Okay, this may seem like an odd question to some of you, but here goes.... 

Would anyone know what equipment I would need to capture or transfer 8mm and 16mm film to Avid Liquid Pro?  I have the capture box for Avid Liquid Pro.  I also have a Dazzle Video Creator 150 capture box.  In this high tech world it would seem that somewhere on this planet there is a devise that I can pop the film reel into and connect to either of these capture boxes and caputure the film.  I can transfer from VHS really easily.  Is there such a beast? 

The least expensive way to do this is to buy one of the simple transfer units.  I own one and they work pretty well for the price.  There's a small "screen" on one side where you project the film.  Inside is a mirror which diverts the image into a lens.  You point your camcorder into that lens and tape the projection.  Something like this might be $40-$50.

There are other methods which are more costly but work better.  There was a discussion of one on the old Liquid forum at Avid's site.  That forum is archived so that it can be searched.  Try "film transfer" or "8mm" in a search at the old forum.  I don't remember offhand the name of the device but it was between $1000 and $2000, I think.

If you have Liquid Pro (with the Pro BOB), you do not need the Dazzle BOB. 

 

It's called a Workprinter. It's a modified projector that uses a cool bulb and transfers the images frame by frame (the least expensive unit uses a modified mouse; you aim a video camera at the transfer lens, it flashes a frame up and then "clicks" the mouse. You need software that's set to capture an image when the mouse is clicked.) Liquid doesn't support a Workprinter as it doesn't have frame-by-frame capture. I think Scenalyzer might. There's also a Photoshop script floating around somewhere out there for creating image sequences (it requires a camera with a driver that PS understands).

 Hope this helps.
 

DStone:

It's called a Workprinter.

Yep, that's the expensive method.  Thanks, Dave.  One of these days when I don't have something else to spend my money on, I'll probably get one.  I took some footage transferred the cheaper way (with one of the simple boxes I mentioned) and manually removed all the extra video frames for a special project once.  Boy, that was tedious.  Thankfully, that isn't necessary for general-purpose transfers and SanD probably doesn't have a need for it (yet!).

The box that you would need is a telecine box. What the box does is essentially allow the 8 or 16 mm projector to run the film and display it on a small screen, the box has a hook up for sound in the case of 16 mm. On the other side of the box you point your camcorder at it and record at the same time, transferring the image. I do this all the time, I found a telecine box at a garage sale for a buck and bought an 8 mm projector for 40 bucks and a 16 mmm projector for 100 bucks on ebay. I had alot of old movies from the 1950's my father shot in south america and europe and I wanted to preserve them. I could have used a transfer bureau on the web, but this can get rather expensive since they usually charge by the foot for the transfer. I just did a 8 mm transfer for a friend, his mother had her wedding on 8 mm from 1961, and see has not seen it in 25 years, so I transfered it for them. She was incredibly happy. I do this as a hobby basically, if you have some stuff you want transfered contact me at my email address, richardspitzer@hotmail.com.

The boxes they've described do an ok job, however if you'd like to capture your films properly, either invest the money, if you have a lot of film, or pay to have it done for you.  Typicall you can get it transeferred without any editing for .16 to .18 / foot.     I do this type of work with film, slides, and photos as a sideline business.(recondition and put together on a DVD)  Here's the site for the equipment I use.  http://moviestuff.tv/ 

  If there's any questions I can answer for you please msg me.  If you look around online, there's a lot of places to get this done properly for you.  I'm not trying to hustle up work.

SanD:

Okay, this may seem like an odd question to some of you, but here goes.... 

Would anyone know what equipment I would need to capture or transfer 8mm and 16mm film to Avid Liquid Pro?  I have the capture box for Avid Liquid Pro.  I also have a Dazzle Video Creator 150 capture box.  In this high tech world it would seem that somewhere on this planet there is a devise that I can pop the film reel into and connect to either of these capture boxes and caputure the film.  I can transfer from VHS really easily.  Is there such a beast? 

One way is you can project on a foam board and capture with a video camera. We use a cream colored one and capture right thru the video camera into Liquid. We usually have the camera just above the projector to record the foam board.  We do around 100 small rolls a year..

Another option would be something like "Glasscreen"  ( http://www.glasscreen.com/ ), a system of a screen composed of two thin sheets of optical glass with a thin layer of parafin between them, a mirror and the projector.  The projector (film or slide) projects the image via a mirror onto the screen and the video camera shoots into the back of the screen (hence the need for a mirror).  The advantage of the parafin layer is to minimise the flare of shooting into the glare of the projection lamp.

