I just found a box full of old 8/Super8 films thought to have been long lost
and I’d like to package them up on DVD for the kids. I’ve got an
attachment which will grab the individual frames at about any reasonable
resolution but how do I animate the frames?
I tried the old projector/recorder route but the result was not a very
satisfactory even for me. The local shops want an arm and a leg for
something not much better so I’m looking to play with it.
On 2010-07-04, Will Honea <whonea@yahoo.com> wrote:
> I just found a box full of old 8/Super8 films thought to have been long lost
> and I’d like to package them up on DVD for the kids. I’ve got an
> attachment which will grab the individual frames at about any reasonable
> resolution but how do I animate the frames?
>
> I tried the old projector/recorder route but the result was not a very
> satisfactory even for me. The local shops want an arm and a leg for
> something not much better so I’m looking to play with it.
I know I can extract individual frames from a video with mencoder. The
reverse must be possible.
>
> Check this link and you can make your stuff ‘Making movies from image
> files using ffmpeg/mencoder’ (http://electron.mit.edu/~gsteele/ffmpeg/),
> the link is already posted above. In windows you can use PhotoLapse, a
> free tool.
Thanks for the reference - lots of good info for a nephyte there, especially
wrt the frame rate. A quick scan of the data does point out an issue I had
not thought through, however: I’m going to need a BIG disk or break this
into a bunch of chunks. Even that will be interesting as I also found
several hundred feet of old gun camera film from my younger days. That
stuff is on 16mm film at some 100 fps so I can see the GB counter spinning
already…
On Mon, 12 Jul 2010 04:24:46 GMT, Will Honea <whonea@yahoo.com> wrote:
>avenuemax wrote:
>
>>
>> Check this link and you can make your stuff ‘Making movies from image
>> files using ffmpeg/mencoder’ (http://electron.mit.edu/~gsteele/ffmpeg/),
>> the link is already posted above. In windows you can use PhotoLapse, a
>> free tool.
>
>Thanks for the reference - lots of good info for a nephyte there, especially
>wrt the frame rate. A quick scan of the data does point out an issue I had
>not thought through, however: I’m going to need a BIG disk or break this
>into a bunch of chunks. Even that will be interesting as I also found
>several hundred feet of old gun camera film from my younger days. That
>stuff is on 16mm film at some 100 fps so I can see the GB counter spinning
>already…
A lot depends on what you want to achieve, and the nature of the
source material. Quality equipment to convert 8mm to video runs about
$1500 to $2000, stuff for the gun camera will be quite a bit more.
There is also issues about quantity. Several hundred feet is
uneconomical to do yourself. Many thousands of feet is uneconomical
to take to a shop, even though it means capital investment and lots of
hours. If you have a lot, keep in mind the conversion is an act of
love.
Disk is down to around $100/terabyte, much less than the conversion
equipment.
I don’t know of any non-expen$ive process that is faster than normal
watching duration.
> A lot depends on what you want to achieve, and the nature of the
> source material. Quality equipment to convert 8mm to video runs about
> $1500 to $2000, stuff for the gun camera will be quite a bit more.
> There is also issues about quantity. Several hundred feet is
> uneconomical to do yourself. Many thousands of feet is uneconomical
> to take to a shop, even though it means capital investment and lots of
> hours. If you have a lot, keep in mind the conversion is an act of
> love.
>
> Disk is down to around $100/terabyte, much less than the conversion
> equipment.
>
> I don’t know of any non-expen$ive process that is faster than normal
> watching duration.
Conversion rig is not an issue - I have a room full of optics and servo gear
so rigging the projector/camera sync to produce a color balanced image is
not pretty but solid - even managed to get the heat effects on the film
resolved. Only real quality problem now is the actual projection image
surface - amazing how many artifacts you get from most projection surfaces.
I’ve about given that up for projecting directly through the camera lense.
My real problem was/is stitching the frames together. As for time, this is
indeed a labor of love as some of the footage has significant meaning for
me and my family, some is unique, much is frankly trash, none is
replaceable. What else does a retired man have but time???
On Mon, 19 Jul 2010 06:31:49 GMT, Will Honea <whonea@yahoo.com> wrote:
>JosephKK@yahoo.com wrote:
>
>> A lot depends on what you want to achieve, and the nature of the
>> source material. Quality equipment to convert 8mm to video runs about
>> $1500 to $2000, stuff for the gun camera will be quite a bit more.
>> There is also issues about quantity. Several hundred feet is
>> uneconomical to do yourself. Many thousands of feet is uneconomical
>> to take to a shop, even though it means capital investment and lots of
>> hours. If you have a lot, keep in mind the conversion is an act of
>> love.
>>
>> Disk is down to around $100/terabyte, much less than the conversion
>> equipment.
>>
>> I don’t know of any non-expen$ive process that is faster than normal
>> watching duration.
