Solved AVI output settings - transferring Film to Video

I think I'm seeing the reason for your workflow, to first edit, then change the fps, although the reason I see might not be the one you are referring to.

At any rate, seeing the specs of your video file using Mediainfo, should help us determine what render settings is going to work best.

Hi Bill, I have been reading your correspondence. Six months ago I was still using SD video. I have a Cinemate (moviestuff product) I think you might be lucky if you can get hold of Roger because I am not sure if Movie Stuff is still in business.

There are two things you need to realise: (1) Standard 8mm films run at 16fps. (2) Super 8mm films run at 18fps. I have read that the Cinecap software should be able to "save" movie footage at a range of frames per second without causing jitter. You must first work out how to set the Cinecap software so that movement on the captured footage looks normal. With my machine, the variable drive controller takes care of that.

Up till recently all my captured AVI files were edited on the Sony Vegas timeline which produced "Veg" files - basically all the instructions needed for the rendering process. Of course while you are editing you are making decisions about what footage you want to keep - and what you want to delete.

Anyhow, when you are doing the editing you must to save the veg file. The first time you do this you must use "save as" and give the veg file a name. From then on just re-save till you complete your project.

You now have a veg file which will open your project when you double click on it. You then go to "render as" where you can pick up a template that will produce the format you want. If you want to make a DVD, you would go to the mpeg2 area. If you just want to view your project on your TV, pick the Sony MP4 template.
Hope I am making some sense to you here........

Hi Hans

I don't get any jitter or blurred frames as the timing disc on my machine is set correctly and cinecap will produce the correct speed for the films. All I was trying to do is edit the AVI file before speed conversion as I pointed out to George in an earlier thread that there are more frames to edit after conversion.

George has recommended to use Mediainfo to see what the characteristics of the file are.

Regards
Bill

There is one part of what you are doing that concerns me and I must confess that this is above my level of knowledge, because I have no experience in working with old style film frame rates.

If you intend to eventually make DVDs, DVDs only support 25fps and 29.97fps.
If you import an MPEG2 video rendered at 18fps into DVD Architect, DVDA is probably going to re-render the video into 25fps or 29.97fps, depending on which template you choose when you start the project. I don't think DVDA is going to let you keep the video at 18fps.

This has been my concern from the very first message you sent me, but I wanted to try I understand all your thinking before I said anything.
My guess is that you need to do some experiments.

Hello Derek

Everything about converting cine films is always trial and error. From setting up the projector and video camera to produce an image in the projector gate at the right time for the video camera to send a snapshot of that frame to the computer by firewire whilst the projector timing disc operates a micro switch which triggers a left click mouse button command to the capture program, (the mouse pointer has to hover over the capture button on the cinecap program), to ensure that image sent is clean and free from blurs etc.
Sounds complicated but I managed to accomplish this very quickly. The resulting AVI file is now my next task to accomplish and as you say I will have to do it by trial and error. The goal is to achieve a clean and presentable video in a way that emulates the original cine film.

Thanks
Bill

Hi Bill,

Here is a location you can download the Mediainfo program SourceForge -- Mediainfo .

Is this the workflow you would like to accomplish.....

- Film in the Workstation XP.
- Record film with Canon.
- Capture in Cinecap via firewire.
- Load captured avi into Movie Studio, perform edits.
- From Movie Studio render to like same avi file.
- Load avi into Cinecap to change frame rate.
- Load avi back into Movie Studio for final edits and render to delivery format.
- Delivery formats may be DVD, or mp4 for computer or web.

It appears most of your trial and error with the Workstation XP and getting to Movie Studio have been successful and you are happy with the results. The only part of the experimentation left is getting a render template in Movie Studio to provide a like same avi file to put back in Cinecap for the frame rate changes.

Of course you can experiment without knowing the specifics of the original file, but without a method to read the resulting file, you are somewhat in the blind. With Mediainfo you can determine the specs of your Cinecap capture file, and then reduce the amount of experimentation to render out of Movie Studio, and then by looking at the specs of the results, can better determine if you are getting the closest match possible. It is still going to take a couple trial renders, but it shouldn't be that bad.

Thanks George

I've already downloade the file.

You've summed up my workflow very well, I'm a bit busy at the moment but will try various outputs.

Regards
Bill

Hi Bill,

Good deal. If you post a screen shot of the Mediainfo (text format) of your original avi, we may be able to offer some insight to get close to the best match.

Also, I agree with Derek's concerns about making a DVD from 18 fps video. Although you may be able to feed 18 fps into some other program to render and burn a DVD, the DVD standard (which DVD players are looking for) isn't going to be there and most likely will not play well or not at all. If they did play most likely it would put you back to that Charlie Chaplin look.

I think many of the computer players will adapt to the 18 fps frame rate, and if not may have controls to manually adjust for the non-standard frame rate. I don't think YouTube or Vimeo will accept the 18 fps, although I'm not sure....something to look into.

This is a interesting project you have going on including this thread.

Following on from what Derek said in Post 14 above, the problem is to reconcile the cine fps (16 or 18 with 8mm film) with the TV fps (25 in PAL land). Some of the best telecine cameras (very expensive) interpolate frames which can help smooth the difference. There is much on this in the Sony Vegas pages where John Meyer is the recognised expert while Avisynth provides another way of reaching this goal although there is much to learn to be able to use this approach. I ended up having my several thousand feet of cine film transferred to AVI with a telecine machine by a commercial company - expensive but I did this over several years, so spreading the cost, and was able to edit successfully (including colour correction, sharpening etc) using Sony Vegas Pro with Plug Ins such as Mercalli from Pro Dad for any stabilisation that was needed..

Good Luck,

Richard

Hello George

From what I understand is that having processed the AVI file to 18fps the encoding/rendering to DVD or mp4 will convert it to PAL OK and it will play OK. I know I did some a few years ago with Pinnacle Studio and it looked OK. It's getting to grips with Sony Vegas that's the aim.

Mediainfo results

General
Complete name : C:\Users\Bill\Desktop\TEST.avi
Format : AVI
Format/Info : Audio Video Interleave
Commercial Name : DVCPRO
File size. : 501 MiB
Duration : 2mn 25s
Overall bit rate mode : Constant
Overall bit rate : 28.9 Mbps
Recorded date : 2016-02-22 17:42:51.000

Video
ID : 0
Format : DV
Commercial name : DVCPRO
Codec ID : dvsd
Codec ID/Hint : Sony
Duration : 2mn 25s
Bit rate mode : Constant
Bit rate : 24.4 Mbps
Encoded bit rate : 28.8 Mbps
Width : 720 pixels
Height : 576 pixels
Display aspect ratio : 4:3
Frame rate mode : Constant
Frame rate : 25.000 fps
Standard : PAL
Color space : YUV
Chroma subsampling : 4:2:0
Bit depth : 8 bits
Scan type : Interlaced
Scan order : Bottom Field First
Compression mode : Lossy
Bits/(Pixel*Frame) : 2.357
Stream size : 500 MiB (100%)
Encoding settings : wb mode= / white balance= / fcm=manual focus

---

Hello Richard

I have had a look at Avisynth and the work that Video Fred from Belgium who developed a lot of what John Meyer uses. I see that a French pair of people have developed a GUI for it called Film 9. To me it seems very intensive to use but some of the results are very impressive.

Regards

Bill