The power of Avisynth: restoring old 8mm films.

[johnmeyer]

First, the slides. The best way to scan them is a Nikon Coolscan scanner. They don't make them anymore, but you can get them on eBay. You can sell it when you are finished in order to recoup the $1,000+ cost.

However, slide scanning is slow. It took me 3+ years to get through my dad's 10,000 slides.

I recently needed to scan 3,000 slides for a client whose dad is dying and wanted to see the slides one last time. So, I converted a Carousel projector into a very high-quality, extremely fast scanner. The results, when using my old Nikon D-70 as the capture device are probably 85-90% as good as the quality of my Nikon scanner, albeit without any automatic dirt or dust removal, although that only works well on Ektachrome and doesn't really do much with Kodachrome. The Nikon Coolscan takes about 1.5-2.0 minutes per scan. My Carousel/Digital Camera lashup can capture about 15-20 slides per minute. So, it is almost 40 times faster.

I can provide a few construction details on how to do this conversion in a way that gives you good results. You cannot simply point the projector at a screen and then snap the result with a digital camera. The result is absolutely awful. Instead, you point the camera directly at the Carousel lens, at point blank range. You have to use the correct lenses in both the projector and camera; dim the bulb; and add an additional diffuser in he projector's light path. It is actually quite easy to do, but figuring out which parts to use took me quite a bit of time and effort.

As for your other question, VideoFred put all the control variables for his script at the beginning. You just simply change them and then look at the result.

I created my own version of his script, which I optimized for speed, but with far less sharpening. My work involves mostly really old film and I find that my version's lower levels of sharpening and grain reduction give results which I find more pleasing when dealing with typical amateur film.

Here are the variables from my script. The comments are intended to tell you what they do. So, just get the script working and then start changing these variables. VideoFred's scripts work the same way.

#GENERAL PARAMETERS
#----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
result="resultS1"                                                #specify the wanted output here 
trim_begin=0  play_speed=15                                     #trim frames and play speed (PAL: 16.6666 or 18.75)

#COLOR AND LEVELS PARAMATERS
#----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
saturation=1.0                                                  #for all outputs
gamma=1.0                                                       #for all outputs 
blue= -0  red=-0                                                #manual color adjustment, when returning result3 & result4. Values can be positive or negative
black_level=0  white_level=255 output_black=0  output_white=255 #manual levels, when returning result2 & result4
 

#SIZE, CROP AND BORDERS PARAMETERS
#----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
CLeft=16  CTop=16  CRight=16  CBottom=16                         #crop values after Depan and before final resizing 
W=720  H=480                                                     #final size after cropping 
bord_left=0  bord_top=0  bord_right=0  bord_bot=0                #720p= borders 150
in_bord_left=0  in_bord_top=0  in_bord_right=0  in_bord_bot=0   #Borders around input that must be removed


#STABILISING PARAMETERS
#----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
maxstabH=20                                                         #maximum values for the stabiliser (in pixels) 20 is a good start value 
maxstabV=20
est_left=40  est_top=40  est_right=40  est_bottom=40  est_cont=1.6  #crop and contast values for special Estimate clip


#DENOISING PARAMETERS
#----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
denoising_strength=600                     #denoising level of first denoiser: MVDegrain() 
block_size= 16                             #block size of MVDegrain
block_size_v= 16
block_over= 8                              #block overlapping of MVDegrainMulti()
dirt_strength=23                           #sets amount of dirt removal (big spots)
#dirt_strength=13                           #sets amount of dirt removal (big spots)

#FOUR STEP SHARPENING PARAMETERS
#--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
PRE_sharp_ness= 120   PRE_radi_us= 3            #presharpening (UnsharpMask) just after first denoising
LSF_sharp_ness=160 LSF_radi_us=2  LSF_sub=1.5   #second sharpening parameters (LimitedSharpenFaster) sub=subsampling

#Alternative lower sharpening values
#PRE_sharp_ness= 120   PRE_radi_us= 3                      #presharpening (UnsharpMask) just after first denoising
#LSF_sharp_ness=120 LSF_radi_us=2  LSF_sub=1.5 #second sharpening parameters (LimitedSharpenFaster) sub=subsampling


Sharp_Strength = 0.4


#AUTO LEVELS PARAMETER
#--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
X=4   #X is a special parameter for reducing the autolevels effect on the whites
X2=2  #X2 is a special parameter for reducing the autolevels effect on the blacks 


# END VARIABLES, BEGIN SCRIPT