[Ted Snow]

It does sound like a phase problem to me also. Try playing the stereo version (that you said worked) in vegas and click the “sum audio” in the master bus…I can’t remember the exact name of the button since I’m not at my editing machine. But if you loose the vocal this way, I’d say that would pretty much nail it down do to a phase problem.

[Ted Snow]

Also, you don’t need it to be real dark as one might think. The darker the room is where you are trying to transfer…the more the chance of blowouts and hotspots. Experiment a little with ambient light to see what works best for you.

[Ted Snow]

I have put a lot of work into experimenting with my setup. The first couple of batches of film I transferred was for family members and I had several spots that flickered, even while riding the speed control and lots of hot spots on faces, etc. I used a Sony TRV350 when I first started transferring film and thought they looked pretty good. But since using the VX2100, you can see details that were completely lost using the single CCD camera…a wrinkle in a dark suit, etc.
And thanks for the compliment Gary.

[Ted Snow]

I use a Bell & Howell 466 projector with variable speed. I experimented for several months modifying my projector for transfers. First thing I did was take the gate out of the projector…the little piece of metal that has the square hole in it that frames the film. When I project the film…you can see the full frame of film along with part of the previous and next frames (above and below). What this does is enable you to capture the full frame of film, where as the gate normally cuts off at least 20% of the film all the way around the edges. You can then zoom in on the projected image with your video camera (I now use a Sony VX2100). Regular 8mm film will just about fill the screen perfectly when you get it zoomed right. With Super 8 I have to create a “letterbox” look by adding two tracks above the video track. Both tracks have a solid black color added to it, then I use track motion to position the solid black color blocks to where they cover up a portion of the top and bottom of the video image…actually one for the top and one for the bottom. This is because with Super 8 film the height/width ratio is a little different than it is with Regular 8. A frame of Super 8 is a little wider in relationship to the height. So when I zoom in to capture the left and right edges of the frame of film, I use the tracks above to “cover up” the portions of the previous and next frames.
I have pretty much elimidated any flicker from my film transfers. The trick to this is to NOT use a factory projector bulb which is normally 100-150 watts (which was intended for projecting the image 15 feet away on a screen)…plus the fact that they are very expensive and are rated for 25 hours of use. I removed the DHL bulb and fabricated a mount so I could use a 50W MR16 halogen bulb (cost a whopping $2.50 and are rated for 3000 hours). I actually hard wired it to where the original bulb socket was wired so that when I flip on the “lamp” switch the MR16 comes on.
Hot spots are hard to completely avoid since the “dynamic range” of video is much less than film. An example is a shot that is kinda dark but someone has a white t-shirt on. The t-shirt will usually get blown out, but with the right camera settings this can be minimized. The settings on the VX2100 I use are:
Steadyshot…OFF
AE (auto exposure)…Sunset/Moon
White Balance…Indoor
And always use manual focus.

As far as cleaning and lubricating I use those pre-treated furniture polish wipes. A set of film rewinds are pretty much a must have if you transfer film. I picked up a pair on Ebay for $20 a while back. I run the film through one direction using the wipes (lightly pinching the film between my fingers with the wipe). I then rewind the film back the other direction but this time using a clean t-shirt to wipe off any excess.

I use a white piece of cardstock paper for my screen (I’ve read that a light grey works better for contrast but I haven’t been able to find any locally so I use white). The projector is set up about 2 1/2 feet from this screen. The projected image is about 8″ wide. I have my camera on a good tripod just behind and above the projector. Once I get the camera “framed” to the image I stick a “sticky note” paper on the screen with a couple of “X’s” marked on it to focus to. Once the camera is focused then you can fine focus the projector image by watching an external monitor. It’s much easier to focus the projector this way as opposed to looking at the small projected image on the screen. But you do have to get the camera focused correctly first.
I hope this helps you get started. I just finished up a job of 8mm film from back in the early 40’s and they turned out absolutely wonderful. My customer was quite amazed at the quality.

Ted

[Ted Snow]

When placing the 4 nodes…place two of them close together at the beginning of the sequence and two nodes close together at the end…then pull down the center part. This will create a “dip” in the volume.

[Ted Snow]

What most people do not know is that everytime they run their film through a projector without the film being lubricated, the film gets scratched. I have transferred a lot of 8mm film and not one of my customers knew anything about needing to lubricate their film back when they used to watch it years ago. I have transferred film from the early 50’s that looked good as new but I’ve also done film that was very scratched. I fully edit the film but I don’t even try to mess with the scratches. As Gary said, if you can find a software that will maybe help it that would be your only logical approach. A frame by frame touch up would take endless hours even for one small reel of film.

[Ted Snow]

I have both onboard sound and an Echo Mia…when I choose MS sound mapper it uses the onboard sound with my computer speakers…when I choose the Echo driver it uses the Mia which is hooked up to my Mackie 32×8 console.

[Ted Snow]

At the very least you should play a well produced commercial (store bought) DVD on the TV you are monitoring on and see how the colors look. Sounds to me like your TV is set up with too much color level. Are you using color correction to make the footage look good on the TV? The reason I ask is because I ran into this same problem a while back. I use a 21″ panasonic flat screen (not flat panel) TV as my monitor. I set the color level on the TV while looking through a Rosco #80 blue filter as described in some of the setup proceedures I’ve read. This proceedure is used if you do not have a commercial video monitor that has a blue switch. Problem is…when I got the color set using the blue filter with the SMPTE bars in VEGAS I had the color level WAY up. And I DID follow the directions from start to finish…brightness, contrast, etc. for the whole set up. But this setting made my footage look really blown out so I in turn lowered the saturation level in Vegas. Thus making my final product look washed out on other sets. Once I set it up by just eyeballing it my videos are fine. But…for commercial work you REALLY do need a professional monitor for anything that is going to be broadcast.

[Ted Snow]

Doug,
I too have a cable ran from the back of the computer that I can switch to different pieces of gear…but 4 pin firewire ports are not that durable to say the least especially when you have to plug and unplug. I had a pin bend on me on my old TRV350 camera which made the camera useless for firewire transfers. I now have a VX2100 that I am much more delicate with the firewire port. Quite a bit of my business is old 8mm film transfers so when I’m not shooting with the VX2100 I leave it set up for transfers so there’s less plugging and unplugging. I’ll keep tinkering and see if I can come up with a solution to the IRQ problem. Thanks again.

[Ted Snow]

Might add also that Vegas is a VERY powerful audio editor…whether for stereo editing or multitrack. From what I understand, audio is one of the weaknesses of some other editors.