Time for a better movie scanner option

[Randy Wilson]

I have about 50 hours worth of mostly Super 8 movie film from the 1960s and 1970s, and while I've had great success in scanning over 100,000 pictures from 35mm prints, slides and even negatives, I have yet to find a reasonable solution to scanning Super 8mm film.

I have tried the following:

• Projector with a mirror and frosted glass screen. => Too bright in the center and dark on the edges.
• Projector onto a movie screen. => Contrast too low.
• Projector onto an 11x17" piece of cardstock on the wall => Ok. (More on this below)
• Wolverine frame-by-frame scanner => Half the resolution of the cardstock-on-the-wall approach. :/

I have heard of the following:

• Kodak Reels: I had high hopes, since it has twice the resolution of the Wolverine, which seemed to have half the resolution of my off-the-wall solution. However, reviews of that indicate that they use heavy compression that make it about as bad as the Wolverine (sometimes worse).
• Various services: Price is prohibitive (many thousands of dollars)
• Do-it-yourself scanners on YouTube: Nice results, but you have to build your own scanner from scratch with various special parts.

I keep hoping that there will be a system for $1500 or less than would take frame-by-frame scans of film at 2K or better (using my iPhone as the camera if that's the expensive part). But I haven't heard of anything reasonable yet.

If a decent piece of equipment existed, a bunch of enthusiasts could go in on it, take turns using it, and then sell it back off, and split any loss on the sale among the participants, and we'd each only be out a hundred bucks or something, especially if they're close enough to each other to avoid shipping it.

As for my current best approach:
- I have an 8mm / Super 8 projector with a variable-speed knob.
- I shine that onto a wall about 6 feet away with a piece of white cardstock taped to the wall.
- I have a 20-year-old Canon Elura miniDV camcorder. I point it at the image, zoom in until it just fills the frame. I do focus lock and focus on the wall (using a piece of paper with images on it for that part). I do exposure lock and adjust during a practice reel of film.
- I plug the camcorder via Firewire into an older MacBook Pro that has a Firewire input.
- I run iMovie HD, which can capture the live footage from the camcorder in real time, and record the footage as it comes in.
- I adjust the variable speed knob on the projector until the light-and-dark throbbing goes away. I adjust this occasionally as I capture if it starts up again.
- I click "capture" on iMovie, say the name of the reel out loud for later identification, run the projector, turn off the light, and record away.
- After capturing all the footage into their own clips, I can use iMovie HD to trim the junk out of the clips. Then I rename each clip according to the date and what's in it.
- I wrote a little program in Java to read the iMovie project's XML file and see what frame each title includes. Then I copy those frames of the ".dv" file to a new file with that name. (Fortunately, miniDV files use a constant number of bytes per frame, and have no other special header data in the files, so I can just copy a certain number of bytes from the file into the new file and it ends up creating a valid .dv file).

All of this works ok, but the quality of capturing off the wall is at most half as good as if I had a good frame-by-frame scan. But when I compared it to the Wolverine capture, it was TWICE as good. I could see all kinds of detail in my capture that was lost by the Wolverine footage due to its low resolution, high compression, and washing out the content.

I'd really like to capture this film at a good enough resolution and quality that I could consider it as good as the original, so I don't need to keep the original any more. Currently, I feel like I'm capturing a version I can watch, but which does not serve to replace the original.

I sure wish someone would create a system with good quality for an acceptable price.

[Will White]

May I suggest you borrow a 4K digital video camera and use a high-gain screen (a good Da-Lite or similar, either white or silver fabric) (or piece of a screen) attached flat to a wall. In a fully darkened room. Try experimenting with varying the size of the projected image and the distance from the camera to fill the camera capture. Set up your camera lens and exposure so you have a good depth of field to get maximum sharpness. With your Mac and iMovie you can make improvements to the captured video, or you could try the free version of Blackmagic DaVinci Resolve for even more ways to improve the captured video. If you have access to a fast Windows PC there are even more editing options to use. I think you will find that this is the least expensive, but very good solution to transfer 8mm film to digital video. And it is much faster than the "low-cost" frame by frame units. In case you have not seen, there are complete new projector and 4K camera integrated systems for sale on the net, but they also do not capture frame by frame and they are rather expensive. Actual high quality frame by frame capture systems are very expensive. Good luck.

