Can you help me- I am an obvious amateur!

[Susan Campbell]

I am trying to film an OLD 16mm film in order to transfer it to DVD. There is a bad flicker in the DVD recording due to mis-matching of the "shutter" speeds. My projector won't go faster than 24 frames per second and the DCRDVD405 is recording at almost 30 frames per second. And Sony tells me this camera’s speed cannot be adjusted. I have tons of old film as do my friends and I want to be able to transfer them to DVD- is there a camcorder either video or digital, which will allow the camera to record at 18-24 frames per minute (adjustable shutter speed) or is there another solution to this flicker problem? This is very important to me and I need help soon.



Susan

[Cole McDonald]

Originally Posted by Susan Campbell

I am trying to film an OLD 16mm film in order to transfer it to DVD. There is a bad flicker in the DVD recording due to mis-matching of the "shutter" speeds. My projector won't go faster than 24 frames per second and the DCRDVD405 is recording at almost 30 frames per second. And Sony tells me this camera’s speed cannot be adjusted. I have tons of old film as do my friends and I want to be able to transfer them to DVD- is there a camcorder either video or digital, which will allow the camera to record at 18-24 frames per minute (adjustable shutter speed) or is there another solution to this flicker problem? This is very important to me and I need help soon.

There are services that will do this for you frame perfectly. Since they do it digitally, you can probably also have them stop before they get to the dvd point and give you the footage files before they slap them into a DVD for use in editing.

This place in St. Cloud, MN does s8mm work:
http://www.flickos.com/

as far as getting a camera that will shoot it, I would imagine anything with a variable shutter speed will render it well, but not frame for frame. Even if you get a camera that does 24p, you'd need to find a way to synch it to the frames of the projection...that equipment is expensive.

[Susan Campbell]

I realize I wouldn't get really professional quality-however if I could find a video or digital camcorder with adjustable shutter speed I could probably do it well enought to preserve old family and friend stuff. So if there is such a camera that you know of; I would really appreciate knowing where to look!

[Cole McDonald]

The canons (GL's and XL's - in standard def) have a feature called clear scan to make it so that TV screens that are in a shot don't get the black bar rolling up them. This feature would probably do the same thing for a home made telecine. I'm sure other manufacturers have similar technologies by different names.

[K. Forman]

I would rethink doing it yourself. It would be cheaper and faster in the long run to outsource the film.

[Richard Alvarez]

Telecine transfer projectors have special five bladed shutters in them. Normal 16mm projectors have three bladed shutters. The five blades combine with the 24fps, to create 120 flickers per second, which divides equally by both 30 interlaced frames, and sixty seperate fields.... hence, no flicker.

[Cole McDonald]

Find someone to borrow a canon camera (or something else that claims to be able to shoot TV screens without the "roll") from and see if it does the task as required...if not, find a different solution. We can argue technical differences (which are all very valid) all day long, but if you find a camera that you can try out for a day to see if it works and end up saving bunches of money over having it professionally processed, do it that way.

[Owen Dawe]

PAL runs at 25 frames per sec, close to film 24 fps. But that's probably not much help, unless you live in Pal land. I've had reasonable results with 8mm film doing it myself using a PAL camera, connecting up a monitor and adjusting the camera shutter speed to minimise flicker. But then I live in PAL land.

Project the image onto a clean screen about 200mm 8 to 10 inches. Keep it as small as you can. Flicker wasn't my main problem. It was keystone effect. The problem is lining camera and projector square on to each other to eliminate keystone effect. I'm working on a simple rear projection unit. Like you I have plenty of film over 50yrs old. To send large volumes of film to a production facility costs a small fortune. Let me know how you get on.

[Cole McDonald]

If you were to project onto a large piece of frosted or etched glass, you could resolve the image onto it, then point the DV camera at the other side to record the image. My library used to project movies from the read of a frosted sheet of plastic when I was growing up so they could have multiple little screens and keep the projectors away from the public.

That would take care of the parallax issue (keystoning).

(this is the way 35mm adaptors work BTW)

[Richard Alvarez]

Use the 'search' function on this forum. Type in "Poor mans telecine" and you will get a dozen threads discussing how to do this.

DISTANCE will eliminate the keystone effect. When I transfer super 8 this way, I put the projector and camera side by side, about ten feet from the screen in a completely dark room. I use a variable speed projector, and tune the projector to eliminate most of the flicker.

You won't find a variable speed 16mm projector though. So you are not going to eliminate the flicker. (Remember, there's a SHUTTER in the projector thats causing the flicker to be seen by your video camera. A three bladed shutter causes 72 images per second to be flashed on the screen.)

16mm telecine projectors are very special beasts. And very expensive. You can buy a version from Moviestuff in Houston, that will do a pretty good job though.

So your choices are:

Aim and shoot it off a screen... and deal with the flicker as best you can but accept it.

Send it off to a transfer house and pay for a great transfer.

Buy your own telecine machine, do the transfer and sell the machine when you are done.


Depending on how much film you want to transfer, and your tolerance for flicker... you'll have you answer.