Railfan Technology > 8mm transfers to digital

Between late 1956 and 1960, shot about
3500 feet of 8mm movies, mostly steam
(NKP, B&O, N&W, CPR, CNR, PRR, others).
As years passed, avoided projecting these,
and they're relatively clean. And, given the
limitations of 8mm, quality fairly good.

Some years back, had many professionally
copied to VHS, and about 10 years ago
to DVD.

Looking now to have some copied to digital
utilizing latest technology and process.

Any recommendations would be appreciated.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 12/16/14 03:09 by NKP715.

If you have copied them to DVD then they are digitized. You can make copies (clones) of that using standard video editing software on a PC with DVD drive.

You've already done the important parts.

Good luck, love to see these sometime, as they are right out of my childhood era.

Chico

Chico,

Thanks. Appreciate your input. My use of the word
"digital" may not have been correct, but what I'm
looking for is the latest technology, to achieve
the best result. From what I've seen on the web,
the preparation/cleaning of the original film is
one of the key steps.

Have already done copying/editing on my PC, but want
to get to the next step. Thanks, again



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 12/15/14 16:53 by NKP715.

As you mentioned, the first step is to clean the film. Do that before any further projection or transfer attempt. If you can't do it, ask the transfer facility to do it. There are two good ways to transfer your 8mm film, either via a Rank machine or a scanning method. You'll pay a good bit for these but the results will be far better than shooting a video as it is projected.

The transfer can be to either digital tape or to a hard drive for sending it to your computer for editing and image correction (assuming you're doing that yourself). If transferring via a Rank (or equivalent) machine, you can do the color / brightness correction as part of the process. Studios that do this offer a few options at different prices. The best is scene by scene where you attend the transfer session and tell the colorist how you want each scene to look. This is the most expensive option. The cheapest is to get a "best light" transfer where the colorist looks at the first few feet of the reel and makes a setting before running the entire reel. The results will be good and bad, depending on the exposure and lighting of each scene. Any out of focus or extremely dark scenes should be cut out of the reels as there is no way to fix them so why pay for them?

Remember, 8mm is only 1/4 the image area of 16mm so they will not look as sharp as 16mm but they should look far better than the transfers done in lesser methods.

Before sending your film to a studio ask them what the method of transfer is and for some examples of work they have done.

You will also need to tell the studio what speed was used in the filming, 18 frames per second (silent speed) or 24 frames per second (sound speed). Most 8mm is 18 FPS.

You should also number the reels in the order you want them transferred so the studio will know before doing the transfer.

The third option is to buy your own transfer machine and do it yourself but the above choices will get you the best job with the best imagery.

-JH

NKP715 Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> > Looking now to have some copied to digital
> utilizing latest technology and process.

I recommend having them scanned to 720P AVI format. This is better resolution than an NTSC DVD. You can then use any video editing program to create video files (WMV, MOV, etc.), which you can upload to e.g. YouTube. If you want to create a physical DVD that can be played in a player, you can use DVD authoring software to produce them.

Duane's Photo does a great job: http://www.dwaynesphoto.com/common/newforms/Film_Transfer.pdf

The facility that has the best reputation for 8mm digital transfer is Pro8mm.com in Hollywood. Their flying spot scanner cost a million dollars. All the big name directors like Stephen Spielberg and John Carpenter have had their neophyte 8mm feature films transferred there.

Thank goodness you didn't throw away the film. Some folks transferred to VHS tape and threw away the film. Now they are stuck with a low res copy. Now you can get an HD, maybe 4K file out of it and it should look fantastic.

There is no known practical home device to do this. If any one can show one, please do.

Projecting the 8mm on the wall and video recording it is a desperation possibility but that is low quality. You need a variable speed projector to eliminate the roll bar.

Dennis Livesey
New York, NY