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**Patrick** · 20 February 2000, 00:33

One option you have which would allow you to maintain the best quality would be to play back your 8mm tapes using a Digital8 camcorder. Have this camcorder connected via firewire to another Digital8 or a MiniDV camcorder. The digital tapes made on the recording unit should be good for a few years until a better method of digital storage comes along.

The only problem that might occur is if the original 8mm tapes were recorded on a camcorder which didn't have its tape path alignment adjusted within specs. Even though the tapes might play back on the unit they were originally recorded on, they may not track properly on another unit that is adjusted correctly. This is a common problem with the 8mm format. If this is the situation with your tapes, play them back with the original camcorder and connect it to a digital camcorder with an S-video (and audio) cable. This wouldn't be nearly as good as the first option I mentioned, but at least it would still allow you to archive your analog tapes to a digital format.

******

I realized after I posted that if you were to use the original 8mm camcorder to play back your tapes that it wouldn't have an S-video output like the Hi8 camcorders do. Well, your third best option is to then use a composite cable to transfer the video signal from your analog camcorder to a digital unit.

[This message has been edited by Patrick (edited 20 February 2000).]

**Flying dutchman** · 20 February 2000, 00:44

... Kinda hard to answer. You CAN record using the Marvel codec, and use a program like "avi.exe" to change the codec name in the header of each avi file. If you change it into "MJPG", you can also use different MJPG codecs such as PICVIDEO (which can be downloaded for free at their website).

Picvideo runs fine under Windows 2000! This is currently the only way to directly playback Marvel videos under Win2000...

At the highest quality, a CDR will only hold 3 1/2 minutes of video though, and is of yourse much to slow for direct playback.

You might want to convert the video to mpeg-2 using a codec like LSX. In that case, you can fit some 15-20 minutes video (full resolution, high quality) on a cdrom. Looks like mpeg-2 is here to stay!

Have you tried to film off the screen? It's hard to find the right adjustments for brightness and contrast, and the result is "flickery" because of the funny frame rate. The biggest problems are that super-8 is recorded at 18 frames per second, and that the contrast is low. Moreover, "black" is never quite black but rather dark grey.
It might be worthwile to use a program like "virtualdub" for reprocessing, it has an excellent filter called "levels"...

**Patrick** · 20 February 2000, 00:53

Hey dutchman, you're grounded! StLlloyd is talking about 8mm video, not 8mm film.

**Wyntha** · 20 February 2000, 03:08

I'd be interested to know if a) Mpeg-1 is an alternative to Mpeg-2 as you can get more on CD-R that way and b) What about Mpeg-4?

**stlloyd** · 20 February 2000, 12:29

Thanks for the quick responses - just posted this last night and several response already.

I didn't know you could use PICVideo to play Matrox MJPEG just by changing the name in the file, but that is good to know. I am not looking to play off of the CD's just archive and reload the onto hard disk when I do the real editing. I have found I can go with the low quality setting for capture without any vissible loss (8mm is like VHS, not all that good). That improves the time per CD somewhat.

As for transferring directly to DV using a Digital-8 camera, that would definitely be the easiest, but I don't have access to one. I do have a DV camera for the receiving end tho. Capturing in MJPEG and converting to DV is a possibility, but is very slow when rendering.

I have tried some direct MPEG-1 capture, but there was noticeable quality loss. But great compression.

Direct MPEG-2 capture using the YUY2 registry hack may allow me to capture at full resolution - half resolution doesn't cut it. I have tried RGB but can't capture at full resolution. My system is based on a 450MHz PIII, so even with the registry hack it may not be able to do the direct capture at full rez (anyone done this with a 450?). I was going to test this with the trial version of VS4.0 but my 15 days have expired and I haven't found a way to clean things enough to let me try this again (it was installed with CleanSweep on, but there is still something out there). I really want to use MSPro6.0 but still waiting. 15-20 min per CD would be fine (beats 3-5min for sure).

A question regarding MPEG-2 capture with GoMotion direct. I have seen comments about this having problems with fast action. Most of my videos don't have that much action, but some do. Will this be a problem?

