[Frameworks] Film-Video Transfer: DIY Super 8 telecine, Costco, and the Pros

[Charles Chadwick]

Re: someone's mention of yesvideo... do yourself a favor and don't send your work there. I used to work there, so some insider info. Film is cleaned without actual cleaner, film is constantly scratched by going through poorly maintained projectors, and once film is transferred, a team of editors cover up the transfer technicians' mistakes by literally editing them out... If there's a hair for 10 seconds, they'll simply cut it out of the video and leave you with your original footage missing on the dvd they overcharge you for. Plus, their cracked out mpeg2 encoding makes their dvd's look like youtube videos. Avoid crappy consumer labs like this one like the plague...just thought i'd pipe in

-charles

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:charles:chadwick:
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> On Jul 23, 2014, at 5:26 PM, Dave Tetzlaff <djtet53 at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> Since so many Frameworkers continue to use photochemical film 'acquisition' (sic), and distribution/exhibition opportunities are just getting ever more digital, it would seem that telecine/scan techniques and services are ever more important to our little community.
> 
> I think it would valuable for list members to continue to offer their knowledge and experiences -- good, bad or some of each -- with different DIY techniques, maybe different pieces of gear of varying price and availability, and different firms that offer transfer services, including the naming of names.
> 
> ......
> 
> The tricks with off-the-wall telecine for S8 would be:
> 
> 1. Finding a projector that holds constant speed, and has fairly even illumination across the frame rather than a hot spot in the middle.
> 
> 2. Using a video camera/DSLR that has variable frame rate, and tuning it to the speed of the projector. Most "prosumer" models from Panasonic and some from Canon have such an adjustment. Ideally, you'd want a camera that can drop down to whatever the fixed speed on the projector is, probably 18fps, or go up to a multiple of projector speed (e.g. 36 fps). If you can get a projector that does 24fps, it might even work with un-adjusted 24P, but many S8 projectors are only in the ball-park of their rated speeds. Variable-speed projectors might be a possibility, but you can't hit precise speeds with them, and they're more likely to drift. So you'll never be able to adjust a variable speed projector to a constant frame-rate camera. 
> 
> 3. If you can only match camera and projector at a projection frame-rate other than what the film was shot at (say 24fps vs. 18fps) it's no big deal, as you just change the speed in the NLE. For most material, it should look fine. If you're projecting at the 'wrong' speed to a variable frame-rate camera, I'm not sure if over-cranking to a multiple (e.g. shooting 24fps projection at 48fps video) would yield smoother results when you drop it back to 18fps in the video editor. Anybody know?
> 
> 4. As Dana said, playing with the shutter speed on the video camera can MINIMIZE flicker, but it's highly unlikely to get rid of it. Whether the minimal flicker is acceptable is a question for your own tastes and purposes. One of the best senior video projects one of my students made was shot on Super-8 and telecined off a wall to a basic DV-NTSC camcorder. The video had a lot of flicker, but it was perfect for the aesthetic of the project.
> 
> In the one regular class I taught where students shot on photochemical film (16mm) they still finished in FCP, and toward the end of my teaching we had gone from NTSC to HDV. I had telecined the students footage to NTSC with a 5-blade (Singer-Telex, and later an Elmo), which was tricky enough that I had to do it myself, but when we got Canon XHA1s I just set up a regular Pageant and that hit sync with the 24F mode without any tweaking. The results looked very nice to my eye, and the students could do it themselves. But 16mm projectors are a lot more regular than most Super 8 machines. But if you can get an even, steady image on the wall, I'd guess HD video of it should be more than acceptable for most purposes
> 
> 4. Since a certain amount of trial and error is involved in getting any DIY telecine adjusted, you'll want to have some not-valuable footage to do that, so you can get your precious new footage done right in the fewest number of passes. In addition to getting the best sync/least flicker you'll want to find the best manual exposure. One setting may not work for all shots, since even Super 8 has a lot more latitude than video. Auto-exposure will be slow to react to shot changes, and will mess up anything where the frame is darker or lighter than average.
> 
> 5. All of this assumes you're running un-spliced film through the gate. Splices will mess everything up. As far as I know, the only way to get a quality transfer of spliced film is by having it scanned.
> 
