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

Thu Dec 29 22:30:15 UTC 2011

Can't believe I missed this. I have a few cartridges from school projects. I have a flatbed scanner with a transparency adaptor, and was thinking of scanning full strips and either finding or writing software to assemble them. 

Re: editing / drop frame / etc: I shot one of my projects with a custom dual threaded bracket that let me attach a miniDV camera and super8 together. I then used final cut pro to edit the miniDV footage, and finally went and cut the super8. 

Interestingly, the differing frame rates actually made a lot of the editing hard. I had a couple scenes with a guy running around the corner or similar. I had the guy (thanks, rbraun!) run twice with the camera in different places, and then had to cut at the right moment. One frame was actually enough for a noticeable difference (if my actor was a pro and ran the same place and same speed it may not have been like that). The different frame alignment between super8 and miniDV meant that the optimal cut points were actually sometimes quite different. I felt like I was re-deciding from scratch where to do the cut. 

Thanks,

gopi at iPhone

On Dec 29, 2011, at 14:14, jim <jim at systemateka.com> wrote:

> 
> 
> 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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>>>> Noisebridge-discuss at lists.noisebridge.net
>>>> 
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