I haven't tried MPEG4 - will it be around down the road?

------------------
-StLlloyd

**Flying dutchman** · 21 February 2000, 04:48

Aargh! Thanks Patrick. When I read the "8 mm, 10 years old" I assumed it was super 8, not video 8...

**Fred H** · 23 February 2000, 00:58

Hi, Flying dutchman.
You are right, there are peaople who will archive super 8mm and even old 8mm films, like me. ( I have some from ...1943 !!!)
My biggest problem is that my Sony TRV 10E camcoder has autofocus, which is a problem to get constantly sharpen images. The autofocus "jumps" to find the right distance, missing seconds of videoclips.
Yes, I know how to cure it, with another camcoder using manual focusing... or have you an other "miracle-solution"? :-)

**Willem** · 23 February 2000, 01:57

>Since this is only standard 8mm video...

Try default settings for video, full quality settings for RR and at least 4 Mpbs for MPEG2 (MP@ML).

>to play back your 8mm tapes using a Digital8...

Tapes do not last forever... broadcasters have problems with older tapes. Neither are CD-ROMs everlasting. If you want to keep your recordings you have to copy them every ten or twenty years to new medium. In this respect MPEG2 sounds great, because 1) copying bits does not affect quality and 2) digital television keeps MPEG2 alive.

Willem

**kidspot** · 23 February 2000, 14:56

I've got a question that "flying dutchman" started to answer. A friend asked me to help archive his father's old 8mm films from the 50's & 60's. I would like to get them on DV tape or CD's in MPEG-2. Is there a better method than shooting at a screen? Is it better to use a silver screen or white Overhead type?

Mahalo - Kidspot

**KRSESQ** · 23 February 2000, 20:28

Use a flat, clean, matte finish posterboard for the screen. We did some experimenting at our local PBS station and this worked best...no glare or hot spots. Get the projector and camera as close together as possible. Be sure to shield the camera from glare from the projector. Get the camera/projector as close to the screen as possible for a nice bright image. If possible, use a camera with a full manual aperture control. For best quality a projector with a five bladed shutter should be used to eliminate strobing. Unfortunately these are somewhat rare. But with a little luck the strobing won't be too noticeable. We achieved surprisingly good quality transfers using this setup. For serious, professional transfers check out www.super8sound.com.

**hippie91** · 24 February 2000, 12:20

where can i get that program that just changes the header to chonge the codec... it would save me many hours since a lot of times people bring over cg stuff for me to output and i usually end up having to run it through msp's convert file option to stabalize it, usually converting it to matrox mjpeg.

**Mikey** · 25 February 2000, 06:47

RE: Capturing 8mm film to video:
I remember reading a post on rec.video.something from a guy in
Europe who had rigged up a device that scanned 8mm film frame by frame and pieced
together an AVI file from it. He said the quality was superb.
Now there's an idea for a product!

**DouglasTexas** · 25 February 2000, 14:42

Restoration of old 8mm film. We do 8mm film tranfers. @.10 a foot straight image to VHS high grade tape. Then we use a Dazzle USB Digital Video Creator, to import as native MPEG2. Then we can edit within this program for the final edits. We then use Cakewalk Pro 9 to add sound. Either music,and or narrative. Since this has worked so well for us we are also doing video import to write to CD. And note: we have managed to do alot more video then what I have seen everyone in this discussion has been able to. Just to find out just how much I did an experiment. I recorded a full length movie. About 1 hour and 30 minutes long. I was able to get 70 minutes of that video onto a CD. of course first I had to do a split of the movie accordingly where I coould know that each file would fit on a 650 meg CDR. As long as keep it about 620 megs or less it worked just fine, this allowed plenty of room for the table of contents file on the CD.
We are looking forward to using MSP 6 which will further our ablity to even more. Works well with presentation software too.One other program that really helps too is Cool Edit 2000. I can edit all my soound files any way I want to. And then export them as PCM, RealG2 or MP3 or SND for apple just to name a few.
DouglasTexas

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Archiving of older 8mm video

Archiving of older 8mm video

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