Converting 8MM Film to 1080P

I have recently started a project to convert several reels of 8MM film to 1080P for editing in iMovie. I will describe the process for anyone who is interested.

*Previous process*
Several years ago, we captured the 8MM film footage by hanging a bed sheet on the wall, and then shooting with an analog VHS camcorder. Several years later, we converted the VHS to a DVD, and several years after that, converted the DVD to Apple Intermediate Codec using MPEG Streamclip. Then edited in iMovie to produce an h.264 file.
This was suboptimal for many reasons, including the annoying flicker from the mismatch between the frame speed of the camcorder and the film. The resolution is something less than 640x480.
[Here is a sample of the "sheet on the wall" process.|http://mitnosnhoj.tumblr.com/post/195201441/my-daughter-meredith-is-a- student-at-auburn-but]

*1080P process*
I sent the original rolls of 8MM film to mymovietransfer.com. They went through a process of cleaning the film, capturing each frame, and having a technician monitor and apply color correction.
The end product was an 18fps 1560x1080 progressive motion jpeg-A file in a MOV container on a hard drive. If I had a more powerful Mac, Final Cut Pro, and a fast RAID array, I could have chosen Apple Animation Codec or Uncompressed 4:2:2. For my setup, Motion JPEG was fine, and produced a 16GB file out of about 30 minutes of film. (You can also choose DV if you don't care about the resolution).

After receiving the hard drive in the mail, the resulting file looks great in QuickTIme Player.
I then created a 3.5 minute event from the master file in MPEG Streamclip, still in Motion JPEG.
Then I let iMovie create thumbnails. I dragged the footage into an iMovie Project in 16:9 ratio. Set the Crop tool to FIT to keep the same 1560x1080 aspect ratio + letterbox. iMovie cannot create 18fps projects, so it converts the 18fps to 29.97fps. Even so, the NTSC project comes out pretty clean. I added a photo for a title and a couple of simple transitions, and then rendered the movie as h.264 1920x1080 with fast internet streaming enabled. YouTube does not limit the file size, so I used 8000 kbps, automatic keyframes. I then uploaded this file to YouTube. YouTube does their own processing and presents the file in 1080P. The YouTube is not quite as sharp as the Motion JPEG, but it is still pretty good.
[Here is the YouTube video|http://mitnosnhoj.tumblr.com/post/479002429/1958-3-months]

iMac 24 2.8Ghz, iPhone, TV, Mac OS X (10.6.2), Panasonic HDC-SD5 iMovie 8.0.5

Posted on Mar 28, 2010 3:15 PM

25 replies

Apr 10, 2010 12:13 AM in response to AppleMan1958

WOW! I wish, my family had 'film' those days (as you know, we are both same age)!

1080 from 8mm film.. = each 'dot' is ~ 2.4/1.000th mm .. we are close to each silver atom 😀

did you consider to play with the color correction tools of iM? to increase contrasts and esp. saturation? or would this destroy the 'aged look' of your movies..

what impresses me is the frame-stability and .. howtosay... 'clearness' - really awesome! will our HD-videos look that good in 60 years .. ? 😀

lot of money, but for a lot of quality! grrrreat!

Apr 10, 2010 4:05 AM in response to AppleMan1958

There's actually a projector sound in the Projector Theme in iDVD3. I've kept all the iDVD Themes - not sure if they still come with the latest version of iDVD though.

The sound is from a 16mm projector, but sounds much the same as 8mm. The audio is only about 30 seconds, to suit the Theme loop. The audio clip is in both AAC and AIFF format and can be located in this folder:
Macintosh HD>Library>Application Support>iDVD>Themes>iDVD3>002_Projector.theme - from there right click, select Open Package Contents and navigate through Contents>Resources.

In the Resources folder you will find the 2 audio files. Also in that folder (among other things) are 2 movies entitled BackgroundMovie.NTSC.mov and BackgroundMovie.PAL.mov. As the names imply, this is the background movie for the theme, showing a projector screening a blank image onto a screen. Looks great and could possibly be used in iMovie '09 as a lead in to an old 8mm movie like Appleman's. The .mov files are in Photo JPEG format 640x480 25 fps (PAL version) - this imports perfectly to iMovie '09.

