Is Do It Yourself Film to Video Transfer a good idea for me?

If you are a Do It Yourselfer with some time, patience, and technical skills, you can do a good job transferring your home movies and slides to video, and finally to DVD in your home or workshop. The DIY approach to Film to Video transfer gives you the most personal control. You can decide in the editing process ‘what comes next’. There is also a learning curve in the FTV (Film to Video) transfer process. Getting satisfying results requires understanding the process, and maximizing your ability to get the most you can out of the equipment you have.

FTV transfer is a multiple step process. There are different ways to go about it depending upon the type of film and equipment that you have, and the quality of the desired results that you need or want to achieve. Here is a list of the preferred equipment suggested to Do It Yourselfers, and a few tips to help you to be successful in your film to video transfer project.

Film to Video

- Movie Film Projector

You will need a good quality 8mm, Super 8 or Dual 8 film projector depending upon whether or not you have both types of film. 8mm has small spindle holes on the reels and square film frames and sprocket holes on the film. In Super 8 the film frames are wider, and the sprocket holes are narrow. The Super 8 film reels also have a larger spindle hole.

Whether transferring home movies or photographic slides it starts with the projector. A well operating clean projector is the first step to getting a good quality video transfer. Well operating is important so that the film moves easily through the machine. There are a lot of moving parts in a film projector, and they all need to be moving in synchronization for the film image to show as a smoothly moving image.

A clean projector is important so that dust specs and ‘trails’ do not appear on the screen. A well lubricated projector will reduce the mechanical flicker of the film and shutters not quite matching correctly. This can usually also be adjusted by a framing control on the projector. Lenses should be cleaned with a soft polishing cloth and a streak free glass cleaner or alcohol. Dust specs and trailers often collect on the film gate where the film moves through the projector as it is lighted for projection. The film gate can be cleaned with a soft photographic brush, and compressed air.

If possible it is best to use a variable speed projector to help reduce film to video synchronization flicker. Frame flicker occurs when the frame rate of the projected film and the frame rate of the video camera are too closely synchronized. By adjusting the frame rate slightly above or below 12 or 18 frames per second this affect can be reduced. There are high end telecine projectors that are specifically designed for film transfer work that eliminate this problem, yet they are rare and expensive and are not discussed here.

16mm motion picture film can also be transferred using this process, the same process and principles apply.

- Slide Projector

Photographic slides can be projected and recorded in much the same manner as motion picture film. The slide image is projected just as with motion picture film except the images are advanced individually. A remote control slide projector is highly desirable for slide to video transfer.

- Film Viewer

While not a must have, a film viewer can help you quickly determine the content of a reel of film, and for finding cleaning, and fixing damaged film spots without running the risk of damaging your film in the projector.

- Film Splicer

Use to add leader to the beginning of film reels, mending damaged frames, and splicing short reels together into longer ones. I see this as a critical tool. Leader should be added to the beginning of film so that you have time to get the video camera started, and the projector up to speed and humming before the first frame appears. Film breaks. Old film breaks more. You will need to repair it. A splicer turns a difficult task into a much easier one.

- Film Handling Supplies

These include film leader, splicing press tapes, cotton cleaning pads, cotton gloves, and film cleaner. You don’t have to use gloves, yet skin oil will leave smudges on the film. Regarding film cleaner: If the motion picture film you are viewing has been sitting for some time (6 months or more) there is almost certainly oxidization ‘graying’ that occurs. The longer a film has been sitting, the darker it gets. You can clean the film and almost certainly get a ‘brighter’ image, if the film was not originally shot too dark to begin with.

Film cleaner is the best solution for this. It is expensive and fairly hard to find. You can also clean your film with isopropyl alcohol (or 100 proof Vodka) running the film between the two reels above the film gate and lightly pinching the film between an alcohol soaked soft cotton cloth or gauze pad. You can also add some spray silicone lubricant to your alcohol (4 parts alcohol, 1 part silicone). This acts as a conditioner that helps reduce the brittleness that occurs with film aging. Spray the silicone into the alcohol and shake it up each time you go to use the solution.

