My real-time telecine project

[Stan Jelavic]

Here are the two clips Alwyn,
taken with the LED light and the other one with the Halogen lamp.
https://drive.google.com/drive/folde..._O?usp=sharing

Good point Robert. Did not realize that the diffuser can impact the color but that makes sense. It can act as a filter. Learn something ever day.
I really never expected good results with projection but with the small image on the screen and variable lamp power source it is possible to get pretty decent results.

[Alwyn Adkins]

Thanks Stan.

[Nantawat Kittiwarakul]

You know what? The primitive halogen lamp is literally my "secret sauce" when scanning super8 films, especially negative stock.

As all incandescant lamp will always have full spectrum thus giving best color rendition. It's the hard fact, you can't deny it. And since virtually all cameras can be white-balanced down to 2500 kelvin so color temperature would never be the issue.

You may need LED light source with something 95 CRI to be in the same ballpark with halogen. However the cost would be no comparison - I bough my 3x pack of 12v 50w halogen lamp for just $3 (so $1 each) try finding any LED with 95 CRI at this price.

The fun part is when I shared this to a Facebook group dedicated to film scanning topic, I was greeted with TONS of negative / insult comments. 9 out of 10 insist on $300 high CRI LED light source otherwise the result would be crap. The remaining one would think that's skeptical - to say at least. In the end I just heck with that and stick with my $3 solution, and let them keep fumbling around with color grading up until today...

[Robert Held]

Stan,

Thanks for providing the files. I played around with the led.mp4 video in Kdenlive and balanced the RGB as best I could, plus adjusted the white point and Lift/Gamma/Gain. While not perfect, I think I got it close. It looks pretty nice in my opinion. Some scenes are more affected than others and it probably needs a scene-by-scene correction.

[Stan Jelavic]

That is much better Robert but it does take time and effort. Nice work. I will definitely try that tool.

[Robert Held]

Thanks, Stan. DaVinci Resolve can do it too, possibly with better results. I just like Kdenlive as it's open source and more like Adobe Premiere which is what I used for many years.

[Shane Graber]

You know what? The primitive halogen lamp is literally my "secret sauce" when scanning super8 films, especially negative stock.

I bough my 3x pack of 12v 50w halogen lamp for just $3 (so $1 each) try finding any LED with 95 CRI at this price.

In the end I just heck with that and stick with my $3 solution, and let them keep fumbling around with color grading up until today...

If you don't mind my asking, which 12v 50w halogens did you buy? Any links?

[Nantawat Kittiwarakul]

Simply put - the most typical halogen lamp ever. I'm dead certain that you can find this right in the hardware shop nearest to you.



A slight misunderstood - it is in fact 20w lamp not 50w, as it's already almost overkill (too bright!) in this application. In fact I had to slightly underrun this at only 9v to get proper brightness level. The actual color temp doesn't matter much as long as it's still within the white blance range of camera used.

I'm very pleased with the result, and will probably stick to this solution for current & any foreseeable setup in the future.

[Shane Graber]

Simply put - the most typical halogen lamp ever. I'm dead certain that you can find this right in the hardware shop nearest to you.

A slight misunderstood - it is in fact 20w lamp not 50w, as it's already almost overkill (too bright!) in this application. In fact I had to slightly underrun this at only 9v to get proper brightness level. The actual color temp doesn't matter much as long as it's still within the white blance range of camera used.

I'm very pleased with the result, and will probably stick to this solution for current & any foreseeable setup in the future.

Did you have to put a diffuser in front of the lamp? If so, what did you use? I've seen people cut a ping-pong ball in half and use that as a diffuser...

I'm assuming I could use something like this to tweak the brightness of the lamp: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B09P6CMRC9...fed_asin_title

[Alwyn Adkins]

Nantawat Kittiwarakul, the pins on the "standard" downlights are narrower than projector globes and won't fit in either of my projectors. Are you using a downlight connector?

Shane Graber, I'm using one of the attached to control the output of my LED.

As for a diffuser, I'm using the diffuser out of one of these downlights (the top unscrews so you can pull out the diffuser; I had to sand mine down a bit to fit).

