DIY real-time 8mm/S8mm telecine system sample footage

[Stan Jelavic]

Here is my system running. Connected the camera to an hdmi monitor. Much easier to adjust focus. Essentially, turn the camera manual focus to one end, and move the 50mm lens all the way in, then adjust manual focus as close as you can get. Then move the lens out some and adjust manual focus one way or the other way. Go back and forth a few time and you will get the best focus pretty fast. the camera position is not critical but bring it close to the lens.
https://photos.app.goo.gl/frH4LrHciRjrRGsZ8

[Stan Jelavic]

Here is the side by side comparison between Hawkeye (modded Wolverine) and Sankyo + HDC-HS9 (Hawkeye on the left):
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1-_A...usp=share_link
The Sanko footage has some flicker in the beginning but was fixed later in the footage.
So you have to monitor the scan carefully and readjust the speed if some small amount of jitter still appears.
Alternatively you can postprocess it
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jj58d87L9L8&t=117s

[Onnie Granados]

Nice work, Stan and Nantawat! It's great to have all these options available for film scanning, where no matter your budget, you can get often get very decent results with a minimum of $$$ as long as you're willing to experiment!

The real-time HDMI monitoring of the transfer is a very nice option with the Panasonic 3CCD camcorder, and along those lines -- for you experimental types, that camcorder as noted puts out a live HDMI output, which you could use as an input/capture device for a frame-by-frame scan into a computer/software. So rather than spend $$$ on a machine camera into your frame-by-frame scanner, for around a hundred bucks you could pick up one of these old camcorders, and see how it might work for your purposes.

[Stan Jelavic]

Thank you Onnie. Nice range of solutions and pretty decent quality.

[Nantawat Kittiwarakul]

I happened to have another Super8 sound film to be scanned. The customer need no frame-by-frame process so I did my real-time setup much like in this pic.



And then here's the result.

https://youtu.be/CrGh5C7khwQ

NOT as crisp & clear as frame-by-frame scanning of course, but I'm dead certain that the customer would be more than happy with the result.
So yes, this real time scanning setup can give pretty decent result if done right.

[Gary Urbanovsky]

Hello from the Heart of Texas. Todays weather forecast is the same as yesterdays and most of the next month, high of 105F, that is 40C for the rest of the world. Now for the "Rest of the story." About 8 weeks ago my brother and two sisters were cleaning my mother house and found the 8mm films our dad made back in the 50,60, and 70. My sister said lets get them digitized so we can pass them on to our children. Me bring the oldest spoke up and said "Let me look into it." 3 days of Google searching and I found his forum and Onnie's DYI telecine. 7 days latter of reading all the posting in this section and most of the archives, I decided to use his posting as a guide. My reason for not doing a "frame by frame" capture was two fold, first we found approx 7000 foot of regular 8mm, dad never upgraded to Super 8, and second dads filming skills of the early 50's was "not that good." So this process will be "good enough" for now. I might do a frame by frame later.

I know that Onnie did not come up with this process but he is the most current posting of the process. Many members have posted there systems for this process, Nantawat and Stan are ones that came to mine as I post this.
I have assembled all the pieces, projector, video camera, LED light and have a running system and have done about 1000 foot of film and they don't look too bad. But I think I can do better.

Now that you have the back story, here are my questions. I am using all the same equipment as Onnie, so I will not list it, but if you need a specific make or model of an item to help you answer one of my questions I will post them all. The post processing software I am using is "Shotcut" I have also got DaVinci Resolve and VitualDub2. I like Shotcut, DaVinci is over my head for now.

I have done many test with different camera settings and this were I need help. The camera has 4 quality settings.
HA 1920x1081/60i approx 17 mbps vbr
HG 1920x1081/60i approx 13 mbps
HX 1920x1080/60i approx 9 mbps
HE 1440x1080/60i approx 6 mbps
Can someone tell me which one of these I should be using? I think the HA would be best but HG and HX are the same but each has a different mbps.
Is bit rate more important? Am I over thinking this? Also the test I have done, so far, I had the camera set to auto. Many of the posting I have read said use manual settings. If I should be setting the camera manually, what shutter speed, what F stop?

