8mm *MOVIE* film, to digital, to firewire

[Jack Honeycutt]

At 09:17 AM 10/3/2003 -0400, you wrote:

>In this situation the frame loss, if any, happens in the capturing 
>process.  This is why:  Although it
>appears continuous to the eye, the image on the screen goes on an off with 
>brief dark periods in
>between, and occasionally the camcorder could snap a dark frame, as there 
>is no way I know of,
>to synchronize the projection with the capture.

I am actually able to get rid of the dark frames.  The way I do it is that 
I use a 5 blade projector that has a adjustable shutter.  Then I hook a 
monitor to my digital video camera (which also has a adjustable shutter 
rate).  Then I project the film.  I see the "flicker" then adjust the 
projector speed up and down a frame rate or two and then adjust the digital 
movie camera.  I  watch it on my monitor.  After a little fussing, the 
"flicker" goes away.  When I look at the raw video in my Windows box, I 
have no dark frames.  All is well.

>I suggest that you take a capture that you did with your Windows process 
>and check it out frame by
>frame in iMovie.  I think you will find faded or dark frames in there.

Humm.  OK.

>The bus speed of your G4
>should be more than adequate for the throughput required, as long as you 
>don't do to an external
>HD (in which case it may or may not be).

It is internal HD (7200 RPM) connected directly to the Sonnet EIDE 
controller card that is plugged into the PCI bus (which runs at 50Mhz).

>I hope someone will correct me if I am wrong, but to my best knowledge ALL 
>the quality loss you
>suffer will be in the capture and digitization process, before it gets 
>memorized, whether the memorization
>occurs on the tape or in the computer.   Either way you do it, the digital 
>stream via the firewire
>connection will be identical in content and speed.  Thus, you choice for 
>doing it one way or the other will
>have no influence on either image quality or on frame loss.  However, not 
>all camcorders are able to do
>it directly.

I see.....

>I suggest that you copy two minutes, or so, worth of movie by both 
>methods, and click through frame
>by frame in iMovie, to compare and see if you can find any noticeable 
>difference in image quality and
>quantity of dark frames.  Compare also with the results of prior 
>conversions via your Windows computer.

That is probably a good idea Bob.  I'll give it a try.  I hope to use 
iMovie and iDVD, but if this 'old Mac is not up to the task, then I have to 
move back to my windows box.  What a bore!

jack