The Videomaker's Journey: part twenty-one
Transferring Ciné Film to DVD.
Use the links in the text to move between sections.

The standard 8mm film projector we were using had a constant speed motor whose shutter speed was varied by moving a small lever. This moved a tiny rubber wheel across a disc. The wheel moves closer to the disc centre or further away so as to adjust the speed. It doesn’t adjust smoothly, it jumps! Getting the exact speed is usually impossible. The first time, we fluked it. We didn’t know it was a fluke and later on we altered the setting, to our sorrow. One movie maker we know, sets it as best as he can, and then uses a resister in the electric power to make fine adjustments to the speed.

With us, someone holds finger pressure on the lever. We get about 40 seconds of good shots, then a fade to a very dark picture for about 5 seconds, then a fade back to a good picture. (See the appendix for an explanation of why this happens.) We then make another recording, with the video camera set to auto exposure, this gives us a recording a shade brighter than the original film. If the auto exposure is set to “auto spotlight” - it will be a shade darker and close to the exposure on the projected picture. If you look at “Section 8. Exposure” (below) you will see further advice on how to go about this work.

Because it was difficult to adjust the shutter speed on the standard 8mm film projector - the “visual speed counter” was no help to us - it was all done by watching the “TV Monitor”.

Some 16 mm projectors have two-bladed shutters and such machines were designed mainly (or exclusively) for projecting at 24 frames per second. 16mm films were also shot at 16 frames per second. 16 mm projectors with two-bladed shutters must be set to run at 25 frames per second no matter at what speed the film was shot. There is more on this in the appendix to this article.

Modern video editing systems allow us to speed-up or slow-down video pictures slightly if required. Now this has nothing to do with transferring the visuals, but it comes to mind when thinking about how the transfer of the Audio will be handled. Forget this for the moment and read on down to Item  "5. If you want to record audio.”

The 16mm film projector worked fine for the first two films. After that it became very difficult. We were constantly adjusting the shutter speed. The “visual speed counter" helped us to get started, but after that we had to adjust the shutter speed by watching the “TV Monitor”.

We then moved on to using Bill Rahmann’s 16mm film projector. It worked perfectly. The Shutter speed was set by using the “visual speed counter” and it was spot on, no further adjustment was ever needed.

If your projector only has a loudspeaker sound output (a high but adjustable level) start with it at zero and try to turn it gently up to just over half-way up its scale and then use an audio-mixer to reduce the signal strength to microphone input level. That setting tends to get the best performance from the projector's built-in amplifier.

Bear in mind that it is usually possible to connect to a line-input socket on your computer and record the sound direct to hard disk. That may be simpler but you will have to resynchronise the sound and visuals later.

If your editing system allows you to adjust the length of audio tracks by running them slightly slower or faster than normal, you may be able to match them to the images much of the time. The pitch of the audio will be slightly affected unless your editing system can change speed while maintaining pitch - as some can. Alternatively, the trick is to trim parts of the audio so as to get the audio to match the picture.  Occasionally you may have to do it the other way round and shorten the video picture to match the sound. A good tip is to remove any existing cross fades at the cuts and apply new video cross fades - or just trim the ends of the shots.

Using the audio from the original audio cassettes is our preferred option.

The projectors we used had line level audio out. This had to be reduced to microphone level so that the audio could be fed into the "mic in" socket on the video camera. I use an S-VHS VCR that has audio level gauges, so as to fine tune the audio volume. All this will be explained below.

First a warning - audio signals from the output socket of a tape recorder, VCR, TV etc. are very high when compared to signals from a low impedance microphone, which has a very low signal. If you accidentally feed "line level audio" into a socket meant for a low impedance microphone, you will blow something up - either your own ears, or your video camera or other equipment. The audio signals from all the movie projectors that I have seen so far operate with line level.

Headphones are of low impedance - only plug them into headphone sockets. If you are messing about with cable adapters, don't connect headphones to line level audio - you will blow your ears up!

If you are not sure about how to connect the cables, the rule is:

Turn all the volumes down to zero - switch the power on - then slowly turn the volumes up as you listen.

A friend of mine, who is an expert in these matters - and myself - use this rule when trying out new equipment and new ideas.

On my audio mixer - the microphone, input and output is 600 ohm. The line level input is 50,000 ohm maximum - and the line level output is 5000 ohm maximum. Adjust the audio so that most of the peaks touch zero db - an occasional high level peak is OK, but no higher than about + 3db.

The camera must allow manual adjustment of the focus and the exposure. The view in the eye piece and on the flip-out screen must line up with  your monitor. If it doesn't, get the Service Centre to adjust them. The Panasonic 3-chip mini-dv video camera that I bought recently is spot on. My Sony D8 video camera had to be adjusted.

