8mm film to DV

Ohm wrote on 5/4/2003, 2:29 PM
I have 8mm film dating back to the 1940's. I am considering buying the "Video WorkPinter Jr." from "Movie Stuff". The features of the WP are attractive because the film is brittle, and I can not risk running it through a projector at normal speeds.

Has anyone out there done business with them, or used their equipment? By their web site, it looks like there is about a 40 day lead time, after I send them money. I just want to be sure they follow-through on orders before I send money.

Or, is there any other equipment out there that any of you have used that would do frame by frame capture that I could compare Movie Stuff's equipment to, in the $1000.00 range.


Thanks for your help

Comments

JJKizak wrote on 5/4/2003, 4:36 PM
If your film is that brittle I would consider having a pro lab transfer
it to video as they have experience handling that kind of problem. They use
1.5 million dollar machines with perfect registration and they can run 1 frame
at a time if they have to. The price is high but the price for new hair is
higher.

JJK
sacherjj wrote on 5/4/2003, 8:48 PM
I've got the Workprinter Jr. on the way. I ordered it at the end of March or beginning of April, so I should have it by the beginning of June. I decided to go this route because of the very reason you are talking about. I would rather get the transfer done with as little resplicing as possible. It just seems to make sense that a shutter-less 1 fps machine should be much easier on the film. Hopefully it will work as nicely as it reads on the pages.
Ohm wrote on 5/4/2003, 10:53 PM
James,
Thanks for your cautionary note. I am a bit of a knuckle-head, though, and I don't want to trust this to parcel carriers, or the postal service.

Joe,
Good luck! Unless somebody has anything bad to say about "Movie Stuff", or has a better alternative, I will probably place an order before the end of next week.

I may end up pulling what's left of my hair out, but this is something I really want to do. I'm sure you feel the same way about it.

Thanks for your replies,
Dennis
Tyler.Durden wrote on 5/5/2003, 7:34 AM
Hi All,

My friend has the XP on order. A couple of thoughts to consider:

Roger (the moviestuff guy), says you NEED to have a 12x zoom, not a 10x.

Also, you want to ensure you can save images as fast as the projector advances (1fps or whatever you order)

Plenty of drivespace is essential. Full-frame stills take up mucho space.

You might peruse the 8mm forums where the moviestuff users hang (there are links at moviestuff) to get more info.


HTH, MPH
johnmeyer wrote on 5/5/2003, 4:44 PM
Ohm,

I bought the original Workprinter from Roger (Moviestuff) about ten months ago. It is an amazing Rube Goldberg device that does a fantastic job.

I have a Sony TRV-11 that has a 10x zoom which was perfectly adequate for the job. Of course, I would have preferred a 3-chip camera, especially one with zebra bars to help avoid hot spots.

When I did most of my transfers, I was still using Videofactory. I tried doing pulldown by setting the video playback to 0.6, which provides the 18-->29.97 fps conversion. It was pretty good, but I was able to get even better results using a product called AVISYNTH. It is a little piece of shareware that lets you write scripts for handling video frames. I wrote a pulldown script for 18fps, and the results were better than anything else I tried. (I've put the script at the end of this post).

Two other techniques are also worth mentioning. Film jitters in the gate. Even if Workprinter had no gate jitter (and it doesn't have much), the camera that took the picture has some. To completely eliminate this, I used a product called "Steadyhand" which is designed to take hand-held video and make it steady. I used minimal settings that were designed to eliminate the "shake" caused by the gate jitter. The result is something quite remarkable: rock steady film.

Also, when film -- but especially silent film at 18 fps -- is panned, the picture appears to jump, sometimes rather violently. However, when you look at the individual frames you have captured from Workprinter, before applying pulldown, they look fine. The answer for this situation is to use a product from the same people that make Steadyhand. This is called Motionperfect. It sythensizes new, intermediate frames in order to go from 18fps to 29.97. While this can introduce some odd artifacts if you apply it to a scene where someone walks across the frame, it works almost perfectly on panned footage. So, I capture with Workprinter; apply Steadyhand to the 18 fps footage (always do all processing before pulldown); and then apply Motionperfect to the panning scenes. Motionperfect is doing the same job as pulldown, so you don't need to apply pulldown to the scenes done with Motionperfect.

Hope that helps!

AVISynth 18fps pulldown script (insert the name of your video file in the first line):

AVISource("c:\my documents\yourfilm.avi")
AssumeFrameBased
SeparateFields
SelectEvery(12, 0,1,0, 3,2,3, 4,5,4,5, 6,7,6, 9,8,9, 10,11,10,11)
Weave
AssumeFPS(29.97, true)
Ohm wrote on 5/6/2003, 12:36 AM
Everybody,
Thanks for the support. I'm sure there will be a fairly steep learning curve at first. I got the camera covered, and installed a separate drive for this project. I am -- for sure -- saving all of the tips I get.

Thanks, John, for taking the extra time to write from your experience.

Dennis
jsteehl wrote on 5/6/2003, 8:26 AM
Hello Marty,

I'd like to get more feedback from the WorkPrinter users... do you have links to the 8mm forumns?

Thanks,

-jason