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**Dr Mordrid** · 29 January 2002, 11:03

There are cheap copy racks made just for this kind of thing.

You project the film footage onto a mirror which reflects the image onto a back-projection screen. Point the camcorder, doesn't matter what type, start both and you get a pretty decent copy. An example is the SIMA CopyKit (Model SVC-VA).

You could also take it into a service agency and have them do it. You'll get much better, if more expensive, results.

Yes, the room should be dark and QUIET, unless your projector has line outs you can plug into the cams microphone jack with an adapter.

Dr. Mordid

**PETERLEE** · 29 January 2002, 16:33

been using "copy rack" thru 4 incarnations of video from 20 years or more, good quality, only 1 snag. cine is 24 frames / sec . in "pal" land where i am video is 25 can produce flicker.........
i am lucky " inherited" projector with variable speed control....
adjusts playback & gets rid of flicker..........hope this helps

**Brian Ellis** · 30 January 2002, 00:49

Hulk

I presume you mean 8 mm film?????? At least, that's what the others here seem to think you mean.

There are two 8 mm film formats. Double-8 was the earlier and cosisted of 16 mm film with twice as many perforations as ordinary 16 mm film, which was run through the camera twice. When it was processed, it was slit up the middle and the two ends joined, to produce 50 ft of 8 mm wide film with a play time of a tad over 4 minutes. The image size was very small, so the quality was relatively mediocre (although better than any video. No sound film was available, although some companies put a magnetic stripe between the perforations and the edge. The sound quality on these, if you should happen to have one of the very rare projectors with sound, was mediocre. Another sound solution was a passive add-on to a silent projector, consisting of a large flywheel between the film spool and the first sprocket: this had a magnetic head and the sound quality was atrocious.

The other format is Super-8 which was sold as a cassette containing 8 mm wide film and very narrow sprocket holes, giving a much larger area for the image. With a good camera, such as the Canon 1014, the quality was superb. A 50 ft cassette ran for about 3.5 minutes. Kodak did offer film with a magnetic sound stripe and there were a few sound cameras, but they were the exception rather than the rule. They were not a commercial success. Again, sound projectors did not grow exactly on trees and the quality of the best was still mediocre.

I therefore think that it is unlikely that there will be sound. In any case, all 8 mm projectors are horrendously noisy so, if there is sound, a direct connection to the loudspeaker socket, with a resistor network, would be the only option. In all probability, the amplifier would be a valve (tube) type with a single Class A beam tetrode output, feeding an output transformer with a 15 ohm secondary. Do not run it without a 15 ohm load, as you may get some horrendous voltage peaks across the primary which may blow everything to kingdom come.

Two other points: the film has probably become brittle, so have a good splicer handy and run it through as little as possible. Also, it may have become dirty with the dust of ages. Cleaning is tricky. Running it through a dry, soft cloth will probably do more harm than good (scratches): the best thing is to clean them manually by looking at it through a desk magnifier and flicking off each dust particle with a camel-hair brush. An alternative is solvent cleaning, but this is a job for experts with good equipment because the solvents used are quite toxic and the blend varies according to the type of film base.

A little tip: if the film is so brittle as to be unworkable and you cannot get a copy made, you may be able to save the situation by putting them in a tin with some camphor for several weeks. Triacetate film base will absorb some of the camphor vapour and become slightly more supple.

BTW, silent film speed was 16 fps for double-8 and 18 fps for super-8, so set the shutter speed of your camera to the longest exposure time possible.

**Hulk** · 30 January 2002, 09:39

Brian,

Thanks for the great advice. I did find out from my wife that there is no sound. They have about 20 reels of this stuff, whatever it is. The last time I dealt with film was in high school 20 years ago with the whirring projector!

Hmmm. 20 x 4 would be about 80 minutes total. No too bad. I'm thinking that since the run time is so low with this stuff they captured exactly what they wanted to capture so the editing won't be too involved. I think one possible disadvantage with the relatively low cost of shooting today is that many people don't plan shots, they just let it run, and run, and run...

I hope I'm lucky and the film holds together long enough for me to get it recorded.

Mark

**zeb7** · 30 January 2002, 21:17

If some of the film is so brittle, you could (as last resort) scan it on a flatbed scanner,
then you would at lest have some frames to preserve before the film perishes completely

The scanner would need to have an optical resolution of 1800dpi to be similar to S-VHS
or 1200dpi for VHS

BTW : i don't mean scanning all 86,400 frames

just enough to make a slide show of the unrecoverable film
or what you have time for.

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Tip on copying 8mm video with my dv cam appreciated.

Tip on copying 8mm video with my dv cam appreciated.

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