[Milsurplus] 16mm platform

[Ray Fantini]

Yes, have converted much film to video. Years ago we had a RCA Telecine setup with five blade synchronous projectors that did a great job transferring from 16 MM optical or mag sound to video but all that's long gone today. Spent one summer working in television right out of high school running similar setup in local television station broadcasting episodes of the Flintstones and Hogan's heroes from 16 MM film along with transferring commercials from film to two inch cart system for on air playback. Broadcast television got rid of film syndication back in the eighties, we scraped all our Telecine equipment at the university in the early nineties and about the best I can come up with today is the couple projector I saved from recycling and keep around just in case something shows up. The big problem is that when transferring film to video is the different frame rate. The old broadcast projectors used a five blade shutter to convert from the film frame rate of 24fps to NTSC at 30fps, without this you get a problem with flicker and the old projectors I have do not have the five blade shutter. Now that everything is digital though may go and try setting the camera frame rate to 24 fps and see how that works out.  The other issue is a lot of the old film stock is brittle and the sprockets will tear or film break when in use. Stuff that was stored in the can and taken care of holds up real well but film that was left out exposed to heat or otherwise abused falls apart when you try to project it. Just transferred a bunch of old broadcast news film from back in the seventies and it was just stored in a cardboard box and was brittle and the fact that many of the splices were done with masking tape meant that every time one hit the gate it separated. 
I still have a 16 MM Bolex H16 camera that I have out in the hallway in a display case and every now and then some student will see it and want to shoot some film project because they think film is cool or something like that. Once they find out that sound has to be recorder separate and three minutes of raw film stock are around sixty bucks that scares them away. 
I am curious now to try transferring over to 24 fps and can also 480p as opposed to interlace and see how that looks. Just about everything gets converted down to a H.264 Mpeg file anyway and most computers don't care about frame rate or any of the issues that use to matter in the days of television or video tape.
And as far as copyright goes you should be there and watch every part of the process, that's the only way to be certain no part ever shows up on YouTube. Controlling and copyrighting media is a big issue these days. Most of the kids I work with see nothing wrong with stealing others copyrighted material and don't understand how that's an issue. Its always amazing how people think others work should be free for everyone.

RF

-----Original Message-----
From: Milsurplus [mailto:milsurplus-bounces at mailman.qth.net] On Behalf Of Hue Miller
Sent: Saturday, April 26, 2014 2:02 AM
To: milsurplus at mailman.qth.net
Subject: Re: [Milsurplus] 16mm platform

Ray F., have you converted 16mm to digital, or is it just that people have asked you to?
Has anyone else here paid for 16mm conversion?
Also, if I have a film that is possibly the only extant example, can I copyright this, or is it more likely, pay to have it digitized, and then see it on YouTube tomorrow?
-Hue