Help with standard 8 projection

Kino · Dec 4, 2020

We didn't have that option unless we shot sound on film and recorded an optical track or striped mag film. Editing that was even more complex.

Anyway, we deviate from the topic...

Alan Edward Klein · Dec 4, 2020

I received as a gift when I was 13, over 60 years ago, a three-lens turret, wind-up, 8mm camera. I still have it although I haven't shot it in 50 years. I used it to shoot family movies for about 10 years after I got it. Since most of the pictures were of my sister's kids and family, when VHS tape players came out, I made VHS tapes of them through an outside service. I gave one set to my sister and was able to play another tape on my old TV. I still have the original film that I had put together in 500-foot reels.

Then when computers came out, I converted the VHS to digital and burned CD disks. When my niece passed away, I put together a digital movie with titles, applicable music, credits, etc, and gave it to her brother and mom as a memento. The digital movie has menus so you can jump to any point of it looking at the index in the front. It was a labor of love and really came out very well. It's easy to make copies and show on my 75" TV today and looks great. The whole movie is stored on a memory card along with other movies that is plugged into the TV's USB jack, ready to play at a moment's notice. My projector broke anyway. It would play backward but not forwards.

You might consider converting. There are a lot of good services out there.

Meanwhile, my wife found pictures her dad had taken of her and her sister as well as the vacation her parents went on years and years ago. 43 fifty-foot rolls, about 2 1/2 hours worth. We still have not gotten around to seeing them, much less converting them.

Kino · Dec 4, 2020

HD, 2K and 4K scans of Super 8mm and Regular 8mm film @ $25 to $35 per roll (plus media):
https://filmphotographystore.com/co...ts/film-scanning-services-super-8-regular-8mm

We use this very same scanner at our archive.

Alan Edward Klein · Dec 4, 2020

Here's a projector that converts to digital about $400. Anyone know how good these things are or can recommend one?
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B...H3FGN&linkId=814f7e49e25b74596219625827497350

Alan Edward Klein · Dec 4, 2020

Kino said:
HD, 2K and 4K scans of Super 8mm and Regular 8mm film @ $25 to $35 per roll (plus media):
https://filmphotographystore.com/co...ts/film-scanning-services-super-8-regular-8mm

We use this very same scanner at our archive.

I compared HD (720x480) to 2K (1920x1080) on the same reel of movies at two different places a couple of years ago. Hard to see the difference with 8mm. If you're going to create movies afterward by editing using a video editing program, you can always uprez to 4K. SO I don't think it pays to buy 4K or even 2K, to begin with. I recommend you pay to convert the same reel at a couple of services and in a couple of resolutions especially if you have a lot of film to convert. Then you can compare before you decide how you want to do the whole conversion

ic-racer · Dec 4, 2020

perkeleellinen said:
Thanks, Kino.

Digging around online I stumbled across a cool video:

Nice. I never got to do that, because when I was in Photo/Cinema school, we only shot silent film. Videotape was going to replace everything, so all my synch-sound work was done in videotape.

Alan Edward Klein · Dec 4, 2020

If this is of any help to anyone, I had sound syncing problems when I transferred video from my Samsung Galaxy S7 to be used in my video editing program in my Windows 10 desktop. I used Handbrake to sync the sound.

Donald Qualls · Dec 4, 2020

Alan Edward Klein said:
I used Handbrake to sync the sound.

The problems I have are only on my Linux desktop system -- I can view the very same YouTube video on my phone, tablet, or Fire Stick and it'll be in sync. Further, I don't have the option to adjust the sync on YouTube videos.

perkeleellinen · Dec 4, 2020

Alan Edward Klein said:
You might consider converting. There are a lot of good services out there.

If there enough gems on these reels I will probably do this so my relatives can have copies. Projecting them is great first time, but I think they'd like to be able to watch them on their own terms rather than mine eventually. Currently I'm seeing a minute of family and friends in the 1960s followed by two minutes of flowers, mountains or brass bands.

Kino · Dec 4, 2020

While there are few resolution benefits for converting Regular 8mm to 4 or 2K, it does serve you well for modern video playback without having to upscale them with uncertain loss of information.

