@flyingski

You must have orderd yours around the same time as I did. Mine came last week but I havent had time to play with it. I am also missing a manual for it, if there is one at all. I still need to purchase the software, did you buy the Pro version? Is there a better software? Do you know what the resoltion is for still image sequence?

John Meyer, I have a similar problem. I’ve upscaled pal dv to 1080p and this resulted in black edges (lines) on top and bottom of each frame (so the height is lower than 1080). I tested your method (c.f. 1 and 2) using Mercalli and everything is ok. But how can I add black edges to the stabilized clips? (c.f. 3 Add the pillarboxes).

Jøran Toresen

Thanks John, I "discovered" your method of removing, stabilizing and adding the pillarboxes shortly after posting the question but it's nice to have conformation that it's the only way to deal with the issue.

OldSmoke, Roger should have sent an email with a link that will take you to all the PDF manuals you'll need to get things going. There is only one software package for all the Retro machines. The machine captures everything at 720p 24 bit so the 1080p is upscaling. The capture file in a proprietary format which you then export to the format of your choice. I didn't see much difference in the still image sequences between jpeg and bmp but they were both better looking than the .mov file.

I haven't burned anything to DVD or BD but from looking at files on my monitor I don't see any difference between 720p and 1080p and for that matter the SD version at 480p looks about the same. The machine captures a lot of grain so I'll be anxious to hear how you deal with it.

@flyingski

Thanks for your reply. I need to check my emails but I doubt I got one with a link to PDFs. Not a big deal, all the films I need to convert are still back in Vienna with my parents. I will go on the plane sometime in April to get them over here or maybe even bring the machine. We have too many films to convert that shipping becomes expensive and there is also the risk that they all get lost.
As for grain, I use NeatVideo with great success and hope it will do a good job with the converted film material too. And there is always this if one has the budget for it :-(

@OldSmoke, try this link for instructions: http://www.moviestuff.tv/retro_instructions_page.html

I received my Retro 8 Pro also this week. For manuals, they are all online. I just made PDFs of the webpages. Don't be too eager to start using the unit without reading the manuals. Make sure to read all of them before you start using the unit (both the hardware and software manuals) - and things should go smoothly. They are are linked but here is the general flow I read them:
http://www.moviestuff.tv/retro_8_pro_instructions.html
http://www.moviestuff.tv/retro_8_pro_setup.html
http://www.moviestuff.tv/retroscan_hd_pro_software_instructions.html
http://www.moviestuff.tv/retroscan_pro_hd_settings.html
http://www.moviestuff.tv/retroscan_pro_hd_capture.html
http://www.moviestuff.tv/retroscan_hd_pro_view.html
www.moviestuff.tv/retroscan_hd_pro_export.html
http://www.moviestuff.tv/retroscan_pro_%20trouble%20shooting.html

Note: the documentation says you need "hardware rendering" to see an image in the capture window during calibration. I just have an Intel Core i5 and am using the CPU graphics (I don't have a separate graphics card) and it seems to work fine. Well mostly - I have had the software lock up a few times where I lose my keyboard and mouse and have had to remote desktop in to reboot . I find if I shut down the software and restart it after exporting, it is less likely to lock up. (this could be a USB contention issue on my system - since my keyboard and mouse are both USB based).

Regarding the Retro 8 Pro stabilization - it is frame stabilization of the film frame, not motion stabilization. So don't expect to see camera shake fixed when it is turned on. This stabilization aligns the frame with the sprocket hole edges to give good frame to frame alignment. I tried it but didn't find it provided much benefit. For motion stabilization, use AVISynth and some of the awesome scripts from John Meyer and Video Fred.

Also for cleaning up grain I tried the grain reduction settings. Heavy was too much. Light is OK, but I found using AVISynth for grain reduction to gives slightly better results (again using one of John Meyer's scripts). I've been capture uncompressed and exporting as image files then using AVISynths ImageReader. But if you're not going to use AVISynth then use the light setting.

I did do about 18 rolls with light grain reduction in compressed format and exported to a quicklime MOV file as my first captures. I found this to be extremely easy with excellent results. If you don't need to do a lot of processing, this is a nice way to get movie scanned and burned quickly. I have a ailing stepfather and I wanted to convert some of his old videos for him - and was able to get the 18 rolls done in about a half day and was able to show them to him yesterday.

