Converting 8 mm Film to DV
This article describes how to transfer video shot on film to DV format. It should work for either 8 or 16 mm film, though we performed all tests on 8 mm film. The final link below, Comparison with Service Bureaus, shows the results of our conversion compared with those provided by two service bureaus.
Comparison with Service Bureaus
When transferring 8 mm film to DV, you use a film projector to display the video against a wall and use a DV camera to film the show. Since most DV cameras can also output DV while shooting, you will also use that DV output feed to capture video simultaneously to your computer. Note that if you don't capture simultaneously to your computer, you'll just have to do it later to edit the video or convert it to DVD. In addition, as described in more detail below, capturing video immediately helps ensure that you frame the shot correctly.
Obviously, to perform this transfer, you'll need several pieces of equipment. First is the projector, which if you're like my family, probably hasn't been run in over a dozen years. Second, the DV camera itself, and also a television set to connect to the camera to get a big picture view of the video. The TV is absolutely essential (and the larger the screen, the better), because without it, you'll have to rely on the camera's LCD panel to determine if you're in focus, a recipe for disaster.
Finally, you'll need a computer with a FireWire card and lots and lots of disk space. Each 50-foot film roll took about 750 MB to capture, so if you have 80 rolls (about 4 hours total), you'll need about 60 GB of drive space, which can put a big dent on the capacity of most computers. Consider purchasing an external hard drive to permanently archive your raw and edited footage.
These major appliances out of the way, let's look at the supplies. You'll need a tripod to hold the video camera steady during filming. It doesn't have to be professional grade; a $20 tripod from Wal-Mart will do, and will vastly simplify operation over the collection of books and other do-dads you would use to hold the camera steady if you didn't have a tripod.
You'll need the cables you usually use to connect your DV camera to a television set. Use an S-Video cable if your television set has one to improve clarity. You'll also need a FireWire cable to connect the DV camera to a your computer. The most common camera to computer cable is four pin to six pin, but if you're using a laptop computer, you may need a four pin to four pin.
While you're at Wal-Mart, pick up some extra DV tapes. Each little yellow box of film has between 3-4 minutes of video, use 10-12 tapes to an hour for rough calculations. If you don't have an electrical power strip handy, buy one while you're there. Also pick up a very small paintbrush, like that children use for painting watercolors. While there may be some official gadget that cleans dust from a lens, we couldn't find one, and the paintbrush was the best tool for brushing dirt and grime from the lens.
There are a number of film specific supplies unavailable at Wal-Mart, including cute white cotton gloves that keep your finger oil off the film, splicing tape and a splicer. Depending upon the condition of your tape, you may need some film cleaning fluid, a special solvent formulated not to damage the film, which water can do. Consider buying a new bulb for your projector as well, just to be sure. Check your local camera store or web sites like http://porterscamerastore.com or www.moviola.com.
Budgeting time this process is imprecise, with getting up and running the tough part. Assuming that all of your equipment works, figure at least two hours for equipment setup and then another two-four hours getting the settings correct. From there, you should be able to process four to six 50 ft rolls an hour.
The most efficient way to speed the process is to consolidate your tapes before hand on 7" reels, which hold about 400 feet. Don't go past seven tapes per reel, since film too close to the end of a reel tends to fall of at the most inopportune times. If you can't consolidate your tapes, at the very least get them grouped properly and in chronological order, which will simplify editing down the line.
At least a week before the great conversion, play one or two tapes to gauge their condition. If stored properly, even 50 year old tapes should be in good condition, but if there is dirt, mildew or other damage you'll want to clean that beforehand. In a perfect world, you would clean all tapes with cleaning solution beforehand, but this is a manual process that can take 20-30 minutes per tape, adding many, many hours to the task. Use only film cleaning solution, and follow the directions precisely.
While the projector is out, clean all optical components with glass cleaner sprayed on a soft clean cloth. If there is dust or other grime in the picture frame, use the paintbrush to scoop it out, something you'll do frequently during actual production. Note the make and model of bulb so you can order one if you don't already have a spare. If you have to handle the bulb, use cotton gloves or a towel, since finger oil can make the tungsten bulbs used on these units explode.
The ideal place of convert your footage will have the following characteristics. First, the room should either be windowless or have drapes capable of blocking all light. Since placement of the projector and camera is very precise, the work is best performed on a very solid table on a very solid floor.
For example, we first tried this process on an antique dining room table on the creaky wooden floor of a 100 year old dining room. Between operators leaning on the table, turning the camera on and off, clicking the computer on and of to capture and store the files and just generally walking around, the camera equipment moved just enough to require a reset virtually every shot, which got very frustrating. This problem went away the second time around when we setup on a solid worktable on a concrete floor.
You'll need a flat section of a wall to shoot against. You'll get the best results if you don't use a standard film screen because they disperse light for better viewing by the audience in the room. Rather, use a flat, smooth but non-reflective white surface. We used a white foam posterboard, which worked well.
There is some dispute as to the optimal size of the video on the screen. Some Internet resources recommend a relatively small 8.5x11" size, claiming that smaller is better because the light is more focused. We tested at this size, but found that the small image made it difficult to tell if the film was sharply focused, which complicated production, so we backed the projector up about three feet and shot at about 12"x16".
Side-by-side tests of frames captured from video shot in both sizes tended to show that the image was slightly clearer using the larger display size. However, the results were not strikingly different, so use a size that works comfortably within the confines of your work area.
Whichever picture size you use, be sure that there is ample space between the framed image and the edges of your screen because the "framer" adjustment, used to adjust the image when the top or bottom of a frame is cut off, actually moves the video up and down. During our initial shots, when we tightly framed the video on an 8.5x11" piece of paper, this adjustment moved the video frame off the screen.