[Alwyn Adkins]

I really recommend getting a 50mm raspberry pi lens. I started with the 16mm lens but was not happy with the barrel distortion on the edges of the frame.
If you purchase the Raspberry Pi Lens you have to remove all the outer shell to make it fit in the cavity. Stan Jelavic was kind enough to print me a custom Sankyo mount for the 50mm. This setup works great with my Panasonic HDC-SD9 3 CCD hd camera.

https://www.seeedstudio.com/8MP-50mm...ra-p-4624.html

Kim Trampus, Kim, could you advise the diameter of the barrel when the outer shell has been removed? I'm thinking of one of these for my Eumig. The stock lens is 32mm in diameter. Thanks!

[Alwyn Adkins]

2nd question is what software are you using to capture and edit? I used Virtual Dub (lossless) for this test, but I'm hoping to find a program that has lossless capture, scene detection, ability to include multiple reels in 1 video, some basic transitions and ability to add music under the video. I've been using good ol' Pinnacle Systems 12, but it won't import the .avi files that Virtual Dub produces and won't capture lossless. I've read about OBS Studio, which might be what I'm looking for, but as always, I need other opinions and recommendations...please!

OBS requires a bit of a fiddle to capture lossless and even then, it glitches.

Re VDub and Pinnacle, try installing and captuirng in UTVideo (use the ULY2 setting/YUV422 BT601) or Lagarith. They are (or will be when you install them) Windows system codecs and will show up in VDub for capturing. Hopefully Pinnacle will also use them to open your files.

Re flicker, I'm in PAL land so the camcorder shutter speed options may be different but basically, I put my camcorder shutter speed on to 1/50th of a second and with my three-blade Eumig, I need to lower the motor speed just a touch to get zero flicker, at 16.67 fps. I assume the 16.67 comes from being 1/3 of 50. I therefore hypothesise that if you have your camcorder shutter set to 3x the film speed, you'll be flicker-free. I used to use a voltage controller to lower the projector speed a bit but now I have tweaked my Eumig, as per this thread. Then you can do the deepdive re the dupes and blends!

[Nantawat Kittiwarakul]

Did you have to put a diffuser in front of the lamp? If so, what did you use? I've seen people cut a ping-pong ball in half and use that as a diffuser...

I'm assuming I could use something like this to tweak the brightness of the lamp: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B09P6CMRC9...fed_asin_title

Yes you definitely need a diffuser for even light. The best option would be an opaque white acrylic sheet - 1 mm thick should do the trick. Getting the right distance is also important in order to attain most diffused light.

[Nantawat Kittiwarakul]

Nantawat Kittiwarakul, the pins on the "standard" downlights are narrower than projector globes and won't fit in either of my projectors. Are you using a downlight connector?

If I'm not mistaken EFP projection lamp uses g6.35 socket, while ordinary decorating light like this works on g5.3 type. So yes you need to do some modification.

[Fred Hess]

I am revisiting this thread after some time away. I think I have this project working pretty well now after much experimentation but I still have some questions.
In review, I'm using a modified Dualux-1000 projector with a Raspberry Pi lens and recording with a Panasonic HDC-HS9 camera. I'm using the HDMI out on the camera into OBS via an AVerMedia Live Gamer Mini box. I've got the projector speed as low as it will go which provides no flicker and a very clean image. I then dump the video into DaVinci Resolve for editing. The results so far have been quite respectable.
So, my questions are:
1. What's the best shutter speed setting on this camera? I have not made any adjustments to the camera other than running in manual mode. I like the results, but I've heard that a slower shutter speed might be better. I believe the lowest shutter speed on this camera is 1/30. Can anyone verify that?
2. In OBS, what capture frame rate should I choose? I think the only options are 30FPS and 60FPS but I'm still new to this software so that may be wrong.
3. Are there any other settings/adjustments I should consider using this setup?
4. In Resolve I can flip/crop/change the speed/etc. but I really need to experiment with stabilization and color correction. I think the stabilizing aspect I will be able to figure out but are there any go-to settings that anyone uses?
5. The color correction is a complete mystery to me. I have a reel that has a strong magenta tint all the way through but I haven't a clue where to start to correct that. I know I need to play/experiment with that aspect (and I will do that shortly) but wondering if anyone has any pointers for me. A good starting point? I've seen examples of some pretty amazing results! I need to learn how to do that.

Thanks for everyone's help so far. I've gained a wealth of knowledge on the forum and really appreciate it. I feel like I'm getting closer to outstanding results all the time!