.

[silverstone]

I eventually got some good results by just projecting an image at a slight angle that was about 24" x 18" and therefore bright. I set the camcorder on a tripod at a similar slight angle to one side at the same height just in front of the projector. I did not get any ficker problems, the result was excellent and the distortion introduced by the angle between projector and camera was indiscernable.

I concur with that - I had much better results using this method than with my Vivitar box. Using the box, you get to see the bulb burning bright in the middle of certain frames and it was impossible to correctly align everything perfectly. I had ridiculous piles of phone directories and bits of paper to get the heights of all the components right etc but as soon as you touched the cine projector to load another 3min 50 secs worth of celluloid the whole thing shifted again.

I never completely eliminated flicker but did achieve acceptable results by slowing the speed of the projected image and setting the Sony TRV Digital 8 to manual exposure and adjusting as required. If you overdo it you end up with your cine looking like a slo-mo film.

I've written about this elsewhere, but a major hindrance achieving high quality copy is the loss you will experience when you transfer to DVD HD (to edit the rubbish bits out) and then dubbing to a DVD so you can show the footage to embarrased relatives who had hoped you had lost the old films - the image just gets duller every time.

Unfortunately my pc just doesn't seem to support any of the editing software - after a few minutes of downloading and it just crashes. To upgrade the pc to do this would probably cost about the same as having my cine transferred professionally.

[Boostrail]

Thanks Silverstone for your observations. Yes the device I tried some years ago could have been Vivitar rather than Vivanco or Hama. I agree that apart from the "blob" the thing was too sensitive to slight movements. As I said earlier in those days I was targetting VHS via a S-VHS camcorder and editing via S-VHS VCR to standard VHS. Thank god it was only about 45 mins.

I have now got this enormous box full of cine and I think around 10 hours of cine on about 5 - 10 minute reels to archive and distribute! There is no way I could afford to have this tranferred professionally let alone edited and put together in time sequence. I could probably buy 3 or 4 PC's for this sort of money.

(Silverstone please look around as PC's that will support video editing have come down in price a lot recently - explore this website for the best deals http://www.hotukdeals.com/all/deals/new)

Indeed I need to make initial draft copies and invite comments from several senior members of the family as to content and timing before producing the definitive "Family History 1952-1975 5 -6 disc set"!!

I shall use Pinnacle as an editor and to add background music as once I found out how to use it for frame perfect edits (instructions are poor) it was so much easier and particularly quicker than the others.

[Boostrail]

OK have started transfer process but found some problems that have not bothered me in normal use.

1) Camcorder does not output on Firewire in standby or record mode, only on replay of recorded tape.

2) Temporary solution to above 1) use S-Video via analog capture device (can capture at full res to .avi)

3) Unless recording on its own tape the camcorder turns itself off in about 3 mins,

4) Whatever I have to record to DV tape also during capture process.

5) No flicker problems where shutter is at1/50 and "Play" speed is 18 fps.

6) Having prolems with white balance .

Auto - generally too white-yellow with flare-outs

Day light - result too orange

Artificial light - result too blue

Manual seems to only give similar results to above - cannot say freeze blue or hue/sat. And meanwhile.............Thanks for your thoughts on this.

[glesgaguyav]

Do you have "white balance" control on your camera ?
If you do try setting it on the screen with the projectors lamp on.
The white balance needs to know what to set White to, otherwise it will see the red hew of the lamp.
Ideally you should always set the white balance by holding a white card in front of the lens under the lighting conditions being used.

[Boostrail]

Originally Posted by glesgaguyav

Do you have "white balance" control on your camera ?
If you do try setting it on the screen with the projectors lamp on.
The white balance needs to know what to set White to, otherwise it will see the red hew of the lamp.
Ideally you should always set the white balance by holding a white card in front of the lens under the lighting conditions being used.

Thanks for your response.

Yes the camera has a white balance adjustment and have tried adjusting during projection with no film but do not seem to be able to improve on fixed setting results - seems to go from blue to yellow too quickly.

[glesgaguyav]

Hard to advise without knowing more about your camera and it's manual functions, and the origional quality of the films

But I had to experiment with my cam's settings to get the required results.

White Balance: As stated before
If you have no contrast ie. too white, try reducing the aperture.
Also try moving the cam backwards away from the projector and using the zoom to fill the screen, remembering to over zoom the projected image, if you try and match it to the viewfinder you might have black edges round the picture .
Also remember that a certain amount of adjustment can be made in your video editor, brightness,contrast,colour correction

If your cam has av out (it should) try connecting up to your TV/recorders AV input and view on a TV/monitor, cams LCD/viewfinders are not the best for monitoring they can tend to be too bright

[Boostrail]

Originally Posted by glesgaguyav

Hard to advise without knowing more about your camera and it's manual functions, and the origional quality of the films

But I had to experiment with my cam's settings to get the required results.

White Balance: As stated before
If you have no contrast ie. too white, try reducing the aperture.
Also try moving the cam backwards away from the projector and using the zoom to fill the screen, remembering to over zoom the projected image, if you try and match it to the viewfinder you might have black edges round the picture .
Also remember that a certain amount of adjustment can be made in your video editor, brightness,contrast,colour correction

If your cam has av out (it should) try connecting up to your TV/recorders AV input and view on a TV/monitor, cams LCD/viewfinders are not the best for monitoring they can tend to be too bright

I have found out the problem with the white balance which was manual control resets itself every time the camera is turned off or switched to replay mode and has to be reset each time. I had already decided to use artificial light setting and colour correction in capture software and it works well. I am using S-Video out for capture to dv.avi and am monitoring in capture software. Am also recording to DV tape and will compare firewire capture with S-Video when I get a longer firewire cable.
Contrast was not a problem as I was already using manual F5.6 at 1/50th sec with slight over zoom.
I am getting good results now considering that originals are all standard 8 Kodachrome and most are over 50 years old!

[ipoverdvb]

Originally Posted by Dennis Leighton

I used a Sony VCR-4 telecine adaptor to transfer all my silent cine which I found most suitable. I reside in Shropshire and if you are not too far away to collect it you are more than welcome to borrow it.

Hello Dennis,
Have you used your Sony VCR-4 with a mini-DV video camera?
I picked up a comment somewhere online that the VCR-4 may only be good for older video cameras, I don't know the reason why.
I have a mini-DV camera and am interested in a VCR-4 I've found for sale online.
Do you have any general comments on the capability and quality of the VCR-4 ?
I tried to PM you but I guess my account is too new.
Thanks,
Patrick.

[Dennis Leighton]

Hi Patrick,

Sorry but I cannot offer any advice on using the VCR-4 with a mini DV camera. I am sure, however, that someone will be along shortly on this Forum to offer their advice to you.

Kind regards,

Dennis