Yes, I know many people say they can scale up video from SD (standard definition) to HD, 2K or 4K, but unless you run it through some pretty expensive software and noise reduction, it looks pretty bad. Not only are you changing the resolution, you are remapping the color spaces (REC 601 to REC 709) and that can be problematic depending on your software.

http://www.glennchan.info/articles/technical/hd-versus-sd-color-space/hd-versus-sd-color-space.htm

I think you'd pay at least as much as my listed link prices for SD transfers, so why not just do the 2K or 4K and skip the extra hassle of converting?

Kino · Dec 4, 2020

Donald Qualls said:
The problems I have are only on my Linux desktop system -- I can view the very same YouTube video on my phone, tablet, or Fire Stick and it'll be in sync. Further, I don't have the option to adjust the sync on YouTube videos.

What distribution of Linux are you running? What is your playback program? Are you running a low latency Kernel?

Alan Edward Klein · Dec 4, 2020

Kino said:
While there are few resolution benefits for converting Regular 8mm to 4 or 2K, it does serve you well for modern video playback without having to upscale them with uncertain loss of information.

Yes, I know many people say they can scale up video from SD (standard definition) to HD, 2K or 4K, but unless you run it through some pretty expensive software and noise reduction, it looks pretty bad. Not only are you changing the resolution, you are remapping the color spaces (REC 601 to REC 709) and that can be problematic depending on your software.

http://www.glennchan.info/articles/technical/hd-versus-sd-color-space/hd-versus-sd-color-space.htm

I think you'd pay at least as much as my listed link prices for SD transfers, so why not just do the 2K or 4K and skip the extra hassle of converting?

I've compared services in 2014 who provided 720x480 and HD 1080. 8mm film frame is so small, the data just isn't there to capture. Also, I'm not sure how they get 4K. Are they really scanning at 4K? Or are the scanning at a lower resolution and just uprezing for you? My 4k TV automatically uprezes 2K as does yours. Most TV programs are not 4K. Yet you can't tell the difference in most cases. And that's with modern high resolution cameras not little 8mm frames of film.

Note I just checked with a service that I used before Dijifi in NY use. They don't provide 720 or 4K only 1080 and 2K.

quote:
Film (8mm/Super 8/16mm):

We scan film at multiple levels of service. All levels include inspection, cleaning, and lubricating of the film. The standard file type is MP4.

1080 HD:

Direct $0.50/ft: Cropping to remove perforations from the edges of the visible area.

Complete $0.58/ft: Direct service plus basic color correction.

2K HD:

Complete $0.65/ft: Scanning, cropping, and basic color correction.

Direct $0.60/ft: Cropping to remove perforations from the edges of the visible area.

Alan Edward Klein · Dec 4, 2020

Here's the rest of their quote.

Film (35mm):

We are currently only offering Direct service on our 35mm scans as most 35mm film require a professional color grade.

1080 HD:

Direct $0.75/ft: Cropping to remove perforations from the edges of the visible area.

2K HD

Direct: $0.85/ft: Cropping to remove perforations from the edges of the visible area.

Film (9.5mm, 17.5mm, 22mm, 27mm)

Please call to discuss your project with the Film Manager

Sound options:

Magnetic sound transfer $0.44/ft: If sound is available.

Optical sound transfer from 16mm & 35mm $0.32/ft

Output file formats:

ProRes 422 HQ (.mov file): $0.09/ft

ProRes 4444 HQ (.mov file): $0.14/ft

AVI HD (.avi): $0.14/ft

An .mp4 is included with all transfers.

We have a $17 loading/transfer fee for every job. We waive this fee with purchase of a new USB Flash drive from DiJiFi.

You can stop by to drop off your film in person, Monday- Friday between the hours of 10 am and 6 pm or on a Saturday between 11 am and 4 pm. No appointment is required.

You can ship here too using the forms attached. We also pick up and deliver in the metro NYC area for $50 round trip. This service is complimentary for orders over $500.

Please do not hesitate to contact us with any additional questions via email or at 646-519-2447.

Best regards,

Luke Williams

Film Manager

DiJiFi
film@dijifi.com
www.dijifi.com
646-519-2447

Please contact Film@dijifi.com if you have any technical question about your film order.

MattKing · Dec 4, 2020

A regular 8 frame is about 1/13 the size of 110 film/ a micro 4/3 sensor.

Kino · Dec 4, 2020

Here's the scanner they use. http://www.lasergraphics.com/scanstation-features.html

Yes, it's true 4K . Lasergraphics makes up to 10K scanners; this one tops out at 6.5K.

