Hi Al.
Ah! But that is not authentic in my mind as that would not be seen from a projector. Only an editing table. We had an editing table that used rotating prisms that you could use through a magnifying lens and a back projected bulb. Some used gates like the majority of professional projectors did back then. I never dealt with 8 or 16mm film so not fully conversant with those formats. Did you splice using glue or tape?
Ray.
Did you splice using glue or tape?
Dad did it all in the late 70s/early 80s with glue. I didn't really appreciate the term "cutting room floor" until I started playing his edited compilations and realised what is involved in editing a cine movie. Pretty amazing, the whole technique, compared to the ease of today's non-linear-editing.
Actually the "glue" was called Film Cement. I suspect I still have some somewhere, but now after 40 years it might not work well!
Personally I don't like seeing old film transfers cleaned up too much. It takes away the atmosphere. I notice with John's examples the grain has disappeared along with the dust and scratches.
Hi Al.
Did you realise that in the early days of TV adverts that the star bursts and wipes between adverts were all on film? Even if the advert was broadcast live and not put into a string of film cut adverts, so that people would realise when there was a product change. We used the same glue they used to cement plastic waste pipes back then using something like an ink well and artist paint brush. It came in one litre brown ridged bottles similar to those supplied to chemists. The cutting block had an adjustable blade like on a woodworking plane to go across the film and you had to turn the opposing side of the cut upside down so the film remained flat with no bumps once joined. Depending on the film stock we also used transparent tape on a different cutting block that also punched holes for the edge perforations. It was more messy, often having to clear out the holes by hand after.
On new negative material we cut to directors notes who would put down the film's edge numbers of the frames in and out points to be cut. Wednesdays was preview theatre morning where we would look at the end results for flaws and colour of the final print sections and take notes if we noticed anything. I never did play with film at home or as a hobby. Even back then computers were beginning to take over jobs like colour grading and I could see the writing on the wall. The first PCM tape machines and automated mixing desks were just coming into studios when I left the industry.
Ray.
You couldn't use it with Fuji Single 8 which was like Super 8 with a superior cartridge and on a different thinner base. Single 8 users had to use tape. Oh, such memories.
Hi Al
Going back to changing framerates, have you tried FFMPEG with the minterpolate, Butterflow or tblend filter/plugins?
minterpolate is very slow however within reason it works well, I have not tried the other 2 options..
John EB
Thanks John, I'll check them out.
Hi,
On film splicing - tape and glue:
Al, that is what I was worried about - the pro job at 720 instead of 1080. I think that most commercial outlets (the few that there are) are using old machines that don't have 1080p capability.
There is currently a similar discussion on the Vegas forum about S8mm film.
Hi Eric,
Personally I don't like seeing old film transfers cleaned up too much. It takes away the atmosphere. I notice with John's examples the grain has disappeared along with the dust and scratches.
I prefer cleaning up the old stuff but, as I mentioned, I am trying to find the right parameters in Neat Video to not make the image too smooth but to eliminate most dust, hair and scratches as sometimes they are excessive and detract too much. Take a look at the video that I posted earlier. I think that only 3 or 4 of the scenes have NV applied. Can you see the difference between the shots that have Neat Video applied and those without?
Also, I did some work on the brightness, using gamma low and HDR gamma to bring up the dark areas as the original was too dark in most scenes.
John CB
Hi John.
This is the exact cement model splicer I worked with although he seems a bit slow to me. 🤣
Yes it was old when I used it but the weight of it was useful and never slid around. It was really easy to use but fiddly to adjust if the blade dulled. It would probably still work after a 100 years of continuous use though.
Super8 seems to have around the same resolution as an SVGA monitor. When resized the blocks of colour seem to enlarge making grain harder to see on a more modern monitor. The YouTube re-encode probably doesn't help.
Certainly it's harder to spot changes from the movie than from two comparable still images.
Ray.
Super8 seems to have around the same resolution as an SVGA monitor
Years ago I did an article for our club bulletin where I came to the mathematical conclusion that 8mm was roughly equivalent to the resolution of SD video, and 16mm equivalent to FHD (1080).
Hi Eric,
As others may find this of interest, here is one of your comments in the Vegas forum:
Actually no. At 16fps the flicker would be unwatchable. 8mm projectors have a three bladed shutter so you actually see each frame three times. So effectively you see 16 x 3 = 48 images per second which we perceive as continuous motion. But it's still only 16 original frames per second. Surprisingly movement is smooth but that's because the grain structure of film is very different to the fixed pixel images of digital.
Hi Ray,
This is the exact cement model splicer I worked with although he seems a bit slow to me.
What? Slow? "He" was "me" and I went slowly (filmed in 2019) for demonstration purposes with no practice before recording. I think that I made a dozen or so splices at the time after not having done one for at least 40 years. The video was probably the second or third splice done.
I should point out for anyone doing this to be careful about cutting up the S8 Sound film. The audio is recorded ahead of the image by about 18 frames. so if you cut for the image but not the sound, you could be missing part of the audio or have the audio from the section before the cut at the beginning. To see this, look at the inside of a projector. The film goes through the lens then there is a distance for a loop before the film goes through the playback head.
The best is to digitize and make cuts in the video editor. Of course, you have to get the sound recorded and synchronized.
John CB
Hi John.
Not you, the guy working in the link I gave with the 35mm splicer. One assumes he's a pro, not a hobbyist.
35 mm film audio track I worked on was optical, not magnetic. There is still a frame count difference of 21 frames as far as I remember. It was a long time ago. If a frame had to be taken out of a print it could often cause an audible click. Often that is when tape was used to replace broken sprocket holes if possible rather than remove frames. Negs were never really damaged as only handled on the best equipment and lab staff. It looked like the person in the clip was cutting a print, not a negative.
Ray.
Hi Eric,
As others may find this of interest, here is one of your comments in the Vegas forum:
Actually no. At 16fps the flicker would be unwatchable. 8mm projectors have a three bladed shutter so you actually see each frame three times. So effectively you see 16 x 3 = 48 images per second which we perceive as continuous motion. But it's still only 16 original frames per second. Surprisingly movement is smooth but that's because the grain structure of film is very different to the fixed pixel
Thanks John. Actually my statement is misleading. I should have said "So effectively you see 16 x 3 = 48 images per second which we perceive as a continuous image" (not continuous motion).