My EIKI Telecine 16mm Transfer Setup
ฝัง
- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 29 ก.ย. 2024
- You asked for it - You got it! A detailed look at the process I have set up in the lab for transferring my 16mm film archive to the TH-cam channel. We look at the EIKI model NT-0T 30fps Telecine projector, and compare it to my Bell and Howell model 2585 24fps projector. I also take the curtain aside and reveal the hidden magic of the analog set up on The Big Table that I use to transfer film to video. Enjoy!
Join Team FranLab!!!! Become a patron and help support my TH-cam Channel on Patreon: / frantone
#ElectronicsCreators #patreon #film
- Music by Fran Blanche -
Frantone on Facebook - / frantone
Fran on Twitter - / contourcorsets
Fran's Science Blog - www.frantone.co...
FranArt Website - www.contourcors...
Thanks for sharing this! I was wondering exactly how this was done. It sure takes dedication!
@@fullredplatinum Actually doing tapes didn't require that for me. The steps were:
1) Record a whole side.
2) Run script on the recording.
2A) With sox convert to a mess of numbers "raw" data
2B) Find the gaps and break the file up
2C) Convert each broken out section into its own audio file with attributes of the initial recording
3) Listen to each to assign names
I converted all of my tapes that would still play into audio files with that method.
With dedicated transfer scanners available, I wonder if those are worth the money unless you have thousands of films to transfer. And then I guess, this setup easily provides superior quality.
@@fullredplatinum that's what I meant althoug my sentence ended up slightly confusing. Her setup sure creates higher quality than an all in one machine. Or if there is a machine creating comparable quality, I assume it is prohibitively expensive, at least for this format of film. Or they are just not up to par with maybe a 2 MP CMOS sensor for a camera, plastic lenses etc.
Transfer scanners for still images, either slides or even strips of negatives, that create superb quality, including automatic removal of scratches and lint etc. seem to be a different story. Those handling slide magazines come at about 1000 to 1400 Euro I think, depending on the software version coming with them. If fine with loading each slide on its own,. There are adapters for slr cameras or scanners in the range of 150 to 200 Euro creating great quality. Anything lower seems to be either no fun to use, flawed by plastic built mechanics that break after few images or just overall crappy quality.
@@fullredplatinum true, it's amazing how we get spoiled with today's conveniences, back in the day I wasn't bored at all copying from LPs to cassettes which I hardly can do now 😅
@@alexanderkupke920 There's quite a few reasons you'd want to use a frame-by-frame scanner, especially for negatives.
Firstly, Super16 uses the soundtrack area for a 16:9 frame, and Ultra16 is more like 21:9, extending all the way across the film so the frame is shorter vertically and sits between the sprocket holes. The projector will generally be 4:3 unless you widen the gate and presumably other parts of the optical path.
Secondly, they're usually roller drive rather than sprocket drive, and this means it'll work even if the film is warped. I would also expect it to be gentler on a negative than running it through the entire film path for a sound projector. If you're developing and scanning negatives in 4K for clients I'd expect them to be using something like that rather than a projector/camera rig, and you'd hopefully be amortising the cost of the unit over a large number of clients.
However it'll be less than ideal for doing a sound film transfer, especially with a mag stripe - the projector setup would work better for that.
I love that you've made this video. I watched a few of your 16mm uploads and was super curious.
This was super helpful to see
Awesome set up. Thanks for the tour. Definitely inspires me to do something about transferring the 50+ years old Super 8's I've been sitting on - at least I picked up a projector years ago.
Thanks Fran! The videos have been awesome, but until this video I'd never seen a film projector loaded! Closest I ever came to THAT is a VCR, but it makes total sense. Great hack filming the other side to keep it square! 👍️
What video camera did you use? I use my iPhone and an app that records 24 fps so no need for telecine projector. I like the rear screen setup. How do you record sound?
your transfers are far better than most i've seen. Better than many 35mm transfers imo. I'm curious what where the spool less films for? Some kind of platter system?
I was one of the one's who asked for this but you left out how you capture the sound.
Obviously it's not a mic set up to capture the sound coming from the projector speaker and you have it fed directly to the camera somehow or is it a completely separate process?
