A few weeks ago I
bought an 8mm/super 8 film to video transfer unit made by Wolverine.
I wanted to use it to transfer some old home movies. It has been a
bit of a struggle.
Old Home Movies
Many years ago,
about 1983 or 1984, I used an old projector and a rented video camera
to transfer all of our families home movies to VHS tape. As I recall,
it took me about a day. Later, in 2004, I converted the VHS tape to a
DVD. The image quality after a couple of transfers is not nearly as
good as the original film. There was some loss of colour quality in
the initial transfers and I didn't do a really great job of focusing.
For quite some time
now, I've wanted to do a new transfer from the original film to
digital files. Our old super 8 projector isn't very reliable and I'm
reluctant to use it. I did some video transfers for “Contingency”
using a 16mm projector and a digital camera. The quality was poor,
but good enough for what I wanted to do.
Film Transfer
Options
I looked into what
it would cost to get the film transferred by a professional outfit.
It looked as if I'd need to spend in excess of $1,000 at least. I
couldn't justify that kind of money to myself.
I came across an
8mm/Super 8 film to video transfer unit made by a company called
Wolverine. It cost about $450 Canadian, so a lot less than what it
would cost to get some one else to do the transfer. I figured that it
would be cheaper to do the transfers myself, then I could resell or
even give away the unit.
There were quite a
few videos posted on YouTube by people who have used the unit, so I
watched those before I decided to buy. People seemed to be quite
happy with the image quality, so I decided to go ahead.
I got the unit a
couple weeks ago and tried it out with the original version of
“Weekend in Calgary”. I was disappointed with the image
quality. It looked very noisy. Because I had paid for it, I decided I
would experiment with it before I gave up on it.
Image Settings
The unit allows you
to adjust the framing, exposure and sharpness. Sharpness appears to
be the same as contrast. I adjusted the framing a bit, but it doesn't
affect the image quality I am concerned about. The exposure can cause
the image to look too dark or too light, but it didn't apear to
affect the noise much.
The sharpness did
make a difference though. With high sharpness, the noise is worse
than with low sharpness. The low sharpness setting didn't eliminate
the noise entirely. However, with low sharpness the image tends to
look fuzzy.
Video Compression
One of the videos I
watched earlier suggested that the video compression may be a factor
in image quality. I contacted Wolverine to asked if I could adjust
the compression. They got back to me quite quickly. They said the
compression cannot be changed. They added that the unit is set to the
lowest level of compression that the chip allowed.
Bypassing the
Video Recording
After considering
the reply from Wolverine, I felt that either this was as good as the
unit could produce, or that I had a defective unit. The unit does
have a line out to a TV monitor, so I decided to try that so I could
record the video with my computer. I wouldn't get a usable video
because the computer would record continuously and not just the still
frames. It did allow me to isolate individual frames and compare.
I could see very
little difference in quality that I could see. The frames from the
computer recording seemed a little fuzzier. If the unit is defective,
it isn't because of the video recording.
Next Steps
As I worked with the
unit, I started to feel more comfortable with the image quality. It
may be that because I have paid for professional quality transfers
for my films in the past, that my standard may be higher than I need
for our family home movies. I used one of my own films as a basis for
the tests, so it may not give me a clear indication of what the home
movies would look like.
I plan to transfer
some of our home movies and then compare the image quality against
the images from the earlier transfer. As long as the quality is
better, it makes sense to go ahead with the transfers.
Wolverine did
suggest that the image could be improved with some professional video
editing software. I have Premiere Pro and Lightworks, so I plan to
use those to experiment with them.
Lessons Learned
One of the
difficulties I had was that I didn't set aside the time needed to
properly test the transfers. Partly this was due to my other
commitments, but I am also struggling with motivation these days. In
future I should ensure I have the time to follow up before I buy new
equipment.
I also feel that I
didn't do enough research before I decided to buy this unit. There
are many video reviews available on-line, and I only watched a few of
them before I decided to go ahead. I am not sure if I would have gone
with this unit if I were more aware of the limitations.
This post is a mirror from my main blog http://www.dynamiclethargyfilms.ca/blog