If you want to argue about resolution, there are multiple YouTube and Film user boards where this debate rages on endlessly. I have no use or desire to debate it; I stated my suggestions above. Feel free to ignore them.

Alan Edward Klein · Dec 4, 2020

Kino said:
Here's the scanner they use. http://www.lasergraphics.com/scanstation-features.html

Yes, it's true 4K . Lasergraphics makes up to 10K scanners; this one tops out at 6.5K.

If you want to argue about resolution, there are multiple YouTube and Film user boards where this debate rages on endlessly. I have no use or desire to debate it; I stated my suggestions above. Feel free to ignore them.

It tops out at 6.5K because its scans film up to 70mm (double35mm) which would be valuable in such a large format film. You'd be able to capture such high resolution. However, that's not so with 8mm film. If you look at their sheet that you linked to, the right-hand column shows Personal resolution recommendation for 8mm at 1.2K or 1200. For comparison, 2K resolution is 1920 and 4K is 3840 bits wide. So you can see that you can't get much resolution out for 8mm, due to such small footprint film. This scanner uses the same transport. So higher rates are available as the film goes through the same transport area. But to set 8mm on 6.5K would only slow the process down and provide no additional resolution.

Donald Qualls · Dec 5, 2020

Kino said:
What distribution of Linux are you running? What is your playback program? Are you running a low latency Kernel?

I'm using Ubuntu Mate, and I'm a slow updater; I'm still on 16.04.3 (or 16.04.5, don't recall offhand where to check system version), with HWE kernel version 4.15.0-126 generic. At present, I don't have sufficient impetus to give up a weekend of darkroom/photography time to do a complete clean reinstall, which seems to be the only reliable way to upgrade (and necessarily includes reinstalling hundreds of added packages, plus converting from repo to Snap for some, as was the case last time I upgraded GIMP). Last time I did it, it took me two days after the hardware rebuild was completed. And once done, I'd have to repeat the process for my laptop...

Truzi · Dec 5, 2020

Donald Qualls said:
I'm using Ubuntu Mate, and I'm a slow updater; I'm still on 16.04.3 (or 16.04.5, don't recall offhand where to check system version), with HWE kernel version 4.15.0-126 generic. At present, I don't have sufficient impetus to give up a weekend of darkroom/photography time to do a complete clean reinstall, which seems to be the only reliable way to upgrade (and necessarily includes reinstalling hundreds of added packages, plus converting from repo to Snap for some, as was the case last time I upgraded GIMP). Last time I did it, it took me two days after the hardware rebuild was completed. And once done, I'd have to repeat the process for my laptop...

Something quite odd must be going on with your system. I've been using Linux (Debian) as my main OS for about 15 years (longer as an adjunct), and have never had a a problem with audio sync. If you can handle CLI apt-get and dpkg, you can probably export a list of packages you have installed, which will make it easier to re-install after a wipe or getting a new machine. I've done it a few times, but don't remember the details.

In the past I've used Mandrake (before it was Mandriva), Red Hat, CentOS, Gentoo, Ubuntu, Knoppix (installed), Puppy, DLS, and a few other distros, but I keep going back to Debian. I've even done FreeBSD, Freesbie (installed), Toms RTBT a bit (no audio or graphics), and MinuetOS. I kept having problems with Ubuntu's tendency to release the newest-latest-greatest-coolist packages without proper debugging or security vetting - it bit me a couple times. Of course, now Ubuntu seems to have wrapped social media and related crap tightly into the system.

Still, I never had audio-sync problems. NVidia always worked better for me than ATI, but neither gave me sync issues. The proprietary nVidia drivers were better than the FOSS ones - check there.

I used to prefer Gnome until Gnome3 pushed me away, then I tried Mate, but now I'm on XFCE4 (and I've dabbled with a bunch of others). You may want to check configuration in Mate or Pulse Audio (if you have it) to see if the problem is there. Also check your audio modules and configuration.

You could try a live CD just to rule out hardware issues - and to identify the modules/drivers you need and their configuration, then compare to what is on your installed system.

Donald Qualls · Dec 5, 2020

I should probably start with trying Firefox on YouTube. It might be as simple as a video handling bug in SeaMonkey (though I wouldn't think so, since it's just Firefox with a skin to look like Netscape Web Suite).