The telecine has direct audio output from the optical sensor.
@@FranLab oh, cool!
Thx
Remarkable quality, Fran. I, too, was that 10-year old who knew how to run the projector at school (early 1950s), and ended up running the film department at WGBH for a while. This brings back so many memories. Most programming was on film. The highlight of my life there was when management finally allowed me to buy electric rewinds which, I note, you wisely have.
Are you kidding? Three out of five frames are blended.
Nice setup; I wonder about the "opposite end" (camera, recording, processing) too :)
Thanks! Brought me back to my days of running the AV department at my college. The AV room was also the projection room for the main theatre. I was responsible for putting in the order for the films used in classes and I would order things I wanted to see and project them on to the main screen and watch them from the projection room with the theatre empty. Such fun!
So much fun!! And the people who didn't understand what you were doing thought it was magic and probably hard work.
@@WDCallahan Ha! I wish. They though everything should work all the time and if it doesn't then it's my fault and you know what thirty years later people haven't changed, they might even know less now.
@@BrianBoniMakes
I know the feeling; I was a projectionist for a University's film Dept for 14 years...
Very interesting process and not at all what I expected. From what I understand, the frame rate conversion was required back in the days when NTSC TVs couldn't handle anything but 30 fps. And in PAL regions, film was simply sped up to 25 fps.
But now that playback devices / software can handle video files with pretty much any frame rate, wouldn't it make sense to keep the original 24 fps?
There are HD cameras that record at 24 FPS now, but they cost far more than this one. A 30 FPS projector into a 30 FPS camera is more than adequate for these 16mm films.
Its a nice way to get quick transfers, but the dynamic range is lost without R/G/B frame-by-frame scanning or if you have the time script-assisted drum scanning colour depth is lost with indirect scan methods sadly, but It's funny seeing people with frame-by-frame advance rigs on timers for 8mm although it makes sense 14bit in-camara raws to DNG raw then it's just a matter of conform'ing that to CDNG for lossless video archives.
One gripe I have about YT is your need to push 8k to outweigh the macroblock artefacts, As learned with VHS-Decode RF - Video online production chain.
Why do the screen and the projector have to be so much appart, is it possible to somehow shorten that distance
Cant you have the camera direcly in the projector without using its lens?
Also wouldnt the distance lower the quality? (I mean the room is not completly dark because projector is shining the light in the room?)
Fran, I don't know the nuances, but I can find them if you ask. My brother used to run a "film chain" for Films Incorporated. Their setup was (pretty much) like you have, but with a very important (and curious) difference. The whole setup was columnated, and was shooting right toward the throat of the camera. They set IP the "ground glass" and focused the camera and the projector. When the setup was ready, they removed the ground glass (or in your case, vellum). The camera picked up the virtual image with no intermediate "screen". Let me know if you want more info...
The 1950s and 60s really were another world.
This has been a FranLab Production
Narration: Fran Blanche
Hands: Fran Blanche
Director: Fran Blanche
Script: Fran Blanche
Director of Photography: Fran Blanche
Lighting: Fran Blanche
Sound: Fran Blanche
Editor: Fran Blanche
Sets: Fran Blanche
Props & Equipment: Fran Blanche
Technical Advisor: Fran Blanche
And I like it this way. We know it will be done right.
Holy crap the narration on the promo is hilarious!
Hi Fran, what do you have your camcorder set at - like frames per second? Does it matter? Will any camcorder work? Thanks - Jerry
Thats pretty cool Not saying it was easy. But the whole process is a lot simpler than I was expecting. Had no idea it was just "point camera at projection, hit record". Assuming one has the right type of flicker less projector it seems like a fairly accessible DIY process.
Back in the 80's and 90's we had these same projectors in both elementary and high school. The funny thing was that the older teachers could thread a projector in seconds, but they couldn't figure out how to get the VHS or BETA to work lol. The younger teachers couldn't thread the projector and if they could they would do it wrong and the sound would be out of sync and they never got the focus sharp, but could do the TV/VCR no problem. I was always to the rescue and very eager to help as I loved all electronics. Great video Fran, and a nice treat to walk down memory-lane!
I had assumed you were digitizing these! fantastic work.
Do you clean the film first?
