Warped film on Retro-8 scanner

[jrcasey1960]

Here I am back to get help and ideas from the experts! I've been using th e Retro-8 now for over 2 years. Has worked like a breeze until my current project. The films have some minor sprocket hole damage, but I don't think that is the trouble issue. The films also seem to be slightly warped or waved. I can scan the films, but the image pulls to one side or the other, quite unstable. Severe enough that stabilization utilities only partially work and resulting footage has introduced motion blur to the rapid image shifts.

I think the warping is the underlying issue and wondered if a different type of tension clip placed on both sides of the gate would be feasible. Has anyone else run into this issue? (Retro-8 2fps version).

Should anyone have some ideas, they would be greatly appreciated.

Jason Casey

[milesandjules]

Are the sprocket holes surrounded by black? I've noticed when trying to transfer a commercial thunderbirds standard8 film which had completely see through area around the sprockets that retro could not transfer it....i was going to go around the sprockets with a black sharpie.

I guess you could try manually pushing down both sides and transfer it like that just to see if it works.

Also with registration...you could try davinci resolve it has an epic stabilisation tool...and resolve is free...you just need a pretty chunky computer to run it.

[jrcasey1960]

Thanks for the reply! The areas around the sprocket holes are black (reversal). I'm still experimenting. Appreciate the tip about Resolve, I'll look into it.

[Nate Williams]

Ack don't use a black sharpie on your film, use a dry erase marker so you can easily wipe it off.

You can try capturing the film using FlyCapture2. You'll get each entire frame so you'll need to use Fusion or Blender to track/crop the frame. Something like this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EE_T-g8w2Pc

[jrcasey1960]

More great tips! Thanks so much. I've heard of others using Flycap2 with the Retro-8, but I checked into on PointGrey's site and it looks fairly complicated. I will definitely look at it again, though.