> 6. I have tried using the mirror-box attachments for telecine with no success. I had a relatively more expensive one I got on eBay that had good optics and was built like a tank. Try as I might, I could never get the projector, the box, and the camera aligned properly -- and I'm pretty handy: made my own bench for the projector with special mounts for the box and tripod. Probably could have gotten it right with a more sophisticated set-up, but shooting a screen was a lot easier, and working fine. I put the video camera right next to the right of projector, which minimized parallax to the point no one ever really noticed. You wouldn't want to get behind the projector, as you'd get light leaks from the lamp-house. I projected onto a piece of standard matte-white poster board affixed to a piece of particle board clamped into a Workmate maybe 6 ft. in front of the lens. I could completely darken the room. Actual walls are usally not the best, being a bit uneven in reflectance, not exactly flat, and often blemished in ways you don't notice otherwise because they're just walls. Portable movie screens have issues, too. Forget silver-lenticular and glass bead off the bat, and even a matte white screen can have a little texture or surface ripple you wouldn't see from a screening distance but could show in video re-photography. Cheap poster-board can have surface irregularities, too. Just get a sheet of whatever the art store has that has the most even matte-white finish - probably the foam core stuff, and affix it firmly to whatever vertical surface is most convenient. I just made a little frame of black gaffers tape to hold my screen in place on the backing board. Be careful taping anything to a real wall of piece of furniture you want to keep the paint/finish on. Gaffers tape comes off of most things clean if you're careful and it hasn't been there too long. The blue painters tape comes off nice, but may not be sticky enough to hold your makeshift screen in place (I think 3M has a patent, and theirs is superior to all the knock-offs). Duct tape comes off of nothing clean. It may be (or may not) be useful in hurricanes, but it has no use in any AV application (and yes, I learned that the hard way in my ignorant youth...).
> 
> ........
> 
> Since Dana mentioned Costco, I checked 'em out online. 
> They subcontract everything out to a company called YesVideo, which is also used by CVS, Walmart, Rite-Aid and Meijer (for those of you in Oh-Hi-Oh). 
> The Costco page is : http://www.costcodvd.com/services_and_pricing-film.aspx
> You can deal with YesVideo directly (http://www.yesvideo.com/) but it's cheaper through Costco.
> 
> Obviously consumer home-movie oriented, yesvideo.com's basic service turns your film into a web video you can view online, but can't download. For an extra fee, they deliver you one of more SD DVDs. They take S8, R8 and 16mm original.
> 
> The yesvideo site lists prices for the online service (sans DVD) by reel size:
> 50 ft.  8.99
> 200 ft. 29.99
> 400 ft. 59.99
> So if Ben puts his 12 rolls of S8 onto bigger reels, he can see them online for $90. :-(
> 
> Costco only offers a package with two DVD copies plus the online access. 17.99 for 150 ft. + .11 ft. after. Which would come to $67.49 for 1200 ft. Obviously a better deal than going direct to YesVideo. At least you could rip the DVDs to video files with MPEG Streamclip or such. (Didn't check CVS for comparison.)
> 
> There was a chat box online at yesvideo.com, and I asked the rep a few basic tech questions, like what frame-rate and codec the online versions were, whether the SD DVDs were just standard NTSC 60i or 24P. I may as well have been speaking Martian. He took my email address, and said he'd have a member of the Movie Team get back to me.
> 
> So, does anyone have any experience with these YesVideo folks?
> 
> There's a lot of technology in the process that could vary in quality. Are they using a scanner, a telecine projector, a hybrid like the Moviestuff rigs? If it's not a scanner, what kind of imager is it. Do they do anything with exposure or color, and if so what? What kind of raw file do they capture to, (or do they have some high tech hardware to go straight to MPEG2)? What kind of data rate are they giving the MPEG2 file, and how good is the compression algorithm? 
> 
> They have links to press clips from Wired, WSJ, Bloomberg, and Woman's Day on their page, and to presumably glowing customer testimonials, none of which I bothered to click.
> 
> ........ 
> 
> Granted that Ben's OP indicated 'professional' telecine is beyond his budget, I'll add what I know about two such services.
> 
> Movette in SF specializes in high-quality transfers of old home movies that might be suffering from shrinkage, fading, bad splices, etc. AFAIK, they're the only commercial service in North America with a Kinetta, though it's not mentioned on their website, which doesn't seem to have been updated in awhile. ***Maybe it's a secret? :-) Since Buck and Jeff are longtime Frameworkers, maybe "Pip Chodorov sent me" gets you entrance to otherwise locked doors?*** One of these days, I'll be digging my old films out of the closet and taking them to Buck. (Looking forward to meeting you...)
> 
> Pro8mm in Burbank, on the other hand, specializes in transfers of freshly shot stock. If you do a web-search, you'll find some negative comments and some very positive ones from folks who've had work done there. I've met Phil Vigeant, and he seems like a good guy. My take is that dealing with Pro8mm is like dealing with most film labs: if you just send 'em stuff in the mail with an "I need this done ASAP" 'tude, you might not get the best results. On the other hand, treat the staff like human beings, take the time to ask polite questions and do a little schmoozing, get to know the people, show some love for what they do and for film as an art, and you'll get their best effort. After having bad experiences with other telecine services (NOT Movette, just to be clear), Frameworker Ken Paul Rosenthal took his stuff to Pro8mm. He went down to Burbank with the footage personally, Phil let him sit in on the transfer session. Ken has been ecstatic with the results and with his interaction Phil. And, as Ken is a friend, I can testify that no-one who can get through a tech session with Ken and remain buddies afterward can possibly be an asshole.
> 
> 
> 
> 
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