Hey Fran, I would love to get the audio for the intro / outro song. It's my dog's favorite song, and he loves singing along. Is the song posted anywhere by itself? Thanks :)
It's available for free on any of my videos that it is used in. ☺
@@FranLab That song reminds me of k. d. lang, for some reason.
@@FranLab Does the song have a name?
Okay, what about the audio track ?
Great presentation, Fran. I wish all film-transfer labs were as 'fussy' as you are!
How does the telecine sync with the video (or vice versa)?
I think the way she is doing it makes the sync less important. The projector flashes multiple times on each frame. The video camera is recording with a long exposure time and at a faster frame rate than the film. It may be that so long as both have the same opinion about exactly how long a second is, the results will look good with no cyclic dimming as the timing slides past each other.
I assume the projector runs at 24 fps. With 5-blade shutter we'll get 24*5=120 flashes/sec. This would fits nicely to any camera with either 24p or 30p mode.
Better yet - set the shutter speed to 1/frame rate too. That will TOTALLY eliminate any possible flickering/banding as the result.
Thanks so much for that explanation. A direct telecine projector makes it so much easier. No need for frame-by-frame capture or post-transfer conversion to 30 fps (well, 29.97).
And frame-by-frame would be a nuisance for sound-on-film, since you'd have to capture the sound in a separate pass, then re-synch the soundtrack in post. Yuck. This EIKI does it all in one pass. Super cool!
B&H were standard classroom-issue 16mm in the 1970s before VCRs became affordable.
I was the "projector kid" starting in 3rd grade (1973) who knew how to thread the projector properly and was "that kid" until HS in the early 1980s when we started using VCRs.
There was an entire department in our large SoCal school district (Garden Grove School District) which had a huge library of films which were shuttled between the dozens of schools in the district.
Ah, the avoidance of burned biscuits. Always a worthwhile endeavor. Cine-tastic!
Hmmm… I’m thinking maybe Ozzy Osbourne’s song “No More Tears” was actually about biscuits.
Back in the day I was always looking for an EIKI projector, never found one. Jealous! I did buy a pallet of two dozen Bell & Howell 16mm sound projectors for $10 at a government auction. Same auction I bought a pallet of 12 Tektronix scopes for $20 and sold them to engineering students at my college for $100/each. They don't make auctions like they used to in the old days. :)
Impressive, but for 8mm film most people would get better results with less effort using something like a WolverinePro, that takes a high resolution picture of every frame of a movie and saves it as an mp4 video.
Unless things have changed recently there's not really an equivalent to the Wolverine for 16mm, unfortunately. There are things like the Filmfabriek HDS, but you're talking tens of thousands of dollars. Also frame-by-frame scanning gets interesting when you have to deal with the soundtrack, especially if it's magnetic. The lab I'm using for processing and transfer won't handle sound at all.
@@tapewolf I agree. I was delighted to find the Wolverine unit to recopy my 8mm family movies, but really wanted frame by frame without using the sprocket holes in the film, since they are sometimes damaged. I found that equipment with that feature started at about $8,000, so settled for the Wolverine.
Thank you for sharing this, it was the first thing that came to mind, but everyone else was either scanning the film directly or going frame by frame in a modded projector where I was looking..
I’m a sucker for vintage educational films. I might have just found a new hobby.
I have a vintage GE oven in my kitchen with some of the same features shown in the film.
My grandmother owned the same model or one very similar.
How do you know that projector's case is parallel to the lens optical path? Is that a qualified leveling surface? The same could asked about the camera. Is there a optical way to align everything?
I would of believed Fran used a telecinema device they used in tv stations to transfer film to any other format
I understand that much of the legislation documentation held in the houses of Parliament is written on Vellum (calf skin if memory serves). Apparently it doesn't degrade like paper does, or something like that.
i think my grandparents had the J303 for possibly most of the time they lived in the house they bought in 1954, and spent the rest of their lives with.
My wife was surprised when I pulled the oven door off. In her whole life she didn't know they came off. The safety freaks have made them put screws in that now have to be removed. I was good and didn't "lose" them.
Really great. I admit, even with a 5 blade I can't get flickerless on any of my video cameras. Is there a secret on the camera side? (I worked for years on the Videola transfer machine.)
