Magix Movie Edit Pro - Trial version

Dell Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-1051OU CPU @ 1.80GHZ 2.3 GHZ Installed Ram 16.0 (15.8 GB usable) System 64-bit operating system, x64 based processor.

Windows 11 Home, Version 21H2, Installed 12/1/2021 OS build 22000.556, Experience Windows Feature Experience Pack 1000.22000.556.0

MAGIX Movie Edit Pro 2021 Plus Windows Store, Version 20.0.1.8 (U)

Old Films from a Kodak Super 8. Poor quality(so not expecting miracles). Played on a wall and recorded with a VHS camera in 1990's. Then converted from VTS VOB to mp4. I haven't located the original VOB's so I'm stuck with the mp4's. Not sure what this editor can do but anything would be an improvement. Biggest problems are a lot of flickering* and the films are fairly dark. Couldn't find anyone to do this professionally so I'm stuck trying to do this myself and know next to nothing about it.

*By flickering, I mean the frames are not moving fast enough for continuity of the film display.

Any help would be appreciated....Thanks!

@david-l651

Hi

. . . . Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-1051OU CPU . . . .

There is an O in the processor number - is this the i7-10510U processor?

Are the graphics drivers for the Intel iGPU up to date? The latest version is 30.0.101.1660.

Is there a Nvidia or AMD graphics in the Dell? If so are the drivers up to date as well?

. . . . MAGIX Movie Edit Pro 2021 Plus Windows Store . . . .

A screen shot of the Program settings, Display options tab may help.

John EB
Forum Moderator

@david-l651

Hi,

Well, the transfer method - "Played on a wall and recorded with a VHS camera in 1990's" - is about the worst way to do this. There is little that can be done about flickering. You can do some adjustments for brightness/contrast and colour, but not a lot, especially about dark images that have no data other than black. It is usually impossible to make a terrible recording good.

Even using a transfer box will give mediocre results. You have to take care of flickering during recording to the camera by adjusting the speed of the projector.

I used a Wolverine Digitizer to digitize my 8mm and Super8 films to 1080p. See this thread for the method and an example of the output.

You may want to start again, from the source material.

As far as editing the material, I use Magix Video Pro X as it has better controls for Brightness/Contrast, Color and Color Correction than Movie Edit Pro Plus/Premium, and it has meters to assist (Vectorscope, Waveform monitor, RGB Parade, Histogram). You can get Video Pro X12 for a low price on HumbleBundle (5 days left). Of course, this is not going to transform your extremely poor material into something good.

John CB

@david-l651

Thank you for the additional information!

I am not an expert on digitising film - there are users here who do this sort of thing, I will tag @browj2 because I know he has considerable experience of the process - but I have various questions that occur to me from what you have written.

You say that the frames are not moving fast enough for continuity of the film display but you say you played on a wall and recorded with a VHS camera.. That first quotation would imply that the projector you used was not running at the same speed as the original footage required. Is that the case? If so, I do not think anything can be done since the flickering was, in fact, "burned in" to the VHS footage from the start.

You also say you then converted from VTS VOB to mp4. VOBs are created when a DVD Video is created, so you must have digitised the analogue VHS footage and converted it to digital for burning to DVD. What exact process did you use for that? And why have you converted the VOB files to mp4? VOB files are MPEG-2, which MEP can read and edit without problem; to add yet another conversion stage of VOB to mp4 (having already gone from analogue original to analogue VHS to digital [for DVD]) since every conversion is bound to introduce some degree of quality degradation to your footage, especially since the starting point was film.

One other consideration: the version of MEP which you have is, apparently, the Trial version. ALL Magix Trial versions are in some way limited, with respect to the features of the full, purchased, version. And the version number you have given shows that it is not even the last release of MEP 2021. (The current latest version is MEP 2022, version 21.0.2.130.) I know that MEP 2022 is certified to run under Win 11, I am not sure about MEP 2021.

If your footage was simply affected by "picture noise" I would, without hesitation, recommend you look at and try out NeatVideo as a plug-in to MEP. It is not "cheap" - there is a trial version - but if you encounter "noise" problems in video footage it is, in my experience, one of the best for removing such noise. It can also help very much in reducing picture flicker but, from what you write, it seems your footage may be suffering from being projected at the incorrect speed, which is not what is usually meant by the term "flicker".

Sorry to ask so many questions but I fear that, unless you are able to re-digitise your original film footage, i.e., start the process from the beginning again, there may be little you can do to improve your footage. However, other users may well have more "positive" points to make!

Jeff

PS. I see John CB has already replied to your post!

