Digitizing Super 8 film with sound capture

[Robert Mitchel]

Hi Everyone-
I am a newbie, and very happy to have found this forum. I've got Super 8 film of my kids very young in the 80's, want to digitize those reels plus a lot of older 8mm movies my dad took. I have had a Wolverine Moviemaker Pro for a couple of weeks now. Not really crazy about it, the documentation leaves a lot to be desired, my film kept getting stuck in the machine, plus some of the results look pretty grainy and with rapid color and brightness changes. I now have a couple of 30-minute Super 8 films digitized but of course without sound. I'm looking for a way to bring sound and the movie together. I have an iMac and work with iMovie a bit, it has some capability for merging sound files with film. I also have a Bell and Howell Soundstar projector, I have run some film through it, it makes some noise and recording the sound directly may not be the best option. I see the projector has an output for a speaker to be attached, but I don't have the right jack and my headphone jack set off a loud hum when I plugged it into the speaker output. (1) I am hoping there is an affordable film digitizer that includes sound, and gives better picture quality. (2) In case there isn't any such digitizer, I'm also trying to figure out a way to get the sound from my projector without a lot of noise, maybe finding the right jack will make all the difference. I would appreciate hearing from anyone who had done or is trying to do the same thing. It seem like the only other choice is sending your films to a digitizing service which I really don't want to do. Thanks.

[Gregory Oliver]

Robert,
I went big time and purchased the equipment from moviestuff.tv to capture both 8mm and 16mm video and audio years ago. The trick is that the projector speed can vary slightly as the film runs and it's not enough for your ear to notice but it can throw off the sync when you try to match the digital audio to the digital video.
You might want to check them out.
https://www.moviestuff.tv/
My service (for a small fee) is here:
https://grego-concepts.com/8mmfilms/
Gregory

[Robert Mitchel]

Gregory - Thanks. Good to know this is available, the equipment is definitely much higher level compared to Wolverine. It would be good to see comparisons of picture resolution and quality. It still seems capturing the sound and merging are issues. For now I am trying to understand the output jack from my projector so I can record the sound track pure. I'll update this if I make any progress.

[Jon Bang]

There is a company in Canada that makes superb scanners for å reasonable price compared to moviestuff. I have 3 scanners from them, 1 both standard and super 8, 1 super8 with sound and one 16mm with both otical and magnetic sound.The company name is Ventura film. They can be found on both FB, theyre website venturafilms.com and search for super8 scanner on ebay they will pop up.

[Douglas Meltzer]

The company that Jon mentioned above is actually Ventura Images.
https://venturaimages.com

[Nantawat Kittiwarakul]

In order to get going with what you already have...

1. Get that B&H fixed. That might be loose connection/aged capacitors/whatever. Hope it's still repairable.
2. It's possible to directly hook up from the projector's speaker output to camera's mic. input. You will need an audio attenuator to dial down the signal level to what the camera's preamp can handle. Just DO NOT connect them directly or you'll get extremely overloaded signal, at least.
3. Then just film it. Good old off-the-wall method would be just fine, as long as you get recognizable picture and decent audio track.
4. The rest is just the matter of doing the magic in the editing to match the scanned clip from your Wolverine and the off-the-wall capture, then export. It would be easier to split the clip from step 3 into small chunks (1 minute would be good enough) and sync them on by one. In practice it wouldn't have to be frame-accurate. Some 0.1 second audio delay would be perfectly acceptable.

Some time & attempt to be spent, and see if you're satisfied with the result. If it's perfectly OK for you then the story ends happily. Otherwise some 2-3k $$$ investment would be necessary...

[Gregory Oliver]

I asked ventura images for a price list, and to be honest moviestuff.tv is a much better deal. Just sayin'.
Price List CAD.pdf

[Robert Mitchel]

Jon - I was able to find them on the internet under Venturaimages.com. I didn't see any prices there but under eBay there is a 16mm scanner from them that someone is selling for about $8000 US. What has your experience been with them? Are the 8mm scanners less expensive? Do they record the sound track? Thanks for the tip on them.

