8mm Forum: Re-Recording Question

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Posted by Craig Hamilton (Member # 258) on July 15, 2008, 09:39 AM:

I have just acquired a nice Blackhawk print of one my all time favorite movies in Super 8. this print was originally a silent film but some owner in the past went through a lot of expense and had all three 400ft reels striped and the musical soundtrack added. The blackhawk code on the box confirms that this was a silent print.

This print has a projection speed of 18fps. The recorded sound on the print is the original film score and sounds good on reel 1 & 3 however, reel two had some dropout and part of the stripe in places is peeling away.

This weekend I will will remove a total of around 15 feet of damaged and bad stripe from the film and re-stripe with new magnetic striping (this will put a smile on the wifes face when I take over the lounge on Friday night lol)

My problem is that the master DVD that I will be using for the soundtrack has been transfered to run at 25fps, why some manufacturers think that silent films should have the actors racing around at abnormal speed is beyond me.

What is the best way to record the sound track with the projector running at 18fps and the DVD running at normal speed. As I am recording the original musical score I have the luxury of being a couple of frames out as I do not have to worry about lip sync.

Craig

Posted by Jean-Marc Toussaint (Member # 270) on July 15, 2008, 12:45 PM:

Craig, what kind of equipment are you planning to use?

This is what I would do, but then again, I have the ressources to do it: I would digitize the film in 18fps and run it in a non-linear editing software, interlaced at 25fps. I would then take the soundtrack off the dvd and paste it with the digitized film. The DVD being "faster", I would loop some of the music patterns to fill the voids. ie, if the music changes for a particular scene, I would paste the music change at the beginning of said scene and loop the end of previous music part to fill the gap (with some crossfading). But you might not have access to Soundtrack Pro and Final Cut Pro.

You might also try to do some cutting and pasting of the DVD soundtrack on a simple editing software. You need to "rip" the dvd to your hard drive first.

If you have somewhere a reel-to-reel or stereo cassette tape recorder, you can create your own mix by fading pieces from the left channel to the right channel (and vice-versa)...
Say your scene in 18fps is 30 seconds long. Same scene on the dvd will be 22 seconds. Locate (by simple hearing) a cue in the 22 sec music piece where you could crossfade. Record the music on the right channel and finish with fading out. Then rewind a bit and pause. You will want the DVD to be 8 seconds late, record and fade in on the left channel when you know the track on the right channel will soon fade out. Do the same for the rest of the reel and rerecord the stereo signal in mono on your projector, the music pieces will flow without interruption...

No one said it would be easy.

Or you can stop at my studio in Paris later this year... [Big Grin]

Posted by Mike Tynus (Member # 1108) on July 15, 2008, 02:46 PM:

In addition to Mr. Toussaint's excellent suggestions, I could also digitally slow down the soundtrack without changing the pitch. If interested, I can give you server access where you could post the clips and I'll be happy to retime this for you at no charge. E-mail me if interested.
Happy Striping!

(BTW, what's the title of the film?)

Posted by Steven J Kirk (Member # 1135) on July 15, 2008, 02:53 PM:

Surely start by running the projector in record at 24fps? It's only 1 frame out. A projector with vari-speed like a Eumig can be nearly 25 anyway? What you later play back at is irrelevant?

Posted by Bill Brandenstein (Member # 892) on July 15, 2008, 05:27 PM:

No, Steve, it is relevant because it will sound all mmmuuusssshhhhyyyy. Mike's idea is fantastic but all the tempos will be slow, and the audio may sound quite thrashed depending on how successful the software is -- that's not a small stretch. It's definitely worth a try. Really, my vote goes for Jean-Marc's software approach, but what a HUGE job that is.

Posted by Craig Hamilton (Member # 258) on July 15, 2008, 10:05 PM:

[Eek!]

This should be fun!!!

Jean-Marc, the movie editing software that I use will allow me to to create, say, a slide show of images, lets say 30 images from a digital camera and time the slide show to run for half an hour. The software will automatically calculate to see how long each image is displayed for so that when image 30 has been displayed, time elapsed will be 30 minutes.

I can then import the ripped section of the DVD sound track as an mp3 file in to the slide show time line. Again, I can also let the software match the length of music to the 30 images. The final product could be burned to a dvd.

Craig

Posted by Bill Brandenstein (Member # 892) on July 16, 2008, 11:04 AM:

Forgive me for raining on the parade, but that doesn't sound too precise. I'm not too enamored with the sound quality of mp3s, either, although for this kind of audio it may be inconsequential.

You might find it just as easy to directly transfer the recording to the film and punch in and out here and there to extend the length, because it sounds like with using that software, you'll be losing all sync anyway.

Posted by Jean-Marc Toussaint (Member # 270) on July 17, 2008, 08:38 AM:

Craig, your software doesn't feel like it can handle the job properly. But sometimes it's fun trying to fool a machine and make softwares do what they're not meant to do. Knowing you a bit and knowing that you love rolling up your sleeves, just give it a try. It might work. Or not.

Ideally, you want to work with sound files in AIFF format, since there's considerable loss of dynamic working directly with mp3s.

First things first. Finish your striping job as this is probably the most delicate part of the whole process.

Then, if your software solution doesn't work, check with Mike in the US (Do I smell Protool? CuBase? Logic?)

Or we can try my method. I just finished retracking an Italian print of a Terence Hill "Trinity" movie using the French DVD which had a lot of cuts (shorter scenes). Fortunately, there was no dialogue missing. A couple of laughters and grunts here and there. The fun thing was to pick up sound ambiances, background music and voices from other parts of the scene, or from other scenes, in order to recreate the missing sound parts on the super 8 print.

I'm currently on vacation, I then have a series of job assignements until september 5, so if you want to check again with me after that date, you're more than welcome.

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