You will also need a variable speed projector with any system, not only this one.  The video is recorded at 30 fps while the film is at 18 fps (no sound), or 24 fps (with sound).  The speed of the projector needs to be adjusted to a common denominator (20 fps) to eliminate the strobing effect due to the difference in frame rates.

The problem with the greenscreen is as with any of the reflection boxes.  Trying to keep in sync to avoid any strobing as well as the "bar crawl".  Many cameras from years ago were wind up.  The speed varied mechanically as the spring wound down.  Therefore, you must keep adjusting the projector speed to keep a good shot, not counting not getting a true 90 degree angle on each of the corners when you shoot on a wall as the alingment of the camera to the screen isn't directly in line with the projector.  It's not possible.  When you capture one frame at a time you get a good, full gate, frame.  You then adjust the speed with in the pc for a solid constant speed with zero flicker.  I've used all the methods at one time or the other and the frame to frame capture gives the best quality.  Many times film becomes very brittle with age and you may only get one run before breakage becomes much more probable.  You should have a splicer at hand as well as the ability to clean and lube the film.   Most of the companies that restore old 35mm films use the frame by frame method.  It's well worth the extra effort or expense.

Believe it or not; we were in talks with Arri and a group out of Holland to create a product specific for liquid for doing just this. We were trying to get funding via the EU's ESprit program (which no longer exists apparently) but alas the acquisition occurred and all fun was put on hold. It could have been great.

SanD:

Okay, this may seem like an odd question to some of you, but here goes.... 

Would anyone know what equipment I would need to capture or transfer 8mm and 16mm film to Avid Liquid Pro?  I have the capture box for Avid Liquid Pro.  I also have a Dazzle Video Creator 150 capture box.  In this high tech world it would seem that somewhere on this planet there is a devise that I can pop the film reel into and connect to either of these capture boxes and caputure the film.  I can transfer from VHS really easily.  Is there such a beast? 

I just had about 5,000 ft or so of 8mm done. It was much cheaper for me to have it done. I had them put AVI's on hard drive so I could make my own DVD.

 

I outsource all my 8mm/16mm transfer to a company called Home Movie Depot.  They do an awesome job.  In fact, I have become one of their "affiliates" which affords me reduced prices in order for me to compete in a very tough market.  Like Sam The Sham, I just got finished sending them 5400 feet of film.  The frame by frame transfer will be delivered to me on an external hard drive where all I need do is copy the AVI files into my Liquid Media drive.  Once that is done, the fun begins.

This certainly beats going out buying a projector and doing it yourself plus the quality is fantastic.

I don't accept orders that aren't local.  I only work with my customers face to face.  A large portion of the film I work on is from the 30's & 40's.  16mm and 8mm.  I have seen the work you have outsourced Andy.  They do a fine job as well as I do.  I just prefer face to face.  It's the same with old slides, photos, & negative resoration. Much more labor intense but again well worth the cost.  When I do get film from the 50's and 60's it's almost like working with digital, the color is so crisp and clean.  The older film tends to either go dark or "red" out.  But as with most in the business the way of the hard drive is the best way to go for people that want to edit their own, especially with the 300G usb drives out now.   Does the Depot allow you to supply your own drive?  Just curious.  I do, but I know most don't.

Strat-1st:

Does the Depot allow you to supply your own drive?  Just curious.  I do, but I know most don't.

YES and NO.  You start out by requesting the HDD.  Then on subsequent orders, you return the drive to the Depot, and they send you a new job with your material.  On my first hard drive job, I sent them 62, 3" reels.  They sent be back an 80gb drive loaded with 62 AVI files.  It took me just over 13 minutes to copy them to Liquid's Media drive.  I did not want to edit on the the drive they sent me.  The other day I sent them 5400 feet of film on 17 different reels, mostly 400 footers.  It cost me about $15 to exchange the hard drive for a new one but in a few days I'll be receiving the new drive (probably with higher capacity) and it will be loaded with 17 AVI files, one for each reel.  It will probably take about 45 minutes to copy the files to my NLE system but that beats the nearly 6 hours it would have taken to capture had the job been delivered to me on miniDV!

I suppose some of you are going digital for archiving

would you believe that the big guys have a lot of problems going that way ?

look at this

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/23/business/media/23steal.html?_r=1&ref=technology&oref=login

great article. kind of ties into the blu-ray/hd-dvd thread a bit too. Its a brave new world, or, Honey, where's my film camera.

 this is why they'll pry my ol'Arriflex from my cold dead hands.
 