I'm wanting to do this with an 8mm projector but I want to eliminate the screen component and instead use a mirrorless/shutterless camera with a macro lens to point right into the gate (possibly at a right angle using a diagonal first-surface mirror). My idea is to drive the projector at a slower speed with an external motor and reduction gear and rig the camera's "shutter" release to be triggered from the camera mechanism so that the whole rig can run at arbitrary speed. The projector's lamp would be replaced by a much lower wattage lamp and it would shine onto a diffuser behind the film plane. This will of course result in thousands of still images but they can be processed into video and also, keeping those images means that any present or future AI upconversion can be performed. Could also pull a stunt with a modified flatbed scanner but that would be incredibly slow.
Those old Kodak low profile auto load projectors never failed to thread film properly. Never bunched up.
maybe a dumb question but is the audio track on the same film? Like a magnetic strip along the edge or is the audio on a sperate tape you have to sync and play alongside?
Sound 16mm either has a magnetic strip, or an optical track down the side. However, if you're filming 16mm, it's nearly always done with a separate soundtrack as the quality is better, and also because you can't get mag-striped film anymore. Indeed, super-16 actually works by including the soundtrack area for the shot (since everyone shoots sync sound these days), giving a wider frame that neatly matches 16:9 so it's become very popular as a format for shooting music videos, adverts or TV shows that want to do a film look on a budget.
I'd put some black card on the table before the vellum screen. Eliminate a bit of ghosting on the screen.
Time to change the projector light
Anyone remember that catch phrase in school?
Don't burn the film!
Very interesting and informative! Nicely done.
Some content doesn't age well. Some content started off kind of bad. The up selling ovens stuff seems to check both boxes. The sexism is so thick it nearly drips off it onto the floor.
I really like the explanation of the setup. You didn't mention the matching between lens types and the distances to the screen. There was no pin cushion effect so clearly you have that correct in your setup too.
Fran. Is the camera you are using capturing at 4K or 1080 resolution?
I'm voting for an eighth day of the week called Franday. Anyone second?
Another cooking triumph with Fran:) Thank you!
Those old adds, she will love her new oven... Great stuff, couldn't get away with now. How times have changed, for the better on the whole but to far and to woke now. Nice video thank you
No burnt biscuits, no tears.... oh my!!! Great video Fran, I started my career as a Telecine Colorist in Tribeca so of particular interest to me. Cheers, and stay groovy!
don't matter biscuits are going to be burnt... they always do it's a family tradition ;D
You taught me a lot today. Thanks for that.
She burns those biscuits again and it's a spanking, which may have been her plans all along.
I know what you mean I did my film and videos images transfers 15yrs worth took me 6 months everyday glad to be done with that
This analogue films and storage is 70 years old and it is still possibly to use it. I have a lot of digital files that I can't open. They are less then 10 years old.
The wife dreams about baking biscuits? Sure she does..
Ahh, pet hair. Guaranteed to be •everywhere• you don't want it to be. :-/
thx, i love 16 mm films and you explane cclear how to copie in video ...
Most wonderful creation Fran.
Thats Awesome Fran.
I did over 12 hours of my dads home movies years ago.
Its a lot of work. But worth it.
Hello Fran, how do you transfer the audio portion?
Thanks Fran!
great tips like see you did small size the smaller the screen size the sharper the image
Cool! Great job! Also nice to know how much she loves her oven.
I wished I had kept the Singer Insta-load Graflex I once had. However now, I need another 16mm projector like I need another hole in.....
Your Eiki must also have the special 30 frames per second equivalent shutter attachment too.
Hi Fran. Thanks so much for sharing your technique. I was wondering if you could elaborate more on how you eliminated a potential hotspot from the projector bulb since your camera is shooting directly in the line of sight of the camera through the rear-projection screen. I’ve been trying for several months to build a telecine system that will allow me digitize 8mm & 16mm films, and I finally hit on something that has great potential to work. My projector does not have a 5-blade shutter, but I can compensate with my digital camera by adjusting the shutter speed and ISO. I’m also rear-projecting the image but after it leaves the projector and bounces off a front-surface mirror to the screen. If it weren’t for the darned hotspot, it would be a very reliable system. I’ve tried diffusing the bulb (which is a much lower wattage than the original) but that still doesn’t solve the problem. Really curious how you got around the issue.