- Optical Transfer Box ‘Telecine’

Using a film transfer optical transfer box is far superior to trying to shoot a projected image off of a flat surface. The larger an image is projected the grainier the image and the more washed out the color. By using a telecine the image is projected small on the unit’s mini screen, and the video camera lens is focused on the unit’s macro lens. This optimizes your potential results. The key to success with using an optical transfer box is to have everything as ‘square’ to each other as possible. The projector needs to be at the same height as the mini screen and pointed directly at it without being at an angle. The video camera needs to be at the same height as the macro lens and pointed directly at it without being at an angle.

It also helps to be in a dimly lit room to reduce ambient glare on the projected image.

- Video Camera

The goal is to get your film image into digital format so it can be edited into a DVD. If your video camera records in a digital format the process of transferring video for editing is greatly simplified. A mini DV video camera can transfer your video from the camcorder to your computer's hard drive. Most mini DV camcorders will connect to a computer with a IEEE 1394 firewire cable or USB cable. More recently cameras have been designed to record in digital format. Many newer models record directly onto memory cards or portable hard drives. If you don’t already have a video camera, a newest generation digital video camera will save you time and effort.

For best results your video camera should have manual focus. When doing film transfer set your camera to manual focus and finely tune the focus on the macro lens. Leaving your camera on auto focus will have it constantly refocusing as images changes, and does not work well.

Video to DVD

- DVD Recorder

If you have a home entertainment type DVD recorder you can transfer the video in your camera directly to the unit through the output functions of your camera. This can be especially useful if you are using an older analog video camera such as VHS or Video 8. However, DVD recorders do not allow you to easily edit your projects audio or video, and often have very basic titling and chaptering capabilities. The far superior method is to edit your video in your computer.

- Computer Editing Environment

Once your film image has been transferred into video, the next step is to move it onto your computer to edit and burn the completed project to DVD. If you are using an analog video camera such as a VHS or 8mm camcorder you will need to use an analog to digital video transfer box to convert your video into digital form for editing and DVD compilation. Make sure your computer's hard drive has enough space to accommodate all of your footage.

There are dozens if not hundreds of different software programs for doing digital video editing. Some are simple and basic, some are complex and very full featured. It is beyond the scope of this article to identify the ‘best’ software for your needs. It is helpful if the video editing software that you use has color correction, scene editing and DVD authoring capabilities.

Apple’s iMovie is a richly featured digital video editing environment that is ideal for handling your film to video transfer project if you work in the Apple environment. In the Microsoft operating system, Windows Movie Maker is included with most recent versions. The quality and functionality of this software is better today than in earlier versions still you would be well to find other software to use for your project.

How you go about designing the layout of your DVD project is an artistic matter. You can choose a chronological order, oldest first, newest last. You can choose to build chapters by themes like Horses and trails, Trips to the beach, Betty’s birthday and the like. Choose a theme or ordering convention that makes sense to you and works best for organizing the content of your project.

For ease of editing it is best to work with your video in manageable size clips. Each full 3 inch (50 foot) reel is 3.5 minutes. This is probably the longest clip that you want to work with for efficient editing. You can certainly record longer clips to video at one time. A 7 inch reel can hold up to 400 ft of film. This is about 28 minutes at 18 FPS (frames per second) You can import these longer clips into the computer at one time, and digitally cut them up into scenes, yet for building your Digital video editing ‘timeline’ or ‘storyboard’ shorter clips are more manageable and give you greater flexibility as you decide to make ordering and chaptering changes.

- DVD Burner

Once your video has been ordered and chaptered with audio and titles added you are ready to burn your project to DVD. Most modern computers have a DVD burner built in as one of the drives. Most not all mind you. You will need one to complete your project. If a DVD burner is installed, your DVD authoring software (usually part of your digital video editing program) should automatically find it when you have finalized your project and choose ‘Burn to DVD’.

There are a variety of variables that you can identify as you go to author your disc. It is best to choose the most standardized settings that will make your DVD viewable on the broadest variety of DVD players. It is also best to avoid the highest speed burning rate, make sure that you use HIGH QUALITY name brand blank DVD’s and dedicate your computers operation to burning the disc while the disc is mastering.

No surfin’ Utube and chillin’ to Coldplay while the disc burns (smile). Listening to Benny Goodman and watching ESPN while your disc burns is also a no no…

Good luck with your project and have fun.

Doug

Copyright 2009 – VideoGenesis Productions

All Rights Reserved

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