Don't bother with the1080P format. Since the native scan resolution is 720p the 1080 just takes up extra space from up scaling. Most TVs and players can upscale for you.

One limitation I noticed is that the scan cuts off a fair amount of good image area from the top and bottom of the image frame to fit it onto a 1280x720 frame. Then it also adds thin black bars at the top and bottom of the frame - I'm not sure why it does this since there is plenty of image to fill in those areas. It would be nice if there was a way to scan at just outside the full film frame area and crop manually afterwards. This would give more room to work with for image stabilization.

So far - I'm extremely impressed with this unit. Comparing some of my old camcorder 8mm captures - the sharpness from the Retro 8 Pro sooo much better.

Don't bother with the1080P format. Since the native scan resolution is 720p the 1080 just takes up extra space from up scaling. I am very interested in any information you have about differences you have observed when capturing Super 8. I capture 8mm and Super 8at 720x480 DV, using my Workprinter. I could upgrade to 720p or 1080p capture, but it would cost $$ for the right capture hardware, and I'm not sure it is worth the money.

In theory, SD should be more than good enough for 8mm, and probably Super 8, but I've seen claims to the contrary, but without any solid comparisons.

So, have you tried capturing a few seconds of Super 8 footage in SD, and then doing the same capture in HD, and if so, when you looked at sample frames from each capture, could you resolve any additional detail with the HD version?

Thanks!

From a purely technical point of view: oversampling.

Film that's being delivered as 2K is often scanned at 8K. If you're not going to do any heavy post work then it is a waste of time as the eye will not see any difference but if you're using software it will.

Bob.

John,
I did a fair amount of comparison between S-8 film captured with my Workprinter using an XL-2 and the same film captured with the Retro-8. As you know capturing the film is just part of the process and then it's the tweaking that makes the difference, so obviously everyone's results will vary. That said, my observation is that an SD capture of S-8 film using a Workprinter and an XL-2 extracts just about everything there is on the source S-8 film. The Workprinter captures from the emulsion side of the film and the Retro 8 captures from the base side so there is a difference. I ask Roger why he chose the base side and his answer sailed over my head but I think it basically had to do with the focus ability of the camera in the Retro 8. The finished captured product just looks different. I'm not saying it's better or worse but it's just different, maybe a bit less vibrant but definitely grainer. How much of the additional grain is due to capture from the base side and how much is from the higher resolution scan I can't say.
After having spent the big buck$ for the Retro 8 I'd like to think it does a better job than the old Workprinter but when viewing the finished product on a computer or a big screen TV with an up-scaling BD player the difference is not dramatic. Was this a waste of money? I don't think so because the Retro 8 is so much simpler to use and the entire operation is so far beyond the mechanical monkey motion of the 1930's projector system.
The Retro 8 unit is about the size of an old reel to reel tape deck so it's dramatically smaller than the Workprinter system which takes up an entire pool table and a corner of my basement using an old XP computer with RAID drives, monitor, TV screen (for focus) XL-2 camcorder, and keyboard with modified mouse.
I'd say quality is about a toss up between the two systems but ease of use, speed and storage tips the scales in favor of the Retro 8. It's a tough call to make but I do not miss the fiddly nature of the Workprinter. Hope this helps.

Thanks for all the information about your experience with your Retro-8.

I am quite certain it will produce better quality than the Workprinter because it eliminates the aerial lens and all the chromatic aberrations inherent in that kludge. I don't know if having the film emulsion face the camera rather than the other way around will make much of a difference.

As for the Workprinter vs. Retro-8, I'm sure the Retro-8 transfers at a faster speed (my Workprinter goes at about 5-6 fps).

The difference in capture hardware (no RAID for the Retro-8) is largely a result of Roger Evans wanting to minimize his tech support on the Workprinter. Because so many people had poor disk configurations, and because the third-party software (CineCap) wasn't very fast, the disk became a problem. However, I have done hundreds of hours of transfers with just my standard IDE drive, on a 2004 P4 single thread computer, and never had any problems dropping frames. I talked to Roger about this, and he admitted that a properly-configure computer wouldn't have a problem, but too many people had computer configurations that resulted in slow disk access.