It's a piece of milk glass mounted behind the shutter wheel and gate.
Very interesting video! Where did you get the split reel?
hi do you know about 16mm audio film zonal made some
I'm wondering how the sound is transferred 🤔. Is it a direct connection from the projector to the camera or did you have to jury rig an interface circuit?
It's nice to see such nice equipment being well cared for.
It has a direct sound out from the optical pickup. No need for a jury rig. The projector was designed with transfer to video in mind from the start.
Great video Fran. Do you do transfers as a service? I have a 16 mm film with optical sound I need to get transferred.
There are plenty of places that do that kind of contract work - I do not.
Amazing, fascinating, & totally cool Frannie! When I was a kid we had 3 stooges flicks (16mm) in the auditorium, & it was awesome. I always wondered if they were shot in 35mm then reduced to 16mm for schools/smaller venues. They wouldn't have used 16mm films for the big theaters right?
I purchased 2 of these projectors years ago but not the Telecine one as Fran has here, and he (the seller and old projectionist) was going to give me an old 16 MM projector, I cant remember the brand and it had a great big Carbon-Arc projection lamp. I didnt take it because it was so big and bulky and the power supply for the lamp was like a bar fridge. It also needed 3-Phase which I dont have, this same projector was used at the local drive-in they used to have here, so anyway they may have used 16mm as well in smaller venues perhaps.
Thanks! Very cool!
I wonder if there's a higher fidelity method to get cleaner audio off those film reels. It doesn't sound a magnetic source.
Might well be an optical soundtrack on that one.
Fran...a couple of points...normal 16mm portable projectors often use 3-wing shutters, not 4 (never seen one with 4)...larger "pedestal" type projectors would go to a 2-wing shutter to get the light.
As to 2-perf claw versus 3-perf claw. 2-perf has the advantage that is more accommodating for shrunken film. 3-perf has the advantage that less stress is put on each perforation as the force is distributed over 50% more perforations. I have seen both work very well. High end projectors like Kinoton, Eastman 25 will have intermittent type movements. Eiki tried to use an intermittent but it was never as good as their claw movement.
As for lensing, the Eiki's lens size is not an issue for either quality or light throughput. Most professional 16mm projectors use the 42.7mm diameter lens barrel that Eiki also used. The exact same lenses used in professional 35mm could be used in an Eiki (Schneider Optics, one of the preeminent cinema lens manufacturers made an adapter to be able to use their Cinelux line of lenses in Eiki mounts and one would have to use a collar if they wanted to put that into an Bell and Howell. ISCO, the other preeminent professional projection lens manufacturer also made lenses for the Eiki mount, including their incredible Vario-Kiptaron 20-60mm (by far, the best projection lens ever made for 16mm...even better than fixed EF lenses). If you ever get the chance to get your hands on the ISCO Vario-Kiptaron 20-60 (and it has to be that model and EF or you'll get the "coke-bottle" A/V type), it will be worth it. And, it can be adapted to your B&H with a collar.
Fran knows what she is talking about.
Nice
Cool vids Fran.
Great video Fran
What about sound?
Very Interesting
I worked on many Eiki 16's back in the day and attended a factory training seminar. They were welcomed by the faculty for their simplistic nature of the slot load. They certainly did have their problems though.
Very impressive Fran! Your attention to detail yields perfect results! I love the vellum use for the screen. I was thinking of using the light diffuser sheet(s) from a trashed LCD flat panel TV when I do my setup, it's only for my old 8 and super 8 films though.
I never thought that an electric stove would be action and adventure for women like a airplane is for men. Anyway, I've read about telecine projectors but your presentation clearly shows the shutter method used to eliminate flutter. Interesting idea using a magnifier to look for grain when focusing.
Thank you
...Cheers...
You know an alternative to denril multi media vellum?
Fran,
You mentioned that the vintage vellum paper is completely opaque, did you mean translucent ? I would think opaque is completely blocking light from passing thru paper.