@emmrecs

Hi Jeff,

The flickering is caused by the projector projecting at 16 fps and the camera filming at 25 or 29.97 fps. The camera is going to pick up the black screen when the project gate closes and the film is advanced by a frame, or something like that. I suppose that one could go through the video and cut out the black frames to remove the flickering, export, import and adjust the speed. Still, the result will be pitiful.

When I used my S8 projector with a transfer box and a camera, my projector allows slight adjustements to the speed to remove the flickering. My R8 projector has no such adjustment; even viewing the projection through the transfer box was terrible. Projecting on a normal reflective white screen was worse. Even with my Goko viewer, most of the few films that I looked at were hard to see. Only the Wolverine was successful.

John CB

i7-10510U CPU. Had one Windows update and performed it. Now Screensaver doesn't work. Will have to figure that out before more info can be given. The projector for the film was adjusted as best that could be done at the time. Everything was old, especially the film circa 1950-60's. I have not yet been able to locate the VOB files. As I recall, and this was 22 years ago, the computer that I had would not play the VOB files, thus the conversion. I'm not recalling the process used for the conversion to mp4. Big help right? I would not have taken many extra steps however, as I do not like to add complexity based on my limited skills. Anyway the flickering is not universal so that will have to be edited out, it seems. In reviewing the movies, it seems like they are either very dark or washed out, if you know what I mean. The original super 8 footage was pretty much destroyed so that no longer exists. My father owned the film and would not allow me to have it professionally restored for fear of losing it. He was elderly and did not trust technology, thus the "show it on the wall" scenario. Anyway, I will keep trying to get the requested computer info. And I will try to update the magix software if they will so allow on the trial version. Thanx for your input. As you can probably tell, I am not overly savvy. I am 68 years old and my computer heydays were in the 1980's.LOL!

@david-l651, @emmrecs

Hi

MEP 2021 v 20.0.1.80 is the most up to date version number for this program, and it runs quite happily on Windows 11 (so does MEP 2015 and 2016).

In MEP 2021 check that the Program Settings, Display options, Video mode is set to the Intel UHD graphics as in the image below.

Upgrading to Movie Studio 2022 (formerly Movie Edit Pro) - may bring some benefit to smoother preview playback as it can be set to use the Intel UHD iGPU - the Nvidia M110 is being used purely as a screen driver - it has no NVENC capabilities which are necessary for hardware acceleration of play back and exporting.

You can download a trial version of the program direct from Magix, however it will replace MEP 2021.

HTH

John EB

Thanks John. I guess I'm OK with this version then. Now I will have to play around with it.

I did find the original VOB files but like it was suggested, they could not be modified at all so the conversion must have been done incorrectly.

@david-l651

David, flickering can be drastically reduced fairly easily, but it will cost you money. Here's what the Neat Video plugin for Movie Studio/Movie Edit Pro can do (this video was shot from Cine using a transfer box ie standard speed projector in one end and the video pointing at it at the other end):

You can, of course, apply this only to the sections of your video that are flickering.

I am curious about your comments on the VOBs. MMS/MEP loves VOBs now and will edit them in a flash. The media pool, you should see "Movie 01" or similar, indicating that MMS has found a DVD movie. If that doesn't work, you can use third-party programs to join up the VOBs to create a single MPEG 2 file which you can then edit in MEP.

It would be better to edit the VOBs as opposed to the MP4s, as your would almost certainly have lost quality in the VOB>MP4 conversion.

@david-l651

David, if you like, you can post one of your VOBs onto Google Drive for me/us to have a play with. Send me the link via PM if you don't want the world to see it.

Thanks for the info AAProds! Right now I am reading through the MEP manual(in between other things) to familiarize myself with what can or cannot be done with this application. I am only on page 54 of 361 so I have a ways to go. From what I have read here and based on what I see in the manual so far, this seems to be a video/movie editing software more so than it is a video restoration software, which is what I probably need. I don't think that I would want to burden anyone on this friendly board with my "lost causes" at this point so I am trying to get a better handle on what can actually be done with these videos and how to understand application(s) that perform restoration functions. I appear to be in over my head at this point(typical) so I am reading and learning for now. It's all new to me so I am playing catch up. Thanks again to everyone on this board for getting me on the right page. I certainly needed that!

@david-l651

Hi David.

Most restoration tools are plugins that run within a video editor so you may not be done with the program yet.

Neat Video for instance is a plugin and needs a host program to run within.

Don't let age be a barrier to learning. Most of the people here answering your questions are older than you are.

😉😂👍

Ray.