Super 8 projection to video

[Osi Osgood]

Looking upon my Jaws video, I'm more than a little annoyed with that "flicker" to the image. Therefore, is there a specific fps for a good look to it? 24? 23? 25? Eh?

[Paul Adsett]

Osi, you need to run close to 24fps, but try slowing the shutter speed on your video camera. That should eliminate or minimize flicker.

[Nantawat Kittiwarakul]

Classic headaches of film-to-video transfer.

Assuming conventional 3-blade shutter projector, for silent films the projection speed should be 16.67 fps for PAL in order to get 16.67*3=50 Hz, and 20 fps for NTSC (20*3=60Hz).

But things will get nasty with sound speed film. At 24 fps you'll get 72 Hz, which most NTSC camcorders does not have that shutter speed. Even in PAL the situation doesn't improve much since even at 25 fps you'll get 75 HZ, which most PAL camcorders does not have that shutter speed as well.

The most practical solution would be 2-blade projector. It will be 25*2=50 Hz for PAL. For NTSC it should work well with camcorder with 24p mode (24*2=48Hz).

For other option - some prosumer camcorders/consumer cameras (Panasonic GH series as I can think of at the moment) does have variable shutter speed mode, where you can fine-tune until the flicker is barely noticeable or completely gone. This is of course model-specific function so more research would be needed.

[Osi Osgood]

It looks like it's time to do some experiments. By the way, I saw a YouTube video of a black m white Star Wars super 8 that a fellow did a frame by frame digital telecine of, with one of those little telecine machines that most people use for transferring they're home movies, and the quality was quite impressive. What I would love to do, is to do a telecine of that scope Star Wars 400ft scope, and then, with video editing software, "squeeze" the image into it's proper scope ratio!

[Brian Fretwell]

It was easier to stop flicker in the days of long lag tube video cameras. The solid state devices used now are much more sensitive, even shots of LED text displays suffers in many videos.

[Gary Sayers]

Project at 16 and 2/3rds fps and have the camera set at 1/50 shutter speed. Then speed up the footage with a video editing programme (speed increase by approx 43%, I think). I've just shot some myself but haven't got round to speeding it up yet (have to get my son to do it as I can't get to grips with video editors).

For sound, I recorded separately onto a tascam portable recorder and find that it keeps perfect sync with the footage recorded by the video camera.

As for using one of those transfer machines, I would be wary of risking my films to the mechanics of one of those.

[Gary Sayers]

Did a little bit of experimenting this evening with the projector running at 24 fps. I did various test shots of the same scene from a colour package movie, altering the shutter speed on the video camera for each one.

At a shutter of 1/40th, there was the kind of flicker I would expect. At 1/50th, there was a horrible horizontal 'interference' type of flicker that looked like electronic interference on a TV. At 1/60th, it was slightly better but it was at 1/80th that I was shocked to see a rather pleasant image, with no real 'flicker' as such.

There was just a faint strobe of dark thin horizontal lines going down the screen. Sure, they are not totally invisible but almost and they are not anywhere near as bad as the flicker on the 'Jaws' clip that Osi put up. Perfectly acceptable if you need a quick 'off the wall' transfer done in real time at the correct running speed.

My video camera is a JVC HD Everio.

[Osi Osgood]

When you say "1/80", what does that come out to in frames per second, as I certainly cannot project at 80 frames per second.

[Nantawat Kittiwarakul]

Did a little bit of experimenting this evening with the projector running at 24 fps. I did various test shots of the same scene from a colour package movie, altering the shutter speed on the video camera for each one.

At a shutter of 1/40th, there was the kind of flicker I would expect. At 1/50th, there was a horrible horizontal 'interference' type of flicker that looked like electronic interference on a TV. At 1/60th, it was slightly better but it was at 1/80th that I was shocked to see a rather pleasant image, with no real 'flicker' as such.

There was just a faint strobe of dark thin horizontal lines going down the screen. Sure, they are not totally invisible but almost and they are not anywhere near as bad as the flicker on the 'Jaws' clip that Osi put up. Perfectly acceptable if you need a quick 'off the wall' transfer done in real time at the correct running speed.

My video camera is a JVC HD Everio.

That's probably as best as you can get from most consumer camcorders/cameras.
As I earlier mentioned, with 3-blade projector running 24 fps you'll get 24*3=72Hz flicker. 1/80s shutter speed is the closest possible setting in this case. Any camera capable of setting the shutter speed to EXACTLY 1/72s will get absolutely flicker-free image (in theory, expecting some faint/slow rolling bar in real practice).

Osi - you sure don't have to run the film at 80 fps! Just run the projector as it normally would, and set the camera accordingly instead.

[Brian Fretwell]

Yes it just means that the sensor in the video camera is only active for 1/80s per frame. It usually means the CCD or whatever else is used for the sensor is wiped electronically and allowed to gather light for that length of time before it is read and used for the video.

[Gary Sayers]

Osi, the projector was running at 24 fps and the video camera was set manually to a shutter speed of 1/80th.

Also, make sure you set to manual focus on the video camera too. As for white balance and exposure, I just leave them on auto but you may prefer to experiment with them.

[Paul Adsett]

I have found that I need to SLOW the camera shutter speed to eliminate flicker! My Sony video camera has a shutter speed sub menu which is stepped from FAST to SLOW. Making 1 step towards SLOW eliminates 99% flicker, when my Bolex 18-5 projector is running at its normal 18fps. Going further into the SLOW setting introduces image blur.

[Gary Sayers]

Paul, I think you are right about that when it comes to projecting at 18 fps.

It's all about the magic formula that Nantawat mentions. With a 3 blade projector, the ideal shutter speed on the camera would be 1/54th (18 x 3), so 1/50th would be the one to get the least flicker. At 24 fps projection, the ideal shutter speed on the camera would be 1/72th (24 x 3), so the 1/80th shutter speed is the nearest option.

I was totally surprised when I tried it last night but I had only previously done it with 18 fps footage and not 24 fps. When I tried it, I fully expected 1/50th to be the best, totally not thinking about the fact that this was 24 fps and not 18 fps.

[Nantawat Kittiwarakul]

I once had a prosumer camcorder Panasonic DVX100 (oh that good old SD video days...), which was the very first prosumer camcorder with true progressive sensor & variable shutter speed function, Synchro Scan as called by Panasonic.

When tried aiming to the screen being run with 18fps Super8 projector I was greeted with very noticeable flicker as expected. But when changing to synchro scan mode and tuning it to 1/54s, the flicker is mostly gone.
Better yet, when changing to 24p mode and 1/27s shutter speed, the flicker is TOTALLY GONE. At this 1/27s speed you're getting double exposure per frame, even out the slight variation further. I mean completely smooth exposure, not even a slightest noticeable variation in brightness AT ALL.

(The one I obtained was NTSC version hence 24p mode instead of PAL 25p. But the principle still applies.)

But please be reminded that this is the camcorder with CCD sensor not CMOS, so there's no rolling bar issue to begin with.

[Osi Osgood]

This has certainly been a learning curve for me, but, unfortunately, my Flip digital video camera doesn't have separate settings.