Trying to use my 2585 but the plastic worm gear is falling apart. Is it worth trying to fix?
Yes - they all split eventually, and they make excellent aluminum replacements now.
@@FranLab Thanks. Let the surgery begin.....
Just started using a Kodak REELZ film digitizer for 8mm and super 8 film. Results so far have been VERY good, even with some of my films that are nearly 70 years old.
I find many of your videos very sober, and it is about the former craftsmanship. With emphasis on past!
Because the craftsmanship all over the world is being lost!
one day we will suffer the disadvantages of that.
Healthy and Friendly Greetings from NL
Rob
It's good all these old films are geting archived an shared on TH-cam I love watching these old films shows how much people cared for there product an the life of everything not so much anymore I like to try this I'm the fire if I ever get ahold of old 16mm films
I was in high school when they were trying to transition from film to video, except the video was EIAJ 1/2 inch black and white, and of course there was not comparison. Naturally today, we realize that most film transfers quite well to HD video, while NTSC video is, well, stuck in (low) Standard Definition.
Thanks for putting in the effort to archive these. Im of the post-film generation, but I know my school had a film vault, I always wondered what was stored in there. the film isnt getting any younger, so Im glad your archiving what you can whilst the machines are still working and the film is intact. I find it very interesting, I have audio recordings almost 50 years old that have gone from tape to cassette, transferred to CD, compressed to MP3, then DVD, HDD, USB Flash, and now live on SSD. I can be fairly sure in 30 years time, I'll be able to pull those files up on my bionic brain implant and still hear those recordings. not so with this stuff, if you dont have a clockwork machine and a whole room to watch it in, assuming the ravishes of time haven't dissolved the data, the data is gone. Archive it, so It can be remembered. even if it is as archaic as tears over burnt cookies from an inferior oven. Thats kinda what makes it interesting. Its fast and easy to make backups of these recordings, CD's sent to relatives, RAID arrays, a flash drive in a safe, many redundant copies. its just oral family history, but pretty cool to hear your grandfather at your own age making jokes n cheeky innuendos at your grandmother, when youve only known them as sick old folk. they were hip young things to at one stage. I particularly like my grandmother had her 'stern rebuke' voice down pat, but layered in with a schoolgirl giggle. I wonder how much other family history has been lost, Im just lucky I come from a long line of nerds. my nieces and nephews (maybe own children) will know the sound of their great grandparents flirting. puts the phrase "a glimmer in your fathers eye" into new perspective.
What an amazing fuss !
I've only videoed one film. I used a bog standard Bell & Howell and a Sony CCD V100. I didn't get flicker (due to the Sony camera not making flickery videos) and the result was perfectly acceptable. The guy I did it for just asked how I'd got rid of the sound of the projector !
No, I didn't waste time levelling the projector.
No I didn't waste time levelling the camera.
No, I didn't waste time aligning the camera or projector to be perpendicular to the screen - all three of these issues are 'taken care of' by having the camera and projector light paths as close to each other as possible - this deals with all errors including keystone.
But I did connect projector sound to the recorder audio input. Something you didn't mention ! didn't use back projection either - it's not as good as front projection as passing through the screen will blur the image.
This reminds me of something I saw years ago. It had to do with how movies were shown on television back in the 70s. Do you know anything about that process? As I remember the movies were actually projected on a screen while being broadcast with the TV station camera. I think that might make an interesting video.
i started my first job as an AV Tech in the 80s and was trained to repair B&H TQ1 TQ2 and TQ3 projectors .They always had an issue with a cracking main drive worm gear that had to be replaced with a nylon one.this would involve complete disassembly and re syncing the shutter with the drive chain.I always thought the EiKi NT! and ST1 machines were far better and easier to maintain
How do you accomadate the 24fps vs 30fps? Do you do this is POST? Another video on POST would be very welcome. At least by me . . .
Keep up the good work !
worked on Very many of those B&H projectors. 1550 and 1560s were tuff!
A very interesting video. I have a number of family 16mm films to transfer. One is of my parent’s wedding in 1946 and my grandfather’s sailing on the maiden voyage of the Queen Mary. I have a Specto type A projector made in the town, Windsor UK, where I live. It has double sprockets so only runs double perforated film.