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Topic: Super8 conversion to HDV

Hanspeter Tschupp
Junior
Posts: 4
From: Clearwater, FL, USA
Registered: Dec 2005

posted December 15, 2005 11:54 PM

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I have about 4 hours of Super8 family movies from the 70ies and 80ies. Last year about this time I bought my first HDV camera, the Sony HDR-FX1. I did various movies in the meantime.

My wife just told me she will bring the Super8 movies to a local shop for digital transfer. When she came back with a sample transfer, we were both very disappointed with the quality.

Then I thought to do an experiment with my HDR-FX1. I projected a Super 8 movie on a 3 foot diagonal screen (with an old Eumig Mark S 802) and filmed the projection with my HDR-FX1. I tried both, SD and HD mode. The HD recording were just stunning and offered a surprising quality. Flicker was not a big issue. The only problem was the sound. My movies were all shot in Stereo with a Nizo 6080.

I decided to buy a Sankyo 800 on E-bay for $ 299.-- which should arrive here shortly.

I plan to transfer the 4 hours of Super 8 into HDV over Christmas. I will keep you posted on the results and post a couple of transfer movies on this forum. I also will let you know about the setup and how to handle:

a) Aspect ratio of super 8 <-> versus HDV (16:9)
b) Flicker elimination
c) Parallaxis handling
d) Stereo Sound transfer and filtering of unwanted noises
e) Audio overdubbing in Premiere Pro 1.51(PC) and Final Cut Pro (MAC) (I use both).

Stay tuned.

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Jean-Marc Toussaint
Film God

Posts: 2392
From: France
Registered: Oct 2004

posted December 16, 2005 03:09 AM

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Hey, impressive set up. You can't go wrong. I use Final Cut too.
And welcome to the forum!

--------------------
The Grindcave Cinema Website

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Steve Klare
Film Guy

Posts: 7016
From: Long Island, NY, USA
Registered: Jun 2003

posted December 16, 2005 06:28 PM

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Yes!,Welcome!,

Just please put the film originals into good storage conditions when you are done transfering them. Having a transfered copy doesn't mean the film is now disposable. You can still project it whenever the mood strikes, and maybe transfer again as times and technologies change.

A number of years ago my Aunt presented me with a whole bunch of empty 200 foot reels in cans labeled for trips she'd made all over the world. It seems she'd gotten it transfered and then decided to give me the reels, so she spooled them off into the garbage!

(Really wish she'd told me first!)

--------------------
All I ask is a wide screen and a projector to light her by...

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Hanspeter Tschupp
Junior
Posts: 4
From: Clearwater, FL, USA
Registered: Dec 2005

posted December 16, 2005 08:48 PM

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Thanks for the welcome and hints. I agree to store the super 8 movies after transfer. They have an unique value which should be honored.

I hope to start with the project in about a week. I'll keep you posted about the setup and the results.

Hanspeter Tschupp
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Adrian Winchester
Film God

Posts: 2941
From: Croydon, London, UK
Registered: Aug 2004

posted December 16, 2005 09:47 PM

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Steve - what a sad story! I guess there must still be quite a few people transferring old 8mm material to video or DVD, and thinking that it's then safely captured on a longer-lasting medium. I recall a colleague, a while back, desperate to transfer deteriorating tapes to other tapes, before it was too late.

--------------------
Adrian Winchester

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Steve Klare
Film Guy

Posts: 7016
From: Long Island, NY, USA
Registered: Jun 2003

posted December 16, 2005 10:07 PM

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Yes, and she has come to regret it since then as well.

Unfortunately, many families used to have little rituals like setting up the screen amd watching movies or slides which are getting wiped out by modern life and technologies.(..along with others like eating together at the dining room table and...you know: talking and such!)

-at least if you keep the films you can have the convenience and the ritual too!

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All I ask is a wide screen and a projector to light her by...

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Winbert Hutahaean
Film God

Posts: 5468
From: Nouméa, New Caledonia
Registered: Jun 2003

posted December 17, 2005 03:09 AM

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Apart from the original story......

Jan, you should have missed that Sankyo 800 from Ebay!! [Big Grin]

[Big Grin]

[Wink]

Where were you?

cheers

--------------------
Winbert

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Jan Bister
Darth 8mm

Posts: 2629
From: Ohio, USA
Registered: Jan 2005

posted December 17, 2005 02:02 PM

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Which one? There were about 2 or 3 Sankyo 800s on eBay lately... I certainly did watch them all (one's still running as of right now I believe)... but actually I bought the damaged Sankyo 800 that Michael Clark had for a while. He and I both made a good deal on it, he's happy it's gone and I'm looking forward to tinkering with it and trying to get the sound working again. [Smile]

[Smile]

Speaking of sound, there's been mention of audio filtering and removing unwanted noise here... I just now upgraded both my Windows sound editor (Sound Forge Audio Studio) and my noise reduction plugin to their latest versions, and would certainly be happy to provide audio clean-up services to anyone requiring them if they can't do it by themselves (good software to do this is generally not cheap, but I took advantage of special offers). [Smile]

[Smile]

Yes, I'm quite the sound wizard actually, having composed several tunes and performed audio editing and mastering for CDs and personal remixes...

