Homemade Telecine

[David Brown]

My search was for a Super8 projector in hopes of using both R8 and S8. R8 has a smaller aperture so S8 would handle both.

Not true. I had only to look closer at the specs.




There are no dimensions from the frame to edge of film opposite the perforations on R8.
The image above is visually accurate and the margins look different. So even though the S8 frame is larger, it crops the R8 image on one side.

These pictures below were shot using a S8 camera gate. Even if the gate is flipped, there is more image loss.



I dismantled an old S8 camera for the gate. I will now try to widen that camera's gate. If that fails, back to Ebay!

So yes, I had to order a S8 cartridge to get a pressure plate!

I've looked at a lot of projectors on YouTube and images trying to see the gate parts. My favorite so far would be a Eumig Mark 8 (S8/R8) the gates just slide in and out as does the pressure plate. Nothing to dismantle! Need to find one selling for parts.

And maybe I will have to print my own gate? I do have practice films.

[Stan Jelavic]

Hi David, the Kinograph picture is a very rough idea and I am looking at using only one stepper with a pinch roller. The other roller in the transport would be only passive rollers like in Wolverine. The gate tension in that case has to be setup properly. Possibly use adjustable tension spring loaded gate.
Thanks for the links and the samples that you sent. May be able to use them at some point. For now I am thinking of getting a set of rollers from the link I sent out and see how well they work. The size is not that important in my opinion since the stepper is 1.8 degrees/step but also it has 128 microsteps ultimately we have (1.8/128) degrees/microstep. That is why I was able to fine tune the current setup with virtually zero drift over 1000 frames.

[David Brown]

Awesome find Stan.

I was never able to find NEW recorder pinch wheels in previous searches. Guess you can't buy just one!

4 motors on the "Kinograph"? I didn't read the text, just the picture. I would agree with the 2 motors, one on each side of the camera.His capture seems free of drift. I wonder if some of the shakiness we see isn't recorded by the camera?


OK, here is the Amazon link to what I bought for the capstan.

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0...?ie=UTF8&psc=1

Since 200 come in the package and I only used 1, I tossed a handful in the mail for you. Up to you if you want these sooner or later.

The one I'm using on the Hawkeye's capstan has not lost any traction yet. The spares are kept in a sandwich bag.

I have been looking at these below for possible use as a pinch rollers. I don't know what to expect with the coating.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01HD5KKOA...v_ov_lig_dp_it


I thought about applying some kind of rubber tape like this with unknown materials or diameters.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08PK7JDZY...v_ov_lig_dp_it


So is the final diameter an important consideration?

Feel free to correct me on this.

Using 1.8 degrees of rotation for 1 step and a target of 0.1667" of travel that becomes a radius of 5.3" roller in the calculator. Divided by 10 to get to a more practical diameter means 10 steps to hit 0.1667" of movement. To include 8mm a common multiple could be used.


How important do you think this is? Does the optical sensor play a bigger role here?

Projectors are using a metal rod tied to a flywheel and a rubber pinch wheel on the other side of the film. That's done in tape recorders but for film seems like both should be rubber.
Maybe the motor's shaft could be used with 1 rubber pinch wheel?
A coupler might be need to avoid the flat.

https://www.amazon.com/Printer-Coupl...+motor+coupler &qid=1633368965&sr=8-2

[Stan Jelavic]

Was thinking of getting these rollers. Any other ideas?
https://www.fruugo.us/recorder-parts...RoCpe4QAvD_BwE

The final assembly would look something like this.
https://forums.kinograph.cc/t/my-rpi...mms-design/639

[Stan Jelavic]

Thanks David. The drift is minimal. Ran 1000 frames without any noticeable drift. The shake is there but no drift. The deshaker will take care of the drift also but you do not want too much of it because will result is large crop of the edges.
Yes, planning to try the pinch roller. Would like to try your rubber bands if you could send me the info on where you got them.
For R8 film the gate has to be wide enough. Since the gate has to be widened up anyways for the sprocket hole then might as well make it wide enough for both formats. The MSP430 can be programmed for both formats and can be controlled by a switch.
A note on two different sprocket wheels needed -- I will try the rubber pinch rollers. If that works then no need for two different wheels.
The image quality was not the intent of the test. I did not even bother to check if everything is in focus.
The LED assembly needs some improvement. There is still some light scattered from the side of the LED hole that results in some minor scratches being visible on the left side of theimage.

[David Brown]

Well done Stan!

The stabilizer seems to take care both issues then, drifting and shakiness.

Do you plan to move to a capstan/pinch roller from the sprocket gear now?

I was going to remove the large sprocket and the gate from the projector I just bought, but then there's always regular 8mm in the wings.

A capstan could do both. That also means the motor's increment will need to change for each format.

But then, this projector I bought for parts, is working! A friend with a sound projector has offered to loan it to me in the future, though I don't know it's condition. I do know my new projector works and it has a speed control for fine tuning sound.

The gate is a little odd and might be difficult to mount outside of the projector's frame.

