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Telecine or Beaulieu


Zack Spiger

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If you had a regular average transfer onto miniDV or whatever, then TC issues can be pretty much excluded. Also: at 24 fps, the shutter opening angle is 1/87 sec for the Beaulieu 4008-series. Although that is quite short and can lead to impressions of strobe when filming objects in motion, they should not be so strong as to feel jitterish and jumpy.

 

Those words would normally describe an unstable picture frame in relation to the camera gate and the film transportation. The Beaulieu 6/7/9008-series and to a lesser degree the 4008-series has a reputation for being befallen by pull-down claw problems that lead to jitterish and jumpy transportation (the first due to its construction, the latter due to lack of regular CLA), but the low-res of YouTube and handheld shooting makes it a game of guessing for me what the issue might be with your footage.

 

Although I know this is a tricky thing to ask from you, but do you have any other shots at hand, or could you comment on how long you own this camera, if this is an irregular result you got from it, if it normally works fine, what film stock you used, where the transfer was done etc. The more info you post in your question, the easier it is for people to get a complete picture and come to conclusions faster - and hence be more helpful "out of the box". :)

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...this is a characteristic of the Beaulieu 4008. the mirror shutter is fast (1/86th) at 24fps - fast enough to stop action. This creates a slight strobe effect. If you adjust the shutter angle half open you get (1/172) at 24fps. This will make the strobe effect even more pronounced.

 

The average shutter speed on most cine cameras is around 1/45 - 1/55th at 24fps. The slower shutter speeds produce smoother frame to frame recording.

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...I missed the YouTube example for my first reply. It looks like a camera problem or TC problem. Try shooting a roll of reversal and projecting it. If it looks reasonably stable the problem is probably TC.

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It is my friend's camera we used with Vision 2 200t. I believe it was recently serviced by a reputable source in Porland, Or.

 

I'm shooting with my Leicina Special from now on. That Beaulieu looks too much like a gun, and this is not cool in Northern Ireland.

 

In theory, what would happen to 24fps footage telecined at 25fps?

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It is my friend's camera we used with Vision 2 200t. I believe it was recently serviced by a reputable source in Porland, Or.

 

I'm shooting with my Leicina Special from now on. That Beaulieu looks too much like a gun, and this is not cool in Northern Ireland.

 

In theory, what would happen to 24fps footage telecined at 25fps?

 

 

in theory, not much. Certainly not what we are seeing on your YouTube example. Who did the TC?

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Zack,

 

Time code is not your problem, in PAL countries you are SUPPOSED to transfer at 25fps. Ireland is on the PAL standard correct?

 

PAL is a film friendly video standard because the time code frame rate is only one frame per second different than the frame rate of your film. So when your film is telecined it is only sped up a tiny bit to make up for the one frame difference. The human eye will not see this difference.

 

Those of us on the NTSC standard have a much harder time with things because when we transfer film to video we need to add 6 new frames per second (that is 6 new frames per every 24 frames in order to achieve the 29.97 frame rate of NTSC video), hence the dreaded 3:2 pull down which gives us two split frames for every 3 whole frames.

 

Anyway your jitter problems are because you were shooting hand held and on top of that you may have a camera problem. Also some gate weave could have occurred in telecine. Finally keep in mind that most super 8 cameras (including the Beaulieus and Canons) don't have very good registration. That's one of the things that gives super 8 its charm.

Edited by Douglas Hunter
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Ireland is PAL. The film was developed and transfered at Color City in Paris, France. I payed extra for a "professional" telecine. Who knows what that means....

 

The footage is very shaky since it's handheld and zoomed way in, but it still seems like there is a frame rate problem.

 

I had some Leicina footage transfered and it looked great even though it was shot in the same fashion.

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The footage is very shaky since it's handheld and zoomed way in, but it still seems like there is a frame rate problem.

 

 

What do you mean by a frame rate problem? What are you seeing that suggests this?

 

Granted looking at film on the web by definition can't tell one very much but I'm not seeing anything in your footage that suggests a teleccine frame rate issue, or significant speeding up or slowing down of the camera's motor. Or slipping frames due pull down claw issues.

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There're 2 methods of transferring 24 fps film to 25 fps PAL:

 

1. 24 @ 25

2. 24 & 1

 

Ask Color City which they used, most likely 24 & 1 - this method repeats one extra video field every 12th film frame, and can result in flickering.

 

The easiest method to deal with is 24 @ 25, which is merely a 4% speed increase. You can then conform the PAL video to 24 fps.

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There're 2 methods of transferring 24 fps film to 25 fps PAL:

 

1. 24 @ 25

2. 24 & 1

 

Ask Color City which they used, most likely 24 & 1 - this method repeats one extra video field every 12th film frame, and can result in flickering.

 

The easiest method to deal with is 24 @ 25, which is merely a 4% speed increase. You can then conform the PAL video to 24 fps.

 

 

 

 

Thanks Rafael! I will try this out.

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