That's all well and good if you have the controlled enviroment for the film.  Most people that shot their home movies in the 30's, 40's, and so on didn't have it or didn't even consider it.  They weren't stored properly enough to keep them clean.  So for these folks digital storage is the best way to go as well as the most convient way to enjoy the old films over and over without having to deal with a projector that either needs new belts or a bulb, aside from being a pain in the shorts to rewind every 10 or 15 mins, and if you're lucky your film doesn't break.  That article doesn't address everyone with films to watch.

In  my experience the best method depends on the commecial value of the film.  The best transfers are via telecine machines which are mainly in broadcast TV rooms now but cost hard money.  The other systems mentioned all have drawbacks like strobing, vignetting etc but they're much cheaper.  Sadly it's one of those parts of our business in which there's no compromise. 

The WorkPrinter has no strobing, and very little vignetting (this has more to do with the video camera than the WorkPrinter setup). Still, it's not exactly cheap ($1500), but if you've a lot of material (and sufficient time to do it yourself) it can be more cost effective than sending the film out.

There are advantages to send the film out though. Some companies offer a wet-gate service (the film passes through a liquid filled gate where it's videoed; this fills in scratches, removes dust, negates some water stain problems, etc. They can also do a professional film cleaning which removes accumulated dirt and debris and removes (or at least minimizes) age staining (I do this for my own films, but I don't suggest doing this yourself as professional film cleaner can destroy a film if used incorrectly).

If you use one of the inexpensive film transfer units (which is really just a mirror, lens and projection screen) then you will have both strobing and vignetting (the film is brighter in the center than on the edges). Virtualdub has some filters for removing strobing from film transfers as well as vignetting (Deflicker / Antiflicker, Radial Luminance Correction) as well as filters for handling things like dirty frames, old film color cleanup, etc. You'll need to do a web search to find exactly what you need. It's not the same as going to a WorkPrinter or professional Telecine, but it's better than straight filming. And you may find that these filters work with the Virtualdub bridge for Liquid.

Dave and Andy,

 I am curious about your experiences. Dave, you said there are operators that use a liquid medium to fill in scratches and condition the film. Much of my film is dirty, and yet Andy, the Movie Depot did not describe their film cleaning as a "wet process" as Dave described. They only state that they clean the film. In your experience, Andy, did you see a big improvement in scratch removal and such in the Movie Depot's cleaning process? And Dave, can you recommend a service that does this liquid bath process?

You'll have to do a web search; there are a number of companies. I think one of the more economical ones is Agressive Media (http://www.goaggressive.com/). They've got a split picture showing the results of wet-gate processing for super-8.

What about you Andy? Scratches?

Doug,

If I were you I would call Home Movie Depot and ask them your questions, for me they were easy to contact. My only problem with Home Movie Depot is that they LOST some of my film. It's a long story and in the end they found it but I had to be real persistent.

Doug...

 I just got back a hard drive from Home Movie Depot containing 27 AVI files from 6000 feet of Super8 film I shot between 1972 and 1978.  Yes there were scratches.  Some were pretty bad,  All the film was originally edited by me way back when and my knowledge of proper film care was ZERO.  Usually my film conversion is complete within a matter of just a few days but this job was lasting two weeks.  When I called them to find out why the delay, I found out that my film was is horrible condition.  Tons of splice breaks (I used the liquid method as opposed to tape on my splices), twists and kinks in the rolls.  Plus my large reels contained lots of slack, therefore creating more friction on the film.  That's the bad news. 

Probably, 75% of my footage is virtually pristine and will cut nicely with minimal need for intervention.  HMD treated my video with kid gloves and did a fantastic job cleaning up my mess. 

AndyBrowne:

Doug...

 I just got back a hard drive from Home Movie Depot containing 27 AVI files from 6000 feet of Super8 film I shot between 1972 and 1978.  Yes there were scratches.  Some were pretty bad,  All the film was originally edited by me way back when and my knowledge of proper film care was ZERO.  Usually my film conversion is complete within a matter of just a few days but this job was lasting two weeks.  When I called them to find out why the delay, I found out that my film was is horrible condition.  Tons of splice breaks (I used the liquid method as opposed to tape on my splices), twists and kinks in the rolls.  Plus my large reels contained lots of slack, therefore creating more friction on the film.  That's the bad news. 

Probably, 75% of my footage is virtually pristine and will cut nicely with minimal need for intervention.  HMD treated my video with kid gloves and did a fantastic job cleaning up my mess. 

So, Andy. Are you saying that they removed scratches from teh original film? Also, I am a little confused about this hard drive thing. Do they sell you a hard drive and that is what they send you the files on? Or, do you send them YOUR hard drive and then they put files on it and send it back to you?