That said, the main reason I use Ubuntu (as opposed to other distros) is to avoid having to get the equivalent of a CSE to use my daily driver system, and to have well-vetted software (though that often results in software I want/need to use being too old a version to do what I wanted, so I wind up bypassing the repos). I don't consider the OS a disposable item, it's the core of my system, and installing fresh isn't an enjoyable hobby activity for me. I can export my package list easily from Synaptic (much easier than CLI using apt) -- and that largely summarizes my Linux usage: I'm not a command line guru, I do everything I can in the GUI. I switched from KDE to Mate when KDE 5 broke most of what I liked about the KDE desktop, and I'm a slow upgrader because I don't like having a new interface every few months or couple years. And I dumped Windows in 2011 after my XP system got FBI Moneypak malware twice in a year and showed evidence of some other malware lurking.

I have the proprietary nVidia drivers -- FAR better performance than the "free and open" ones.

Digging under the hood of the OS is quite specifically something I don't like or want to do. Apparently this problem is rare enough there isn't much mention of it, which means no one can just tell me how to fix it -- which means I'm not going to invest tens of hours chasing it. It's an annoyance, not a deal-breaker.

I'm trying to remember if my laptop (Thinkpad T430, Intel graphics) has the same problem -- waking it up now to check. And, nope.

That suggests it's an issue in the nVidia drivers or settings -- but there's no settings for "delay video by 250 ms" so I don't know what setting it could be. I also don't know if I have to restart the computer, or restart the video driver (not even sure how to do that) after making a change to see if it's an improvement.

AgX · Dec 5, 2020

perkeleellinen said:
A question about splicing:

Tape or cement - is there any consensus?

Single 8, which is Fuji's Super 8 system, which got a different cassette with longer film, is PET-based film. PET is not solvent gluable and thus tape has to be used.

Futhermore depending on design of splice a cemented splice cannot be respliced. One has to do a complete new splice, thus salvaging two frames. Not so with tape.

Concerning practicability and whether saving two frames makes sense, Kino is the expert to tell.

AgX · Dec 5, 2020

This is a 100% analog thread. I do not understand why digitisation of film is proposed here, even in detail.

Truzi · Dec 6, 2020

perkeleellinen said:
If there enough gems on these reels I will probably do this so my relatives can have copies. Projecting them is great first time, but I think they'd like to be able to watch them on their own terms rather than mine eventually. Currently I'm seeing a minute of family and friends in the 1960s followed by two minutes of flowers, mountains or brass bands.

My grandfather "converted" to VHS at one point, putting as many reels as he could on each tape. Long after, I converted the tapes to DVD. Even if there is only a minute of family on each real, if you have enough it may be worth it to have everything converted. I'd keep the originals intact so you can project them.

He had used tape to splice. I'm not sure why he preferred that over cement. Not only do I have his reels, but I also have a couple of his early Super8 cameras and his old Keystone wind-up 8mm camera... and they all still work.

@Donald Qualls You don't have to know that much to run Linux nowadays. Debian's installer is much easier than it used to be (but still lets you do advanced configurations if wanted). Ubuntu is based on Debian. My mom is using Debian now, and she knows nothing about computers. Just a standard install. Also, most other distro's software is more well-vetted than Ubuntu, which is why the standard packages aren't as cutting-edge (but you can still go that route if you want).

Donald Qualls · Dec 6, 2020

@Truzi True, but you do need to know about lot about what's under the hood to troubleshoot seemingly rare problems like my video lag issue.

Alan Edward Klein · Dec 6, 2020

When I still had my VHS player, I connected the output to my computer using a fire wire to convert the analog output to data so I could then create DVD's or use for other data purposes. Of course, if the VHS is really old, the picture quality might not be good enough. If it's still pretty good, just clean the read heads first.

BAC1967 · Dec 6, 2020

Truzi said:
I'd keep the originals intact so you can project them.

Or to do a better scan of them someday. I bought some 8mm reels at a garage sale years ago, they guy selling them said it took forever to spool the film into the trash after he converted them to VHS. That made me cringe but I didn't didn't to tell him how foolish I thought that was. The digital scans you can get today are way better than what you got on VHS. Plus, the old film will probably out last a VHS tape.

Help with standard 8 projection

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