My main question was whether an HD capture on your Retro looked significantly better than an SD capture. farss rightly points out that higher resolution may provide some advantages having to do with generation loss, but my main question is whether you can resolve any more detail. My sense -- even on most 16mm captures -- is that I wouldn't get much more detail with an HD capture, but I'd love to have that hunch confirmed or refuted by actual experience.

SD sure as heck makes the workflow go faster.

[I]" farss rightly points out that higher resolution may provide some advantages having to do with generation loss, but my main question is whether you can resolve any more detail."[/I]

It's not generational loss, it's capturing more detail for software to work with. Our eyes may not see any benefit but the software might.

Simple example, grain reduction. With enough resolution it can be possible to actually see the grains in the emulsion in a frame grab. They have sharp edges, very different to what's in the image itself. That'd give a very good way for software to differentiate what's grain and what's part of the actual image.

Bob.

Just anecdotal rather than hard science, but when scanning slides i've seen that scanning at 4800, running grain reduction, then reducing to 25% results in a much better image than scanning at 1200 and running grain reduction. There isn't much more detail in the image, but it is certainly smoother and more pleasing. Yep, 4800dpi slide scans are HUGE files, but they're worth it.

@John – I can’t compare SD vs. HD capture resolutions on the Retro8 Pro, it only captures at one resolution (note: this unit will not scan at 1080p – it only gets close to 720p over a super 8mm frame – more on that later). I believe the software captures at the full resolution frame (about 720p) and then does scaling in software when you export from the capture file (it scales up for 720 and 1080p and down for 480p). From the exported 720p and 480p files, I can see the extra detail when viewed on an HD monitor (it is slight). It’s difficult to tell the difference when the movie is playing though. But, as was mentioned oversampling is always good if you are going to tweak or reprocess things so I think scanning at 720p seems worth it for super 8mm (1080p would seem overkill though). However, with the faster speed of the Retro8Pro, you might get more sensor noise depending on the camera you currently use.

As an update to my previous post I corrected an image dimension (accidentally wrote 720x480P – where I meant 1280x720). Relative to the 1280x720p output size, the cropping limitation I mentioned amounts to average of about 35 pixels from the top and 35 pixels from the bottom. I also noticed there was about 30 pixels cropped from each side. Most folks won’t miss this, and it does make for a clean frame if you don’t want to fuss with additional cropping/processing. But it had me curious so I did a little more investigation.

Looking in Device Manager, the camera shows up as a PGR Chameleon CMLN-13S2C. This camera uses a 1/3” Sony ICX445 CCD sensor that has a maximum resolution of 1296x964. So I did a few captures using the cameras software for comparison. The full camera resolution over the super 8mm image area looks to be about 960x710 pixels. I compared this with the export from the Alternaware software and it looks like Super 8mm scans get upscaled by about 11% for 720p output and then cropped to clean up the film frame edges. I would prefer to have an option to export unscaled – then clean the ugly edges up myself during processing – but that’s just me – trying to preserve every bit of image history on a frame. I also like to do any processing prior to resizing – but it doesn’t look like that’s possible with the current export options from the Alternaware software.

Also, I think my initial observations on grain reduction were wrong. When comparing with the camera s/w scan it seems like the "Heavy Grain" setting doesn’t do noise reduction, rather it seems like “Heavy Grain” does less sharpening. So I may end up just capturing with the heavy grain option and sharpening in Vegas Pro or AVISynth (or maybe in LightRoom). In order to get the higher 15 fps scan rate some tradeoffs were probably made that increase noise a bit. Since the aperture is fixed (probably set for maximum sharpness), this only leaves shutter speed and sensor gain variables to tweak. Running at higher transfer rates would require a faster shutter speed to minimize transport blur of the image. But this means the gain needs to be increased – which results in increased sensor noise. The Retro8 Pro has a decent balance for most material. But I do noticed a bit of color noise in the shadows. It would be nice to have a slow scan option that sets the shutter speed to a slower rate so the gain can be reduced. While the unit does have two speeds, it seems like there is no change in the camera settings between the two speeds. (I guess that’s my second feature request for the Alternaware folks ;-) )

I have to say, I’m having quite a bit of fun restoring old family movies with this unit. Very nice product!