Novice User: Help with project settings for Super 8 scans

Hello all,
I’ve recently acquired a Kodak Reelz super 8 film scanner to transfer my grandparents old super 8 home movies (1969-1977) to digital format. I’ve never done video editing before and realize I jumped straight into the deep end with Resolve 17 Studio. I’ve played around with Premiere Elements (not Pro) a bit, but that’s the extent of my knowledge. So, please bear with me. I’m on information overload.

I would like some help setting up the project correctly to get the best quality output from what I have to work with. Some info on the specs of the Kodak Reelz scanner has been difficult to find (like color space??)

It scans each frame of the film (which appears to be color reversal) using a 8.08 MP 1/3” CMOS image sensor and exports the file at a resolution of 1728 x 1296 (specs call it 1296p), a frame rate of 20 fps, square pixel ratio. The only export option is MP4 format which according to resolve is using the H.264 L4.1 codon if that matters.

I’m guessing the raw footage is at 18 fps, but I have no idea what camera was used to record it. When I play it at 20 fps, it seems quite speeded up and I wouldn’t have expected that much visible difference from 18 to 20 fps but I may be just responding to the choppy motion as increased speed.

The raw scan of a 50 foot reel that was fully used got me 3148 frames in 2:37:08 minutes at 20 fps.

I’m struggling to find the best project set up and output format.

I can set the timeline resolution to match the input MP4, but can’t see where I can set the frame rate to 20 fps. I’ve tried 18 and 24 fps.

At 18 fps it appears Resolve is dropping frames and at 24 fps, the software appears to be adding duplicate frames periodically.

I’d like to maintain some version at as a high a quality as possible, but will mostly need to create files that can be accessed by family on their computers/phones/etc. It would be nice to be able to cast to a TV, but I’m guessing it won’t look that great.

I am attempting to color correct these clips and apply some NR to reduce the noise and also some of the film grain that is pretty strong in all of these film scans. I’m more interested in clarity than the purity of super8 format.

I would greatly appreciate any suggestions on the best way to set up the project. (E.g.resolution, frame rate, format, codecs, etc) and also the best way to render them.

The company that sells these Kodak-branded scanners told me that they don’t interpolate the frames for the higher frame rate, but only speed up the play speed. That seems to be the case when I compare source and record frames and times.

I’m guessing my best bet is to use a 24 (or 23.976?) timeline and then slow down the video in some way to approximate 18fps playback speed (aka..closest to the reality that was filmed at the time). Please correct me if I’m wrong about that. If so, is there a better setting to control the interpolation of frames to fill the gaps?

All and any suggestions are welcome.

Also I’m currently using the rec,709 (scene) color space. I don’t have a clue whether there are others that would be more appropriate for these scans, so I’m also open to suggestions on that as well. I’m still trying to wrap my head around color in general.

Thanks in advance,
Kris

Rec. 709 looks like your best bet. The strange fps number might be a compromise for 18 and 24. There never was a projection format with 20 fps. I’d use a 24 fps timeline and set the project retiming to one of the better settings, like optical flow. You seem to be using Nearest if you see duplicate frames.
But then, they say it scans frame-by-frame. So, you could change the frame rate in the Clip Attributes and check what looks more natural to you.
It’s not recording sound, right?

Hello all,
I’ve recently acquired a Kodak Reelz super 8 film scanner to transfer my grandparents old super 8 home movies (1969-1977) to digital format. I’ve never done video editing before and realize I jumped straight into the deep end with Resolve 17 Studio. I’ve played around with Premiere Elements (not Pro) a bit, but that’s the extent of my knowledge. So, please bear with me. I’m on information overload.

I would like some help setting up the project correctly to get the best quality output from what I have to work with. Some info on the specs of the Kodak Reelz scanner has been difficult to find (like color space??)

It scans each frame of the film (which appears to be color reversal) using a 8.08 MP 1/3” CMOS image sensor and exports the file at a resolution of 1728 x 1296 (specs call it 1296p), a frame rate of 20 fps, square pixel ratio. The only export option is MP4 format which according to resolve is using the H.264 L4.1 codon if that matters.

I’m guessing the raw footage is at 18 fps, but I have no idea what camera was used to record it. When I play it at 20 fps, it seems quite speeded up and I wouldn’t have expected that much visible difference from 18 to 20 fps but I may be just responding to the choppy motion as increased speed.