[Nantawat Kittiwarakul]

The bottleneck is, of course, the camera used. Most DV cameras from 1-2 decades ago (even the prosumer ones) is too inadequate for today. Even a today's plain jane consumer-ish camcorders would easily leave those legacy DV cams in the dust.

However if your expected budget is 1,500$ give or take, that would be more than enough for DIYers to get 4K frame by frame scan setup.😁



The most expensive part of my setup is the camera used - a 2nd hand Panasonic GH5, bought for about $500. The projector was bought dirt cheap - 30$ or so.

The rest would be the time/attempt/trial & error to nail down everything. But once done the result would worth the attempt.

[Alan Paterson]

You mentioned a method using a projector and mirror with frosted glass screen being too bright in the centre and dark at the edges.

I had a similar issue and overcame it by making a simple device that went over the projector lens.

Take the cardboard tube out of the centre of a toilet roll and cut it down to about 30mm high.
Glue or tape black thread over one end so it forms a crosshair.
Use a paper punch to punch a 6mm roundel from a piece of black card.
Glue the 6mm black roundel on to the centre of the crosshairs.
Once dry, place the device over the projector lens. Move it backwards and forwards till you find the best position so it removes the hot spot from the centre of the projected image.
I used this years ago when transferring some home movies. It did the job for me.

Worth a try.
Best wishes
Alan

[Randy Wilson]

The bottleneck is, of course, the camera used. Most DV cameras from 1-2 decades ago (even the prosumer ones) is too inadequate for today. Even a today's plain jane consumer-ish camcorders would easily leave those legacy DV cams in the dust.

However if your expected budget is 1,500$ give or take, that would be more than enough for DIYers to get 4K frame by frame scan setup.😁



The most expensive part of my setup is the camera used - a 2nd hand Panasonic GH5, bought for about $500. The projector was bought dirt cheap - 30$ or so.

The rest would be the time/attempt/trial & error to nail down everything. But once done the result would worth the attempt.

Nice setup. I actually have nice cameras (Nikon D5100 DSLR; iPhone 14 Pro; and an HD camcorder). I keep seeing people pull off DIY solutions like this one that work well. One reason they can do so for cheap is that old projectors are cheap on eBay--probably cheaper than it would cost to manufacture the parts needed to build such a system from scratch. I keep thinking, though, that people who want to digitize their film usually have a camera that is plenty good enough for it, if there was something they could hook their camera to that would feed the film and provide an LED light source.

So I wonder if someone with a good DIY solution could work with someone with some connections in manufacturing to build a system that can solve the problems of feeding film through and placing it in front of a light source, and leave a flat surface on top with various ways to mount a DSLR or cell phone camera to capture the actual frames?

[Nantawat Kittiwarakul]

The very reason using old projector transport is with little modifications it would serve the purpose well. And it's also cheap & plentiful - you can buy a bunch to mess around without breaking the wallet. The one using in my setup is probably my 5th or 6th attempt, and it eventually works now!😆 So there is little reason (for me at least) to make a new film transport from scratch, why re-inventing the wheel?🙃

On the camera side it could be any camera with full manual function, and remote shutter release. Mine is nothing more or less than a reed switch activated by a magnet glued to the projector shaft, then wired it to the shutter release remote socket in my camera. It is really that simple! Someone would eventually find a way to wirelessly remote control iPhone camera and use the projector transport to activate it - that would be even better.

[Stan Jelavic]

With the cheap projectors available, there is little or no incentive in building your own transport. Making a transport is not a simple task and generally they have issues with jitter and are very slow. Here are my thoughts on how to make it by using pinch rollers:
- Use stepper with pinch rollers.
- Use optical film perforation registration that controls the camera and the stepper.
- Use HD ELP web cam ($60) or any other camera for that matter
- Use $60 HD lens
This type of a transport could support most of the film formats and could work with the damaged film by using the perforation hole cadence track. I.e. the hole cadence is calculated and if the hole does not appear within a certain window the camera still gets triggered.

A few years back I planned to build a demo but never had enough spare time to finish it. Still have quite a few bits and pieces laying around and maybe will try to put it together one day. But then what do I do with it.