>
>Conversion rig is not an issue - I have a room full of optics and servo gear
>so rigging the projector/camera sync to produce a color balanced image is
>not pretty but solid - even managed to get the heat effects on the film
>resolved. Only real quality problem now is the actual projection image
>surface - amazing how many artifacts you get from most projection surfaces.
>I’ve about given that up for projecting directly through the camera lense.
>
>My real problem was/is stitching the frames together. As for time, this is
>indeed a labor of love as some of the footage has significant meaning for
>me and my family, some is unique, much is frankly trash, none is
>replaceable. What else does a retired man have but time???
Your intent to capture frame by frame retouch then reassemble got by
me before. If you have sound re-registering it can be very
challenging. In either case the differences in frame rates make some
aspects of conversion twitchy. If you have the money, i would suggest
going to an HD format like 480p or even 720p to get the higher frame
rate, or even doubled frame rate (120 fps) which meets up nice to 15,
16, 20, and 24 fps film. Turns it into a real disk eater though. I
suppose that once you have it as jpegs, you would only have to load
them into an appropriate container format like AVI, then mencode or
ffmpeg could do the rest.
Come to think of it SMPTE has a suite of film, analog (TV and HDTV)
and digital (TV, HDTV, and high res. movie) standards. It will cost
you some to get all the standards you need; software, hardware or both
to match may be very costly.
> Your intent to capture frame by frame retouch then reassemble got by
> me before. If you have sound re-registering it can be very
> challenging. In either case the differences in frame rates make some
> aspects of conversion twitchy. If you have the money, i would suggest
> going to an HD format like 480p or even 720p to get the higher frame
> rate, or even doubled frame rate (120 fps) which meets up nice to 15,
> 16, 20, and 24 fps film. Turns it into a real disk eater though. I
> suppose that once you have it as jpegs, you would only have to load
> them into an appropriate container format like AVI, then mencode or
> ffmpeg could do the rest.
>
> Come to think of it SMPTE has a suite of film, analog (TV and HDTV)
> and digital (TV, HDTV, and high res. movie) standards. It will cost
> you some to get all the standards you need; software, hardware or both
> to match may be very costly.
LOL! The fact that I am a cheapskate also got by you
I never could afford sound-on-film back when this stuff was shot so audio is
not part of the equation until I get working video - and then only as
voice-over dubbing and/or theme music.
Best I recall, the “standard” super-8 was 10fps. I remember some of the
recon film I shot was processed to interpolate between frames for a higher
rate but that was 16mm or occasional 35mm and the military did the
processing but my understanding of that process is that even today’s
desktop setups would groan under the load.
I’m thinking snapshots with animation quality, really, but the old
photographer in me wants to retain as much resolution as possible - whether
I can use it or not. Other than that, don’t look for anything I do to come
up for any awards!
On Tue, 20 Jul 2010 03:44:32 GMT, Will Honea <whonea@yahoo.com> wrote:
>JosephKK@yahoo.com wrote:
>
>> Your intent to capture frame by frame retouch then reassemble got by
>> me before. If you have sound re-registering it can be very
>> challenging. In either case the differences in frame rates make some
>> aspects of conversion twitchy. If you have the money, i would suggest
>> going to an HD format like 480p or even 720p to get the higher frame
>> rate, or even doubled frame rate (120 fps) which meets up nice to 15,
>> 16, 20, and 24 fps film. Turns it into a real disk eater though. I
>> suppose that once you have it as jpegs, you would only have to load
>> them into an appropriate container format like AVI, then mencode or
>> ffmpeg could do the rest.
>>
>> Come to think of it SMPTE has a suite of film, analog (TV and HDTV)
>> and digital (TV, HDTV, and high res. movie) standards. It will cost
>> you some to get all the standards you need; software, hardware or both
>> to match may be very costly.
>
>LOL! The fact that I am a cheapskate also got by you
Only in magnitude, the comment about copious time indicated frugality.
>
>I never could afford sound-on-film back when this stuff was shot so audio is
>not part of the equation until I get working video - and then only as
>voice-over dubbing and/or theme music.
>
>Best I recall, the “standard” super-8 was 10fps.
Dual run 8 (super 8’s predecessor is 15 fps, i already have lots of
poor conversions of that) super 8 is either 15 fps or 16 fps.
>I remember some of the
>recon film I shot was processed to interpolate between frames for a higher
>rate but that was 16mm or occasional 35mm and the military did the
>processing but my understanding of that process is that even today’s
>desktop setups would groan under the load.
>
>I’m thinking snapshots with animation quality, really, but the old
>photographer in me wants to retain as much resolution as possible - whether
>I can use it or not. Other than that, don’t look for anything I do to come
>up for any awards!
You can’t get this quality on your own rig and you will spend a lot of time and money on trying. Believe me I tried it before these guys helped transfer the Super 8 film to digital - .mov files in HD.They created a single frame of digital video for each of the Super 8 frames.