Sorry my first posting is long. Onnie's original post was back in April I think there are others finding and reading this forum and maybe asking these same questions. I hope Onnie sees this and post the settings he used.

I have learned soo much from this forum and the archives. I just hope that I will be able to add something to the work the members has passed on to other members and the world.
Gary

[Winbert Hutahaean]

And then here's the result.

https://youtu.be/CrGh5C7khwQ

This is absolutely prefect for my eyes. You have sucessfully removed those 8mm grains. What tyoe of software did you use?

One downside is the jitterness that maybe due to 18 fps. But if it was shot at 24 fps and still got that jitter... do you think in the future there would be a software that can manipulate transistion from lower fps to 30 or even 60 fps?

[Nantawat Kittiwarakul]

Short answer - no grain reduction software of any kind being implemented.

I believe since it started with a good source, which in this case is properly exposed, and well stored Kodachrome for the past 40 years. Therefore there's very little film grain to begin with.

And due to the nature of real-time process the original 18 fps film speed must be slowed down to (pretty close to) 16.67fps, then captured/processed/exported at 25 fps. This blending (plus some YouTube recompression) would further "even out" any remaining visible grain structure too. This frame rate conversion would also help smoothing out motion jitter (from the original low 18 fps shooting speed) somewhat too.

Sounds a bit counterintuitive, but I've found from my experience that the result from real-time scanning would usually give out some "polished/processed" look, while frame-by-frame would give more "raw" - but darn close to the original film look. Whether this is desirable or not is up to each individuals.

[James Hernandez]

Fantastic posting. I've been transferring film probably now for 21 years and I've been using a mirror/lens system I purchased from movie stuff who now sells higher-end frame by frame scanners that's way out of my budget. My system is real time and every single one of my customers have been satisfied with my work. If it ain't broke don't fix it LOL

I've been wanting to add a second system so I can do more than one project at a time and I'm definitely going to use your setup. God bless you

[Kim Trampus]

I've been trying to achieve the best results using a similar set up. I have a modded Sankyo Dualux 1000 with LED light source, diffusion glass and dimmer control. My first attempts were using my trusty old Panasonic AG-AC 160 camera zoomed in but I was getting distortion with the 16mm lens So I removed it and shot directly at the aperture of the projector. The image was sharp but too small, I had to enlarge the picture in Final Cut to fill the screen but the results were too noisy for me. I then ordered a 72mm 10X diopter for my Panasonic Camcorder and got these results. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-F7iwWSQHmA

Not bad but still does not fill the frame of my camera. So I have been going down a rabbit hole of miniature cameras. First I bought a 4k microscope but the image was very grainy and full of compression artifacts. So I bought a Panasonic HX-A500 Action Camera off of Ebay and bought a 5.4 mm lens from Rage Cam And I got this result https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RFro3DEag_o&t=17s

Still not as sharp as your Panasonic 3 CCD Palmcorder. Looks Like both the microscope and Panasonic HX-500 Action Cam will be going up for sale on Ebay in order to purchase the 3 CCD camera that you used in the demo to try and replicate the results of your setup.

[Stan Jelavic]

Hi Kim. This is the lens I used:
https://www.seeedstudio.com/8MP-50mm...ra-p-4624.html
It is 50mm focal length. Sometimes people refer to a lens as 16mm because it was taken from a 16mm projector.
So not sure what focal length lens you used. Make sure it is around 50mm focal length.
Also make sure the lens is good quality. That should give you a good starting point.

[Kim Trampus]

Thank you Stan, I'll check into that.

[Kim Trampus]

It appears that Seedstudio is out of stock on that lens. And Stan, I looked at your Hawkeye camera demo but the Panasonic is not online in the google drive.

[Stan Jelavic]

Mouser have the lenses:
https://www.mouser.com/ProductDetail...0Pt1uZfQ%3D%3D
Are you referring to this link Kim:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1-_A...ew?usp=sharing

[Kim Trampus]

Thank you Stan. It's a little hard to compare sharpness since the left side is about 20% bigger than the right side. I assume that the left side is from the Sankyo and Panasonic Camcorder and the Right side is the modded Wolverine. The wolverine looks a little more contrasty than the Panasonic but I think you could color correct in Final Cut to get pretty close.