Digitizing Super 8 film with sound capture

[Stuart Budd]

Hello all. New to this "film to digital" too and have had 3 Wolverine type digitizers over the past couple of months. Films would stick and the results were jerky. Noise would grind from the box too. Now I'm a little wiser and have settled with a Wolverine 720p model. Used with a file count of 47 when I got it. I have changed my approach by dry wipeing the film prior to scanning and checking for imperfections such as brakes or poor splicing. I split my scans into Super8 and Regular8. Super8 being more uniform in width (I guess) and no splices. These are 50ft home movies. The Regular8 will have a splice and possibly a varied width being originally 16mm wide. The gate and exit track were sticking points for me. The previous gate was two tab. I now have the new 3 tab which may also be slightly wider. Maybe helping with odd splice matching and other irregular widths. I have changed the "clutch" spring and used steel thrust washers. A lighter spring to reduce the tug and help eliminate jerky playback. Steel washers to prevent wear on the plastic of the clutch. The Wolverine had a nylon washer to help with this, previous models I've had didn't. I've also used some small pieces of foam on the gate door to help keep the film down and in place. Other manufactures seem to have done the same. I may remove the spring from the door too as it works agains you! Also use an elastic band wrapped around the base and then the gate door, helps. Results aren't too bad. They've improved from my day one experience. Filming off the wall will be my next try as you have camera controll over more aspects of the image. I've heard a grey background will help reduce white blowouts. 8mm quite a bit of fun.

[Nantawat Kittiwarakul]

Sorry if this may sounds insulting. But let's see the comparison.


One is the still frame grab from Reflectra Scanner (Wolverine rebranded). All default settings, no further tweaks had been made. Other is still frame grab from mirrorless camera on my DIY rig. Gotta admit that I've made some color corrections to the mirrorless scan. However still quite a difference isn't it?

[Winbert Hutahaean]

Sorry if this may sounds insulting. But let's see the comparison.


One is the still frame grab from Reflectra Scanner (Wolverine rebranded). All default settings, no further tweaks had been made. Other is still frame grab from mirrorless camera on my DIY rig. Gotta admit that I've made some color corrections to the mirrorless scan. However still quite a difference isn't it?

I have heard the bad words about Wolverine products but that blueish picture is the worst I have ever seen. I have seen your Wolverine in operation in the other thread and there was nothing blueish picture like that. I can guess this can happen just coincidence for that particular frame or your color correction you've made on your DIY scan was very high-tech.

I have nothing to do with digital transfer business since my involvement with 8mm purely about film collecting things. But a few month ago I made several attempts to re-coloring super faded picture and I have the good result as seen below:




So everything is possible nowadays, but to say that Wolverine that bad is an exaggeration in my opinion.

cheers,
winbert

[Nantawat Kittiwarakul]

The real main issue to these Wolverine (and all of its variants) is that there is little to no manual control for of any kind - only exposure compensation if my memory is correct. That means ALWAYS auto white balance no matter what. This make it extremely difficult to re-balance the color in the post - you literally have to "chase" it. As in this additional screenshot (only mere seconds later from previous sample) the color balance seems improved somewhat.



OK this is the extreme case. The underexposed Kodachrome seems to be the hardest challenge to it. Otherwise all else would be acceptable to many individuals. Even the negative film scan can give surprisingly good results when done right.



If I have more time I would be able to give it additional tweak. But since it's the loaner unit (not mine, sorry) I have to return within only a few days time. But from what I gathered it's then obvious for me to keep going DIY route.

Feels like I'm hijacking this thread, so this should wrap up my opinion then.

[Stan Jelavic]

I am not a big fan of Wolverine but to be fair the colors are not that bad with a good quality film.


The unit has an exposure setting. The images posted above seem to be overexposed clipping some of the color info. Perhaps a lower exposure setting may help.

[Gary Sayers]

Winbert, how did you manage to get the colour back in that totally red print? It looks amazing.

[Winbert Hutahaean]

Winbert, how did you manage to get the colour back in that totally red print? It looks amazing.

That is what we are saying re-coloring process.

In my futuristic thought, we would have a machine that similar to a projector but actually it is scanning the film frame by frame and process it at 18 or 24 fps. Between the scan and projecting would not be real time because there would be a gap where the recoloring process takes place. So in the my future thought we can still "project" a red print in a colorful way....

This idea has been applied in the vinyl world where the groove on vinyl is actually time-coded sound (similar to fax machine noise) which is sent to the computer where the music file is stored. We listen to the vinyl but actually the sound came from the computer. If we speed up the vinyl, the sound will also speed up. If we hold the vinyl, the sound will stop. So we feel like holding the real vinyl but actually it is digital.