The raw scan of a 50 foot reel that was fully used got me 3148 frames in 2:37:08 minutes at 20 fps.

I’m struggling to find the best project set up and output format.

I can set the timeline resolution to match the input MP4, but can’t see where I can set the frame rate to 20 fps. I’ve tried 18 and 24 fps.

At 18 fps it appears Resolve is dropping frames and at 24 fps, the software appears to be adding duplicate frames periodically.

I’d like to maintain some version at as a high a quality as possible, but will mostly need to create files that can be accessed by family on their computers/phones/etc. It would be nice to be able to cast to a TV, but I’m guessing it won’t look that great.

I am attempting to color correct these clips and apply some NR to reduce the noise and also some of the film grain that is pretty strong in all of these film scans. I’m more interested in clarity than the purity of super8 format.

I would greatly appreciate any suggestions on the best way to set up the project. (E.g.resolution, frame rate, format, codecs, etc) and also the best way to render them.

The company that sells these Kodak-branded scanners told me that they don’t interpolate the frames for the higher frame rate, but only speed up the play speed. That seems to be the case when I compare source and record frames and times.

I’m guessing my best bet is to use a 24 (or 23.976?) timeline and then slow down the video in some way to approximate 18fps playback speed (aka..closest to the reality that was filmed at the time). Please correct me if I’m wrong about that. If so, is there a better setting to control the interpolation of frames to fill the gaps?

All and any suggestions are welcome.

Also I’m currently using the rec,709 (scene) color space. I don’t have a clue whether there are others that would be more appropriate for these scans, so I’m also open to suggestions on that as well. I’m still trying to wrap my head around color in general.

Thanks in advance,
Kris

Almost all S8 cameras shot in 18 fps and/or 24 fps. And none of them was crystal sync'd, meaning the frame rate tend to fluctuate. "Modern" (aka modded) S8 cams have the option to be crystal sync'd.

Resolution wise, it depends on the stock and exposure. Kodachrome 50 is about 300-400 lines when exposed correctly. Maybe a bit better when slightly overexposed.
Any stock with lower ASA would resolve less lines. Tri-X was about 250-350 if I remember correctly. I loved that stock.

Rec. 709 looks like your best bet. The strange fps number might be a compromise for 18 and 24. There never was a projection format with 20 fps. I’d use a 24 fps timeline and set the project retiming to one of the better settings, like optical flow. You seem to be using Nearest if you see duplicate frames.
But then, they say it scans frame-by-frame. So, you could change the frame rate in the Clip Attributes and check what looks more natural to you.
It’s not recording sound, right?

Thanks!! I’m give the optical flow a shot. No sound on any of them. I didn’t realize I could directly change the frame rate at the clip level. That’s a very useful tidbit!

If more than one is selected, you can change them together.

Oh, and you'll need to decide if you want to crop the picture or leave black sides in case your delivery will be on a modern HD display.

Oh, and you'll need to decide if you want to crop the picture or leave black sides in case your delivery will be on a modern HD display.

Thanks again Uli. Based on your comment, would you suggest a widescreen 16:9 format for output?

I did a slight overscan so I’ve been scaling to fit the native resolution of the scan (1798 x 1296) which is what I set the timeline res as. I want to preserve as much of the original as possible, so will scale to fit top and bottom and live with the black bars.

I’m not completely happy with the scan results as there is light bleeding into the images from the sprocket holes which is creating some interesting exposure and color issues. I’m guessing this could be related to the slight curl at the edge of the film (or just a crappy sensor to begin with).

I did notice that using the optical flow does make the playback smoother, but it has made it more challenging for the NR. I suspect I’m pushing the limits of the algorithm given the low resolution and the large grain. I’m still playing with various settings on that bit.

Cheers
K

Depending on content, you could also crop plus keep smaller black bars. Easy to handle in DR. What's not easy is NR and Optical Flow. If you get difficulties there, try this:
NR should be your first step and you could do a render in place. This should be done before changing the size.
Next step would be optical flow, based on the pre-rendered footage (in a high-quality codec). The process can take place in your final timeline.

I’m guessing the raw footage is at 18 fps

If so, if your preferred option is to preserve the integrity of the original film/capture, your best option would be to set your timeline and your captured reel's Clip Attributes > Video Frame Rate to 18fps.