--------------------
Call me Phoenix. *dusts off the ashes*

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Sam James
Expert Film Handler

Posts: 114
From: London
Registered: Oct 2005

posted December 17, 2005 02:23 PM

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Enough talk about Sankyo 800s already! You lot just convinced me to spend more on an Elmo. It's a conspiracy I tell you!!!!!!

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Joe Taffis
Phenomenal Film Handler

Posts: 1592
From: United States
Registered: Jun 2003

posted December 17, 2005 03:28 PM

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Hi Hanspeter and welcome, I'll be very interested in your set-up info and results. I have several thousand feet of film that I would like to transfer myself.

--------------------
Joe Taffis

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Hanspeter Tschupp
Junior
Posts: 4
From: Clearwater, FL, USA
Registered: Dec 2005

posted December 18, 2005 08:32 PM

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Excellent Joe,

I'll keep you posted.

Hanspeter

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David Michael Leugers
Master Film Handler

Posts: 264
From: Fairfield, OH, USA
Registered: Feb 2004

posted December 19, 2005 05:11 PM

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Hanspeter, you are a lucky man to own such films. Always do what you can to preserve them for archival purposes. I recently set up a screen and projected about an hour of 16mm B+W movies I took of our two sons when they were toddlers. Priceless. My wife was crying, tears of joy. I have a fair amount of S-8mm sound film also which I will show the family this Christmas. While popping in a DVD to watch is easier, the experience is absolutely not the same.

David M. Leugers

--------------------
Live Free or Die

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Stig L Lundberg
Junior
Posts: 4
From: Gävle, Sweden
Registered: Sep 2005

posted December 20, 2005 06:26 PM

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Hi there,
I'll be watching your results. I have done the same operation with Sony's smaller HDV camera HCR-HC1E. Colours does not come out nearly as vivid as on real film, especially in dark scenes.
Some improvement to colours using an Elmo Xenon projector, and no flickering after adjusting running speed. This will affect sound though. You state you have stereo sound filmed with Nizo?
That must have been put on later, in your projector, there were no stereo cameras. Question is how to record sound from projector on cable to camera? Phono out or Earphones out?
Stig

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Douglas Meltzer
Moderator

Posts: 4554
From: New York, NY, USA
Registered: Jun 2003

posted December 20, 2005 09:32 PM

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Hanspeter,

Belated welcome to this fine forum! Best of luck with your transfers. I've done the same with 8mm films using my Sony BVW-600 Beta SP camera. The Prosumer HD cameras are fine in terms of resolution but I find a real broadcast quality lens makes all the difference. I was also able to use the camera's clearscan function (for shooting computer monitors) to eliminate any flickering. Instead of recording on Beta SP, I took the video output and ran it into a Sony DSR-25 DVCAM deck.For audio, I ran the speaker outputs through a mixer into the RCA inputs of the deck. The camera was positioned slightly above the projector, on the same axis. I found that taking a white balance off of a white object in the projected film gave me nicer tones than either using a preset or a balance off the projector bulb.
It's much more fun than sending it out!

Doug

--------------------
I think there's room for just one more film.....

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Hanspeter Tschupp
Junior
Posts: 4
From: Clearwater, FL, USA
Registered: Dec 2005

posted December 20, 2005 11:03 PM

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Thanks for all the helpful inputs.

Stig: You might be correct, the stereo sound was made in post. Back in the eighties I lived in Switzerland and had a Bauer T600 which was an excellent quiet projector.

No I got the Sankyo 800 which is fine and works well for waht I'm doing. Xenon would be better, but I don't know if there is a mod for the 800.

The sound routing is as follows:

The Sankyo 800 has 2 line outputs on the backside with 3.5mm jacks. I use those and route the signal into my Korg D32XD which is a sound-processor/hard disk recorder. From there I feed the HDR-FX1 with a line input signal in manual recording mode. I use a couple of digital filters as needed, before I feed the sound into the camera.

Once recorded, I use either Final Cut Pro or Premiere 1.51 with the AspectHD plug in. Capturing and editing in HD is easy.

Since I'm going to mix some movies with real HDV shots, I don't know how I will handle the aspect ratio. I didn't measure it, but I think Super8 has somewhat 4:3 while 16:9 is used for HDV. I might record all movie twice, once "zooming" in to the Super 8 projection having some top and bottom parts stripped and also filming the full screen which leaves two black areas to the side.

See this Picture:

I did not start with the recording yet. Currently I'm playing around with the white balance.

Douglas: Thanks for your hint, especially regarding the white balance. I'll try it out.

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