I guess I'm going back to EBAY! I must keep this new projector running.

I do have some sound films that I have put off capturing until the silent ones are finished. That could happen before this project is finished.

Using a sprocket will be more difficult to include regular 8mm. Only one gate is needed, but two different sprockets.

That also means a different increment for the stepper motor.

If I jump right to a pinch roller, no need for a reg 8mm sprocket!

These demo films you just posted look better. Most of it seems to be the color, and they could have more detail. Just a little, not crazy better.

[Stan Jelavic]

Here is the captured video run through deshaker.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1kmm...ew?usp=sharing

[Stan Jelavic]

Free is always good. The speed of the motor can be adjusted as slow as you need it. The gate, the camera and uniform light are all key components to good quality. It should work ok with lots of types of cameras with some type of macro lens (or reverse lens) since there are no mechanical restrictions.

[David Brown]

I didn't notice the led light leak, but I can clearly see it now that you described it. Could have been glare from the water, nice catch!

Is is possible to slow the capture motor down when the computer falls behind for whatever reason?

I just received the projector I bought. Shipping was free, now I know why. Three weeks in transit. The last 10 days within 10 miles of me??? Fedex handed off to the Post Office. Maybe they were practicing for Friday's drop in delivery speeds?

Can't complain about slow for free. I'm about to begin to dismantle the gate and maybe the sprocket wheels. I'll be sure and go back thru your posts for the assembly of the gate and light.

Quality images from a quality source and camera!

[Stan Jelavic]

Fixed the LED issue.
https://photos.app.goo.gl/yQA9EnRodFFh8zXP9
The hole drilled into the wood mounting plate was not wide enough and not centered. The reflections from the side of the hole were very bright and causing the bloom. If the hole is wider than the bottom gate then the reflections have no way of reaching the film.
I am pretty amazed how a simple concept like this can produce good quality images.
Here is the LED assembly sketch:

[Stan Jelavic]

Exactly, just some loss of the area around the edges. After trimming it should look good. There is a hole under the gate for illumination. I had piece of white paper there that is supposed to reflect the light up onto the gate. The paper got ripped up during installation and that could be causing uneven light distribution. Will look into that later. As you can see the led mount is pretty primitive and I did not expect anything big from it.
The black frames are caused by some of the original frames changed to black. Believe that is caused by multithreading. So it really depends on how fast your machine it. Multithreading is faster but could cause some issues such as blank (black) frames. That is my guess.

[David Brown]

That's looking good! I should stabilize everything. There is no loss of image quality, just a little loss of real estate around the edges.

And even if the film capture is stable, there can be an unstable camera man!

What are the black frames? Are they extra or missing frames?

[Stan Jelavic]

Hi David, with the good quality gate the shake is only in the direction of film travel. I ran the deshaker that Mattias posted and it does a very good job and the result is a stable video but I get some black frames in the video. Will check that tomorrow.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1uUc...ew?usp=sharing

Got it working.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1j14...ew?usp=sharing
Disabled the mode line from the script.
#SetMTMode(2,2)
But believe the main culprit is my laptop which sometimes is very slow at times.

[David Brown]

The instructables 28mm telecine video has a lot of instability. I noticed it in X & Y axis and a little rotation too. I've seen all of that when loosening the gate tension of the Wolverine or the Winait machines. When gate tension is really loose even the framing can change.

Stan, since you're using a projector gate you should not have the stability problems of a DIY. That's if the motor has plenty of torque, and the takeup is not pulling too hard.

I believe by shake you mean the bouncing frame line in the x axis?

I've decided to not tightly crop new captures for two reasons. Sometimes there can be too much movement in X and then I won't need to recapture the whole clip. The second reason is to use frame and perforation for software stabilizing, when needed.

I remember Mattias had all versions of AVIsynth in both 32 and 64bit loaded and was able to manage as needed. I'm doing everything in Vegas now. I could not load any of your sample avis from post #17 into Vegas or Davinci. They play in the browser or with VLC. I was able to load them into Vdub.

So Vdub2 has Deshaker(possibly others) and gausianblur filters. I think they come stock, if that makes it easier. Offhand I don't know why he would want to blur to anything, I'm always trying to remove it! Unsharp mask is my goto sharpener.

[Stan Jelavic]

Playing with the de-shake script. The script posted by Mattias has some syntax errors do to forum web site mangling it. Mostly spaces added. But the bigger problem are the additional plugins needed.

LoadPlugin("plugins/masktools2.dll")
LoadPlugin("plugins/variableblur.dll")

These plugins are not a part of standard Avisynth or VideoFred releases.
See plugin summary page:
http://avisynth.nl/index.php/Externa...Download_sites

Or go directly here.
http://avisynth.nl/index.php/MaskTools2
http://avisynth.nl/index.php/VariableBlur

Note that gausianblur will not run on all window machines. A windows DLL is needed (use 32 bit version):
See notes here:
http://avisynth.nl/index.php/VariableBlur