[Noisebridge-discuss] request for info re super-8 conversion hack

jim jim at systemateka.com
Thu Dec 29 22:14:12 UTC 2011



Wow and thanks lots! yes that helped plenty! 
more thanks. 




On Thu, 2011-12-29 at 13:55 -0800, Sean Cusack wrote:
> ooh crap! Sorry for not seeing this earlier. When I took film and
> video in college, my final project was on 8mm, and I wanted to use
> non-linear editors to add sound, splice, etc. the result (i.e. I faced
> the same problem).
> 
> 
> My solution was exactly what you proposed - dark room, project onto a
> white wall, record with a nice DV cam on a tripod. Reason being, there
> are some weird complications to trying to get analog -> digital when
> it comes to film:
> 
> 
> Video is not quite 30fps, it is 29.97fps because it "drops" a frame
> every so often to store information related to something called a
> timecode. A timecode is a counter that allows software, DVD players,
> etc., to reference different points in a digital file by an index. So,
> somehow, you need to get your non-timecoded analog stuff into a
> timecoded digital format before you can play it on anything. There are
> a couple of ways to do this:
> 
> 
> a) use fancy pants (expensive) editing software like Premiere or Final
> Cut. You can import a "filmstrip" of individually scanned images and
> let it stitch them together into a continuous movie file with a
> timecode attached. This makes the scanning part easy, yet laborious,
> since you can just snap a picture of every single frame.
> b) build a "drop frame" algorithm into your scanner. If I remember the
> math, 29.97fps means you drop 1 frame from every 100 frames of
> footage. So, you'd want to have your scanner randomly skip a frame at
> that frequency. Timecoding would be easy since you'd just number each
> frame in the sequence you captured it.
> 
> 
> Anyways, not sure if that helped or not, or if it was way too late,
> but just to throw an extra $0.02 in there :)
> 
> Sean
> 
> On Tue, Dec 20, 2011 at 12:46 PM, jim <jim at well.com> wrote:
>         
>         
>            Thanks for the ScanCafe tip; I'll pass it on.
>         I'm still hoping someone will provide some kind
>         of guidance re making the gizmo from scratch.
>         
>         
>         
>         On Tue, 2011-12-20 at 15:20 -0500, Casey Callendrello wrote:
>         > I fully support creating such a hack. However, there is a
>         company based
>         > in India called ScanCafe that will do scanning for very
>         reasonable
>         > prices - $.20 per foot.
>         >
>         > --Casey
>         >
>         > On 12/20/11 1:45 PM, jim wrote:
>         > >      a friend of mine has a friend who's got some
>         > > super-8 format film that he'd like to capture into
>         > > some kind of digital format.
>         > >      the content is family stuff, personal interest,
>         > > no commercial value. he's not in a rush and doesn't
>         > > want to pay the high fees for a commercial shop to
>         > > do a conversion. the 20-year old film is in great
>         > > shape, given the limitations of super-8 format.
>         > >
>         > >      i suppose one way of conversion might be to
>         > > play the super-8 onto a screen and record the output
>         > > with a digital video camera.
>         > >      my pal thinks this is good fodder for a hack: rig
>         > > up some kind of ccd device to a mechanical super-8
>         > > film feeder and use sprocket edge detection to
>         > > determine when to capture the current frame to the
>         > > ccd device.
>         > >      anybody got ideas or opinions?
>         > >
>         > >
>         > >
>         > >
>         > >
>         > >
>         > >
>         > > _______________________________________________
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>         > >
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>         >
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