[kimbarator]

@ joeyschwartz:

THANK YOU! I thought that, for a few really special film sequences, getting the film onto a good flatbed might yield superior image quality, but I didn't know where to start. I am so grateful that you took the time to explain your method, and I can't wait to try it!

[MrPlywood]

joeyschwartz: "All toll, it takes about an hour to an hour and a half to produce one second of 1080p video."
Did you really mean one second, or one minute worth of video? One of the original Super 8 films I transfered is about 12 minutes long. At 1.5 hours per second, that's 1,080 hours worth of work.

[flowney]

I think that this could be the beginning of a series on restoration via digitization. For example, I was aghast to find that many of my 35mm slides have lost much of their color. I have 8mm and 16mm film as well. Then there's audio with 45/78 rpm vinyl, 8-Track, audio cassette, etc. Unbeknownst to many, culture is being lost at an alarming rate. Then there's digital media itself. Although digital media doesn't have to suffer from generational loss, that happens all the time due to lack of knowledge about the digitization process. Finally, the media that we use (HD, DVD, CD, etc.) is not as durable as we'd like to think and is subject to sudden, catastrophic, large scale loss.

[joeyschwartz]

Hate to break it to you, but you are correct, one SECOND. My method is very time consuming, and all I have in terms of total footage is about 15 minutes worth. I'm using this method as much to say that I did it, rather than spending a few thousand dollars at Bonofilm, in Arlington, Virginia, which uses a Rank Cinetel sprocketless film to digital file process that can produce the same results in real-time from 8mm or Super 8mm. This is strictly a hobby pursuit for me, sort of a flashback to my old methodologies when I worked with 16mm and 35mm film optical printers in the 1980s and early 1990s.

If I was making a broadcast film or documentary, I'd pay the money to get it transferred in real-time, because at that point, my time would be worth more than the money spent on transferring. Doing this only as hobby, my time is not worth as much, so again, it's a matter of which is more important to you: the time you save getting it done professionally, or the money you save doing it yourself. In this instance, I've picked the money side of things, but you may decide quite differently depending on your circumstances.

Since this is a video thread, I did end up getting my old analog Hi8 videotapes transferred professionally here in Toronto, since I no longer had the means of playing back that format, which included digital PCM audio tracks that many consumer video cameras are not able to playback. I had the transfer company record the video directly to a Firewire hard drive, using QuickTime ProRes NTSC files. At home, I can transcode them to other CODECs as I please. I'm finding that Hi8 videotape is actually deteriorating even faster than VHS, especially on the Evaporated Metal Particle (EV) tapes. Lots of tape drop-outs.

[MrPlywood]

Wow, no offense, but I can't imagine any home movie being worth that amount of effort, unless it's something like the Zapruder film. 8mm film is fairly lo-fi to begin with, add in degradation, scratches, etc., and I just don't see the point. Also, I checked out Bono Film and a few other transfer houses, and found prices ranging from $175/hr to $250/hr (with minimum charges from $85 to $150). That's quite a bit under "thousands" for your 15 minutes worth of film. Seems like that would be money well spent as opposed to the 130 8-hour days it will take you to create your HD version.

[joeyschwartz]

No offense taken, this is just an idiosyncratic adventure I want to continuing doing.

To do the colour grading, that would turn into thousands of dollars. The professional transfer houses are producing, in effect, "one-light" transfers, because I can't sit down with the telecine operator and do advance primary and secondary colour correction on a DaVinci suite with them. If I did, the colour grading fees would be the same price as they charge for 16mm or 35mm transfers, which are always more expensive than just letting the operator make a best guess adjustment.

With my method, I'm doing all the colour grading as well, though most people would not see the difference unless it was directly compared. The films are a family heirloom, so that's why I care so much about tweaking as much quality out of those fragile frames. I could do this much faster by using a significantly lower dpi and/or buy a newer scanner, like a CanoScan 8800. I'm getting great results now, and I'm doing this so in twenty or thirty years time, I'm not doing it again. After this project is all completed, I will only have to transfer it to whatever the current digital medium is at the time, without having to rescan the films, since I am already scanning at a resolution that is resolving almost every spec of grain from the film. In effect, I'm creating digital negatives or intermediaries.

As I said earlier, it's about choice and for this project at least, time is cheap. I agree, most people would spend the hundreds or thousands of dollars to get it done correctly at Bonofilms, which is one of about three or four labs in the United States, that I'm aware of, that have 8mm gates for their scanners. Most other 8mm transfer shops use a process that is based on a projector-camera system which is cheaper, but the image quality is usually quite inferior.

So there you have it, the ability to do your own transfers at the highest possible quality at home is very doable, but the time involved, even with an up-to-date scanner, is very time consuming. That said, the future rewards of passing down family memories to following generations is priceless.

[RESpatz]

For what it's worth, I purchased the boxed version from Roxio. Installed it. Went online to register the product and the CD KEY # submitted was rejected as invalid. There is no way to contact Roxio by phone without furnishing a credit card number. My email has yet to be addressed. One can not get technical support without registering the product. This is an $80 product and so far Roxio has made it difficult to fix a registration problem. HUH?
I am sick of companies that insulate themselves from startup problems.

[reevescajr]

I likewise have had problems with Roxio, although mine have been with rebates. They hire this out to a third party to handle, and evidently that company makes more money if they don't send the rebates out. They're pretty consistent about claiming your rebate request is invalid because you didn't sent the required proofs (even though you did). If you complain to Roxio, their first response is that they can't do anything about it, since they turned it over to the third party. The only way I was able to get my rebate was to threaten to file a complaint with the state attorney general's office. And this isn't a single occurrence; it has happened to me at least twice.

[dianer]

I use a Canopus ADVC-100. It's a few years old so I'm sure they have a new version. It accepts RCA, S-Video and Firewire inputs and will output to Firewire. iMovie recognizes it, so you will be able to capture directly into iMovie with it. Now you can edit before burning.

[dianer]

RESpatz, be sure you are reading the key correctly. Zero and the letter o are often confused as well as the letter B and the number 8.

[Hockeymtnhigh]

I was about to buy the Elgato Video Capture but after reading some other Mac user's opinions I am now unsure. According to some, one should not use USB for video transfers and instead only use a Firewire connection. This redirected me to a couple of the Canopus models (ADVC-55 and 110) with Firewire connectivity. I would like to get some opinions on this topic. Thanks!