[Randy Wilson]

With the cheap projectors available, there is little or no incentive in building your own transport.

Yes, for a DIY project, I agree. I was just hoping that someone could build a mass-produced system that would either include a better camera, or allow you to attach your own (like an iPhone with an app that triggered the camera via a bluetooth signal). Lots of people appear to be buying things like the Wolverine system, and there seems to be room in the market for a higher-quality competitor. If it allowed the use of your own camera, the manufacturing cost should be pretty low.

[Randy Wilson]

Of course, any system that required you to use your iPhone camera would be annoying, because you probably want to use your phone for other stuff and don't want it tied up for 10 hours at a time...

[Stan Jelavic]

There are also other issues with that approach. A macro lens of some sort will bee needed with the cellphone. That lens would not work with other cameras so the manufacturer would need to provide a list of lenses. Then the mechanical details of mounting the cellphone or other cameras. Then the synchronization issue etc etc...
So the Workprinter was a right idea. Use a projector add a condenser lens and then you can have a variety of cameras that can be used with it and it will also sync thee camera. Except that it was very expensive. So people started doing their own versions that are better than the original Workprinter. And here in the forum we have many examples of that setup.
Did not want to kill your idea Randy. It is not a bad idea and I like it but is it practical?

[Stan Jelavic]

Here is a kit for iPhone transfer
https://en.film-digital.com/product-...rtphone-iphone

This is only the lens with the adapter and the LED light.
Talking $$$ or €€€

[Alwyn Adkins]

Randy, it appears that the two main issues are the quality of the projected image for capture and projector light. I started on this path a couple of months ago and quickly appreciated, from other postings here, that direct videoing of the film through the lens was the way to go. Any filming of a projected image eg onto a wall, a piece of paper, or a mirror setup was going to be inferior. I did a bit of experimentation and have come up with the following. Critical to the setup is the 2" 16mm projection lens (get one on ebay) (the lens barrel is actually 30mm in diameter) and the LED light.

I have a Eumig 820 projector.

Lens
I pulled out the normal lens and put in a lens similar to this one (I had to put some thick double-sided tape around the barrel to tighten up the fit a bit):



Light Source
I pulled out the halogen globe (good riddance). I bought a low power LED light:


and pushed out the diffuser plastic bit, then sanded it down so that it fitted into the projector lens mount.

I then got a ceiling LED (you only need around 4w but I couldn't get a dimmable one less than 6.5w):


I bought a mains-powered LED driver box and camping LED dimmer:


The Eumig globe area is very tight so in the end I just laid the globe in the bottom of the cavity, pointing (basically) at the screen! I use the dimmer to lower the globe output. The resulting lighting is perfectly even across the whole image (noting that the actual film hole is tiny, right in the middle of the globe cavity). Best part? You can't burn a hole in your film.



Light diffuser in globe holder:



Like you, I capture direct to computer. I'm using a lossless analogue capture workflow.

The resulting image is quite good and satisfactory for my archival purposes. It passed the Cost-Benefit-Analysis test (and didn't require any "breaking" or "cutting" of stuff). 😉

Here's an example; the only editing I did to this demo was flipping it (it captures upside down) and deinterlacing so I could upscale to minimise Youtube butchering.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tqk-q1KJU28

[Kim Trampus]

Alwyn, Is that a sound film? And if so, how are you capturing the audio?

[Alwyn Adkins]

Kym, yes it is. My projector has a 5-pin DIN socket on the side. I have a 5-pin DIN to RCA cable and route the audio into a Y splitter (only one of the RCA plugs outputs audio from the projector) and then to the 3.5mm Line- in jack on my motherboard.

I tried routing the audio directly into my digitiser (IO Data GV-USB2) but the audio level was quite low. Using the motherboard Line In audio gives me more volume.

I did consider soldering on a patch cable from the speaker before I found the DIN cable.

For the sound film, I process the video and then add the audio from the original capture to the processed video in my video editor.





Pic shows the DIN cable (audio seems to only come out of the black plug) going to the splitter. The red and white splitter females are then connected to the motherboard Line In.

[Kim Trampus]

I see, In the sample beach film I supposed you don't have to worry about lip sync. What if you had a film with someone talking ? How would you re-sync the audio to the silent capture?