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What's the Best DIY Way to Transfer Super 8 to HD/Digital?


PeterJacobsen

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I'd like to transfer my Super 8 film to HD mini DV tapes or direct to hard drive without the expense of using a pro telecine service provider. What's the best way to transfer super 8 at home? I know the quality won't be as good as using professional telecine service providers, but I have to keep my costs manageable. I have a mini-DV HD camera, and I'm willing to invest no more than $2,000 in new equipment to make "quality" Super 8 DIY transfer possible.

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How much film do you have to transfer? I have found DIY frame by frame transfer systems pretty good and if they're set up right I think ithe results they give are as good as most high end transfers. You can buy them and I think if you were to buy one it'll be within your budget.

 

I have used all sorts of high end broadcast transfer places here in the UK and well I haven't always been impressed with the final results with Super 8. But then I had a very cheap transfer, a DIY frame by frame system, I had already had a transfer of the film done by an Ursa but wasn't happy. I was surprised as the results were inrcreadible, better than the Ursa's. Great results and inreadibly cheap and easy, look on the net and you'll find all sorts of stuff aout DIY transfers.

 

P

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Sorry... It was not possible to edit my posting any more..

That clip is pasword protected.

Here is what I wanted to post:

 

Here's a HD 720p25 test, aspect ratio 16:9.

Cropped and upscaled from a DIY 1024 x 768 transfer.

http://www.vimeo.com/6751675

 

pasword= videofred

 

From the same film, but this time in 720p50:

http://www.vimeo.com/6377661

 

Format is 980 x 720, so with two 150 pixels black borders we have 1280 x 720.

 

many greetings from Belgium,

 

Fred.

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Sorry... It was not possible to edit my posting any more..

That clip is pasword protected.

Here is what I wanted to post:

 

Here's a HD 720p25 test, aspect ratio 16:9.

Cropped and upscaled from a DIY 1024 x 768 transfer.

http://www.vimeo.com/6751675

 

pasword= videofred

 

From the same film, but this time in 720p50:

http://www.vimeo.com/6377661

 

Format is 980 x 720, so with two 150 pixels black borders we have 1280 x 720.

 

many greetings from Belgium,

 

Fred.

 

that looks great fpr 64T. but the question is more: "how did you do that" :)

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Your results have information in them than you'd have sworn was never on the original negative. Or reversal. Or whatever it is.

 

Thank you!

 

I have a theory about this: the information is hidden in the grain. And because the grain is constantly moving and changing, frame 1 contains other information then frame 2 and so on. Thus averaging multiple frames makes more information visible on all frames.. On the 2009 E64T clips I have averaged 8 frames.

 

PS: The source was very grainy and there was something wrong with the exposure of my Canon 1014. There was random flickering on the original film. (no pattern). The Avisynth script also takes care of this. I will upload a before/after clip to show you all the effect of the script

 

Fred.

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I have a theory about this: the information is hidden in the grain. And because the grain is constantly moving and changing, frame 1 contains other information then frame 2 and so on. Thus averaging multiple frames makes more information visible on all frames.. On the 2009 E64T clips I have averaged 8 frames.

 

Absolutely! Try this experiment: The next time you see something on television where they're using large pixels to disguise something (like a naked woman) try "dancing" your eyes around the image. Shazaam! You'll see everything they've been trying to hide if there's any relative motion between the pixels and the image underneath. I have noticed that some producers have started to use even larger pixel blocks to prevent that from happening, darn!

 

This effect is similar to your theory about grain, the brain's image processing is using a process not unlike long GOP compression where the information across multiple images is used to create the final visual impression.

 

Phil?

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