Most DJ in the world is now using this type of disc. For example this video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KoV97_c1zzs

He never change the vinyls but the songs is changing all the time...

cheers,

[Gary Sayers]

Sorry Winbert, but how did you manage to get the colour back in the totally red print, or am I missing something in your last post? Did you just re- colour the two frames yourself rather than restore the original colour?

[Winbert Hutahaean]

Sorry Winbert, but how did you manage to get the colour back in the totally red print, or am I missing something in your last post? Did you just re- colour the two frames yourself rather than restore the original colour?

There are many free recoloring online services on the web. Just google it for "recoloring B/W picture online". So what I did was to make the red print to become B/W first (in the mobile phone apps is to make the saturation level to become 0) and sent the B/W picture to that online service. It would change the frames to become colorful like that.

Actually we can also send the red picture directly to the online service but usually the result will not that good.

[Robert Mitchel]

I've been working the last few weeks trying to (1) get the B&H Soundstar projector to consistently produce sound, not successfully, (2) use the output jack to at least reduce the hum when I do get sound, not successful at this either. I did get a mono 35mm jack, but it seems to not be completely compatible with the output from the 'speaker' jack on the projector. I need to wiggle it around to hear better, but this is not sustainable. The bigger problem is that it seems there is something off in the sound reading off the film. There are splices in the film, and when it goes over these, sometimes the film starts to skip, I have been using twisting the lever to stop the skipping, but sometimes the sound stops working. At first I thought it was something overheating in the projector, but it just happened a little while ago and it was abrupt. I know that section has sound since I previously projected the film with sound on the wall so I have that section with a sound track. I am still missing the sound on about half the film, I know it is ok since I had run the film to the end with good sound, only to find I hadn't turned on the video recorder. It's getting more and more time consuming, not to mention I have accidentally crinkled a portion of the film while loading, now I am finding out I need to cut out that part since once crinkled it keeps jamming.

[Nantawat Kittiwarakul]

That B&H projector seems to give you more headache than the desired output. May no longer worth keep messing with it anymore.

Consider looking for another working sound projector to replace that?

[Robert Mitchel]

Appreciate the encouragement to get another sound projector, I did just that, purchasing an Elmo 1200D. Not cheap, but I'm making some progress now. I'm projecting the old Super 8 film on the wall while recording the picture and sound using an iPad. Separately I've digitized the films using Wolverine and loaded them to my iMac. The iPad videos I use Quicktime on to get the audio file in m4a format, then put the audio file and Wolverine video into iMovie. The challenge there is to sync the sound with the video, that requires a bit of squeezing and syncing the sound track. It's not perfectly synced, but it works well enough. Only did this on one 25 minute film but having the video with sound from my kid's baby videos is a real treat. It really helped having a bit of a roadmap from this forum to get this far.

[Nantawat Kittiwarakul]

That's why I highly recommend taking video of the projected film as well (provided if you have any camera with audio input). The visual guide from the recorded video will make syncing work a breeze.
You can go down to shot-by-shot sync if you're nerdy enough but doing a few minute's chunk each should be more than good enough.

[Robert Mitchel]

Yes, I am taking a video of the projected film, using my iPad, on the wall. It has sound inputs but I am finding the placement of the ipad changes the sounds quality, it would be good to use an external mike. Also, I am getting a lot of projector sound in my sound track of the video. A cable for an extension speaker was included, which has the label SC-002, it has a DIN 2P male end which has two prongs, and a female end for a plug-in to the speaker, I think 6 ohms. Attaching a photo of it. Any suggestions on what to use to connect this cable to a speaker would be much appreciated. Thanks.

[Gary Sayers]

When I did my transfers of sound films (using the 'off the wall' method of pointing my HD video camera at a small projected image), I simply connected the projector sound output of my Eumig by cable to a Tascam handheld digital recorder.

This made a great recording of the sound with no projector noise. The video camera recorded the sound with the projector noise, as the sound was still outputted from the projector speaker. Set the camera and tascam recording (without the cable to the tascam being connected from the projector) and do a clapper or handclap in front of the camera.

Plug in the cable to the tascam and set the projector running. When finished, in editing you have a guide track from the video camera and matching the tascam track is easy with the clapperboard marker. Even without a clapper mark, it's still fairly easy to sync up the sound using the guide track, which can be deleted as soon as you have the tascam sound synced up.