[Robert Mitchel]

Nantawat- Great advice. I have a mono 3.5mm jack on order, that might be the answer since the iphone type jack may not be compatible. I was thinking to connect the speaker output to a speaker since my wall speaker is 8 ohms. I may have to repair the film, then film in segments, since I noticed the film was stuttering in places inside the projector during my first viewing of it and that may have burned the film. This is not a quick and easy project!

[Robert Mitchel]

I digitized my first 8mm film on the Wolverine and noticed that the individual film images on the Wolverine seemed higher resolution than the final video I got. The movie seems higher resolution because of the movement that allows finer detail to register on the eye, but stopping the video shows how poor quality individual frames are, even compared to what I could see on the monitor while digitizing. Maybe I am missing something in the setup? The video is certainly compact, about 20 minutes are less than 2 Gbytes.

[Jon Bang]

video-1596744696.mp4

Jon - I was able to find them on the internet under Venturaimages.com. I didn't see any prices there but under eBay there is a 16mm scanner from them that someone is selling for about $8000 US. What has your experience been with them? Are the 8mm scanners less expensive? Do they record the sound track? Thanks for the tip on them.

They are producing new scanners at the moment i think. They will pop up on ebay when they are ready. :-) I have that exactly 16mm scanner, it works just beautyfuel. The camera they use is a ximea xiq, with HD-resolution. And the pictures are saved in .tiff-format. They also have software for capturing the pics, but the software for the camera is also good to use. I use that. The 16mm has both magnetic and optic sound.
I will purchase one of the new super8/standard8-scanners when they are ready. Those are sprocketless, but same camera etc. Dont know what price they will be, but i know they will be worth the mone. I have an old super8mm scanner, with sprockets, thats an pimped projector, filled with electronic. Where i can adjust the speed, from about 10fps to almost 30fps. I have tested and a speed around 20fps is max without framedrops. I havent tried movistuffs scanners, but what i see from the website and pricing, you will get a better scanner from Ventura. Cheaper i think also. Moviestuff dont have sopund as standard as far i can see, thats optional extra....But i like ventura, they are very helpfull all the time if i need info :-)

[Robert Mitchel]

I'm now working on regular 8mm digitizing while sorting out the sound with the Super 8. My mom had around 20 years ago sent some of the films to a camera shop to turn into videotapes and I have digitized those, so I have a comparison of quality. The technique back then was to project onto a screen and videotape it I believe.




Upper picture is from videotape version, lower is digitized with Wolverine. Better detail, also larger field of view since I've learned how to change that from the default. Not sure why the colors are so different, but I haven't changed anything in my version.

[Paul Adsett]

Hi Robert, IMO you will get much better results by simply projecting the film onto a sheet of matt white paper about 8 ins x 10 ins, and filming it with a digital video camera set to a slow shutter speed ( to eliminate flicker). The transfer to VHS tape will always be soft, due to the limitations of the VHS format, and the color rendition of the Wolverine is very poor, as you can see. Off the screen transfers can be very acceptable if done with care, and you can record the sound directly from the projector to the computer at the same time as the video capture. Masking the picture edges very slightly during video editing will produce a nice sharp black edge to the frame which does much to increase perceived sharpness and contrast, and you can also sharpen the picture and enhance color saturation a little bit.

[Winbert Hutahaean]

Upper picture is from videotape version, lower is digitized with Wolverine. Better detail, also larger field of view since I've learned how to change that from the default. Not sure why the colors are so different, but I haven't changed anything in my version.

In this case, I doubt it is the Wolverine as the culprit but your original film has gone fade. This is something common in 8mm film especially those films stock from Ektachrome, AGFA and Fuji. The worst scenario is the film was processed by unauthorized lab that making the fade is even worst. Please check what code is written on the sprocket edge.

If it was Kodachrome, it is rarely known to get fade. The film stock is know the best and only Kodak lab or authorized lab who could process it.

[Stan Jelavic]

The film quality is still ok and the "cool" image can be fixed in the post, I am pretty sure. The colors will not be perfect but you can get pretty close.