John

AppleMan1958 Author

Level 7

27,492 points

Apr 10, 2010 5:21 AM in response to Karsten Schlüter

Karsten, great question about the color correction. I made a conscious decision not to apply color correction, although I usually do for my current camcorder movies.

The reason is that the Debenham people applied color correction to the footage as they were capturing it, and I assume they used better equipment then I have.

I tried applying color correction as a test, and I found that, for example, I could make the greens greener, but it inevitably would impact some other color. For example, if I adjusted the color, all of a sudden the shadows became black.

I decided to keep true to the Motion Jpeg master rather than tweak it further.

This was one of those spring-loaded, wind-up cameras. After 1961, my parents quit making movies. I wish they had kept going. I guess having three toddlers kept them busy.

Apr 10, 2010 11:06 PM in response to AppleMan1958

AppleMan1958 wrote:
... the Debenham people applied color correction to the footage as they were capturing it, and I assume they used better equipment then I have.

I now did read the website..indeed, it's no roboto-process, looks like real-people do the conversions.. which explains the price, but which explains the superb quality too.

really great, thanks für sharing!
(gosh, the cloths! ... 😉 )

AppleMan1958 Author

Level 7

27,492 points

Apr 11, 2010 5:17 AM in response to AppleMan1958

At the suggestion of 73ragop above (Thanks!), I have added a sound track of a clickety 8MM projector to my last movie. Let me know if you think it makes it better.

[Find it here|http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LXE7BBSSdug]

Got the effect at the link 73ragop provided above at www.freesound.org. This looks like a site I will use quite a bit.

rrodby

Level 2

358 points

Apr 11, 2010 6:18 AM in response to AppleMan1958

I like the sound, better than no sound, and probably better than some swarmy song.

can't wait to do mine, same era

roger

Apr 17, 2010 6:22 PM in response to AppleMan1958

I work for a film transfer company myself. We are looking into offering HD transfers. And this one looks rely great. But there is a hair at the bottom of the film. I wonder if it is on the film or got stuck during the transfer.

Apr 18, 2010 4:27 PM in response to Steinninn

I also had some crap at the edge of some frames. At first I was disappointed and ready to complain to Debenham but I need to verify whether it's on the original film - a goober in the camera - or was introduced in scanning. My bet is the former, but I can't be sure yet.

My film, like Appleman's, was from a wind-up 8mm camera. I think it was purchased around 1952, when my older brother was born. It's amazing how these films have such a distinctive "look" to them.

What really amazed me about my transfer project was how little film there really was. I can remember us kids complaining about how much my Mom was filming. At Christmas, when the filming was indoors, Mom had these giant spotlights on a horizontal bar that she used to get a better picture. It was like standing in front of aircraft landing lights, and you could actually feel the heat. But all these years later, I put all our Christmas movies onto a single DVD, and all our vacation stuff onto one other. All of our scanned slides - Mom and Dad used to use two cameras to catch everything - now fit easily on a single USB thumb drive. It just doesn't seem possible.

Apr 19, 2010 9:24 AM in response to Wayne Henderson

I was just about to start this project. Thanks for the upfront advice. Its just so expensive for the homemovie service-- i was afraid to start the project and wind up messing it up. I have my parents old footage in my basement and I am paranoid it will get destroyed.

tx

May 27, 2010 1:45 AM in response to AppleMan1958

I had a super 8 skiing film of mine from 1974 converted to 1080p and received a mini HDV tape that I transferred directly to iMovie with my Canon HV30 HD video camera. I used Digital Transfer Systems at http://www.digitaltransfersystems.net/. I added music and put a 480p version on YouTube at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j-liVCYKHEs

The film looks great except for some annoying threads and lint here and there. I've got about 15 h of old film, including regular 8 mm from 1961, that I need to transfer, so the I'm trying to use the least number of steps possible.

Mark Johnson

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Converting 8MM Film to 1080P