Set the projector up so that it shoots perpendicularly into the screen, and position the camera beneath and as close to the projector as possible. In our workspace, this meant setting up the projector on the edge of the worktable and setting up the camera on a tripod just beneath the projector.
When choosing a setting and placing your equipment, try to keep the business side of the projector, where the tape is setup for playing, positioned for easy acess. If you have to lean on the table or contort to thread the film into the projector, you'll sprain your back, move the table, or both.
Obviously, your computer should be very accessible, preferably on the same table as the projector. Finally, since you'll be turning the lights on and off frequently, operation is simplest when you're close to the wall switch.
There are fundamental differences between film and video. Generally, 8-mm film was shot at about 16 frames per second (fps) and Super 8 at about 18 fps. Most home projectors use a three-shutter system, which displays each frame three times. This means 48 on-screen images per second for 8 mm film or 54 for Super 8.
Your DV camera, by contrast, uses two interlaced fields per frame, one containing the odd scan lines and the other containing the even lines. It captures images at 60 fields per second (30 frames per second * 2 fields). Unless you synchronize the film projector and the camera, the resulting video is going to flicker, because some of the fields will catch one of the projector's shutters in operation, and those fields will be darker than the rest.
To minimize flicker, set your shutter speed to 1/60 second, and adjust the projector speed to either 20 fps, which produces 60 images per second, or 10 fps, which produces 30 images per second. Most projectors have variable-speed adjusters without defined speeds, so during conversion, you simply adjust the speed until the flicker disappears. If you can't set the shutter speed of your camera manually, you may want to rent or borrow one with this capability. Otherwise, the conversion may not be worth doing, as the flicker will be too distracting.
Setting white balance is critical. Different light sources have distinct color temperatures, which highlight certain colors when illuminating a scene. White-balance procedures vary from camera to camera but typically involve zooming in to a white object until it fills the screen and then pressing the appropriate control. This tells the camera that the object is white, allowing the camera to correct for the lighting.
If your camera has manual white-balance controls, set the white balance with the lights off and the projector running with no film, simply projecting a white image against the posterboard. If it doesn't, set the white balance to indoors or incandescent, even if the film you'll be converting was shot outdoors; even though the landscape in the film may have been sunlit, the predominant light in the image you're actually recording is produced by the tungsten incandescent bulb in the projector.
Exposure controls the amount of light that enters the camera. Most cameras have an automatic exposure mode that continuously adjusts for changing light conditions as well as a manual mode. While some internet sources advise using manual controls, this is problematic for several reasons, most significantly because the adjustment is on the camera body where it's difficult to continuously adjust without jogging the camera. Remember that most software programs let you brightness digitally, after the capture, which is usually much more accurate and easier to perform. We elected to use automatic exposure with good results.
We used the opposite strategy with the focus control, which must be set on manual, otherwise the camera will continually try to readjust for the occasional fuzzy images on screen. The best strategy here is to lightly tape a picture or other object on the screen you'll be using and then focus on that object manually, or even let the auto focus do its work.
Remember that you can zoom into an object to achieve a high level of focus and then zoom out because zoom ratio doesn't affect the focus. Once the image is sharply focused, you should not have to touch the camera's focus adjustment for the duration of the project. The only focus that will be changing will be that of the projector, so keep your attention there.
To frame the video, shut the lights off and start the projector with no film, displaying a white box on the posterboard. Adjust your camera on the tripod until the white box is centered in the LCD panel, and then zoom in until the projected image fills the LCD.
Start your capture software and watch for black bands around the video, as in the image above. Note that while the television screen is completely full, the same video in Adobe Premiere's capture screen shows a black band on all four sides. These result from fundamental differences between how televisions and computers display video. When framing the video, if you zoom your camcorder in so the video just fills the LCD panel (which generally has some overscan), you'll leave the black band around the video.
This is fine if you're creating a DVD to display on a television set, since the black band won't be visible. If, however, you'll be watching the videos from your computer, the band will show. The only way to monitor the overscan is to capture the image to a computer while you're filming. Otherwise, you simply won't see the overscan.
Once the camera and projector are set up, it's time to thread your first roll of film. Start with a small 50 foot roll because you'll likely have to run it three or four times to get the focus and film speed adjusted correctly. Start with your most recent film since it will be less brittle than your oldest reels. If you have any reels with minimum value, get started with that. For example, we used a third party promotional reel to fine tune focus and speed controls before starting in on our own footage.
Before turning on the project, find and get familiar with three controls, the focus adjustment, the speed adjustment and the framing tool. You'll soon be working with them in the dark, so taking a little time up front will reduce your fumbling.
When you're ready, start the projector and concentrate first on reducing the flicker to a minimum by adjusting the speed. Try slowing the playback speed first, because accelerating playback speed produces an unwanted Chaplinesque feel. For the most part, once you’ve found the optimal speed, you probably won't need to adjust it again.
Unfortunately, the same can't be said about focus, which is the one control you'll be riding throughout the conversion process, at least once per reel if not more. Keep two thoughts in mind. First, that cameras back then didn't have auto focus mechanisms and that you can't correct poorly focused footage. If a few simple adjustments don't fix the problem, assume that the original footage is out of focus, do the best job you can and refocus when the scene changes or the video otherwise comes back into focus.
Second, the only focus that matters is the one on the projector. Set the camera focus during setup as described above, and adjusting it further during the conversion process will only take you out of focus. So leave your camera alone.
Consider the routine you'll use to start and stop the process. Our routine was to start the computer capture, then start the camera capture, then shut out the lights and finally roll the projector. After the tape ended, we reversed the process, shutting the projector first, then turning on the lights, then stopping the camera and finally the computer. Following this routine helped ensure that we didn't skip a step.