At 18 fps it appears Resolve is dropping frames and at 24 fps, the software appears to be adding duplicate frames periodically.

Yes, I would imagine thats because you didn't set the Clip Attributes > Video Frame Rate to match the timeline frame rate? Hence Resolve is retiming the (20fps) source to match the timeline by dropping frames (to get it to 18fps) or adding frames (to get it to 24fps) respectively. But, as noted above, given that you can create an 18 fps timeline, and you suspect the original film frame rate was also 18 fps, then you can circumvent this automatic re-timing by manually telling Resolve to handle the clip at the film's original native frame rate.

Hope it helps
Andy

And for the light from the sprocket holes try the Color Stabiliser.

Depending on content, you could also crop plus keep smaller black bars. Easy to handle in DR. What's not easy is NR and Optical Flow. If you get difficulties there, try this:
NR should be your first step and you could do a render in place. This should be done before changing the size.
Next step would be optical flow, based on the pre-rendered footage (in a high-quality codec). The process can take place in your final timeline.

Thanks for this. I’ve been playing with various settings and learning more about the order of operations in Resolve (not that intuitive I find) and still not making much progress.

I got a bit distracted with image stabilization (and upscaling), thinking that this could could potentially help with the temporal NR, but this involves various zooms, and translations, so maybe not the best option based on what you’ve said. It may be that the NR gets applied to the source clip anyway, but I’m not 100% sure of that. I was going to do the stabilize, then render to a new file, import that and try the NR on the modified clips.

I’ll give your suggestion a shot!

Thanks again. I really appreciate your replies.

KW

Yes, I would imagine thats because you didn't set the Clip Attributes > Video Frame Rate to match the timeline frame rate? Hence Resolve is retiming the (20fps) source to match the timeline by dropping frames (to get it to 18fps) or adding frames (to get it to 24fps) respectively. But, as noted above, given that you can create an 18 fps timeline, and you suspect the original film frame rate was also 18 fps, then you can circumvent this automatic re-timing by manually telling Resolve to handle the clip at the film's original native frame rate.

Hope it helps
Andy

Thanks Andy,
I did indeed not reset the frame rate of the clip. That was a major ah-ha moment that has saved me an enormous amount of time!

Cheers,
Kris

Kris, can I ask how much that scanner cost, which format it can save and what is the general quality of it?

Kris, can I ask how much that scanner cost, which format it can save and what is the general quality of it?

Hi Walter,
I scanned with the Kodak Reelz. It cost USD 400. Sadly, it only exports MP4’s using the H264 codec with 4-2-0 compression. It also has an auto white balance feature that can’t be turned off. There are some minor adjustments you can make to exposure and tint which help a little in some cases.

After spending several weeks trying to color correct and denoise the scans (I’m a total amateur by the way), I gave up and sent the most important reels to Gamma Ray Digital for HDR pro scanning on the Scanstation at 4K. I should be getting those back tomorrow. Perry sent me a quick frame comparison and it was quite impressive.

That said, it does a decent job on well exposed footage, but anything with both bright highlights and shadows ends up blowing out the highlights and the compression artifacts in general are annoying. It’s worse when the shot has low dynamic range or is underexposed.

I had tried many years ago to transfer with some sort of projector, and the Reelz was light years better than that. For many people it will be just fine, especially if you have lots of film and are on a budget.

Kris, it has been a year since you started this thread. I hope you have had good results with your Kodak scanned footage. You are a year ahead of me.
I will be doing the same thing. I will switch to DR after 25+ years using Adobe Premiere Pro. Over 10 years ago I used several Wolverine scanners which all had film transport issues and while the image looked OK in the LCD, the mp4 was very soft and grainy due to the compression being too severe. I have read similar things about the new generation of scanners. I will buy a Kodak to see how much they have improved. I have read that some hackers have gotten the firmware to scan at a higher bitrate. The image size is already large enough (1080p +) The scanners like Kodak and Wolverine look-a-likes do not have an easy way to update firmware, so I need to do more research and let you know. I would like to know what parts of DR you used for stabilization etc. I will look at Topaz Iris AI also. Like HDR, the AI may sample several frames before and after to give a more natural look to faces, and remove transient specks. Was the light bleed near the sprocket holes on the film or do you think it occurred during scanning?
thanks... Kevin