My video camera eye piece and flip-out screen have the 4 x 3 aspect ratio - the films I am copying have the 4 x 3.3 aspect ratio - wide screen problems are a minefield - adjust the system I describe to suit what you want.

[ Measure the picture the projector produces. Don't assume it will be one of the so-called "standard" ratios. It is a matter of taste whether you adjust things to include the whole projected image, which may mean including some of the black border you drew round your screen, or move closer but risk losing some of the edges of the image. There are times when you will have no choice. (See "11. Projector Screen" below for details of making a miniature screen to project onto.) For example if your camcorder shoots only in 16:9 and you are copying a 4:3 film make the black lines at the sides of your screen wide enough to fill the image. Or if you are copying a widescreen film with a 4:3 camcorder make the top and bottom lines wider. You may find it helpful to use matt-black card rather than inking thicker lines. Another option is the black felt-covered paper often sold in toy and craft shops. - Ed.]

Focus - you will need to lock the focus of the video camera on the projected image. (You might think that focusing on a sheet of newsprint held on the screen would be easier to do ... but that will not work - the resulting video will be slightly out of focus. You have to focus on the projected image while the film is running.)

Auto focus systems - these work to select a sharp picture. (They do not work like infra-red range finders bouncing a signal off the subject to measure the distance.) Try setting the video camera on auto focus - run the projector - focus the projector - now where there are some sharp pictures in the film - lock the focus on your video camera.

This is one reason to have a TV monitor connected up. Check it carefully to see that the resulting image is sharp. If necessary adjust the focus manually. The eye-piece or flip-out screen on your camcorder is so small that it may not reveal just how sharp or soft the image is.

Exposure - if you are copying a movie that has a night shot with some darkness, you must have the video camera's exposure locked to a manual setting or it will try to compensate for the dark image.

A movie that has the exposure properly set throughout the film is best recorded with a locked exposure. If some parts are too dark or too bright - go back and record these parts at a suitable exposure. You can then use a computer editing system to select and use the best shots, normally this is the best way to go about the job.

If you have a film that has a lot of variation in the exposure - make another record with the camcorder's auto exposure turned on - for the full length. This will give you a fairly good result - but it will be just a fraction brighter than the projected film.

Using the "auto exposure spotlight" video camera setting, will result in a slightly darker record that is closer to the desired exposure.

When using "auto exposure spotlight" - where a bright scene is followed by a dark scene - 3 or 4 frames at the splice will need to be removed because the auto exposure takes about 1/8 second to adjust to the change of brightness.

If the flip-out screen and the eye piece on your video camera and your TV monitor are not calibrated correctly as I have previously described - you will get a further loss when watching the movie on a TV, because most TVs crop all four edges of pictures..

Set the film projector, so that the required picture will be just inside the frame marked on the screen. Get the top and the sides right. Sometimes this will cut a bit off the bottom of the picture. If some of the shots should have the top clipped, make a separate recording to get all the bottom part in the picture.

• Now set the video camera to record just inside the marked frame.
• Note: dimensions are in millimeters and are to the inside of the marked frame.
• Check the diagonal measurement to get it properly square.
• The black line of the frame should be at least 12 to 15 mm wide and may have to be wider if your camcorder and the projected picture use different ratios.

[ Several film makers have rescued ciné productions and given them new life with brand new soundtracks - sometimes using the grandchildren of the original subjects to provide voices! - Ed.]

Dirt sticks to the glue line at the splice between each section of film. I find that using a computer edit system to delete splices and any adjacent bright frames (caused by over-exposure as the original camera started up) will shorten a movie by about 25 seconds for each 10 minutes of movie.

I have accumulated a good variety of long cables over the years - so I can take what is listed below with me, and be sure I can set up the gear without a prior inspection of the site. If you need to buy cables, I suggest you have a preliminary set-up so as to sort out what you need - it all depends on where you have to place your equipment.

Watch the audio-level gauge on the S-VHS VCR - and use the audio mixer to adjust the audio levels.

We then record the full length of the film. If there are problems - read the advice listed under "exposure".

This film was made by Don Chapman, I have added the music. This transfer to DVD was made before we started using the target marked on the screen. Before this, I had great difficulty setting up the video camera. I used a scene that was slightly tilted, and as a result the titles are not quite horizontal. We were happy with what we got - but we will re-record this movie in the future.

We were well briefed by Nev Long on how to do this work. We had a very rewarding success on the first transfer with a standard 8 film, we got it in one pass.

The first two 16mm films we transferred were also recorded in one pass. The other eight films required several passes as described in “8. Manual Focus and Manual Exposure” - followed by a lot of work with computer editing.

That Saturday Last Summer
(4 minutes)