@MAA

Hi,

Ditto what John EB said. I hope that you have Movie Edit Pro Plus or Premium, not just basic. If you do have basic, try to get an upgrade to Plus or Premium. Check which one has the lower price, because recently Premium was on sale. I see that this is no longer the case. PhotoStory is just a version of Movie Edit Pro with a different look and less features. There is absolutely no reason to use PhotoStory if you have Movie Edit Pro.

Personally, I prefer Video Pro X for projects like this.

As John EB pointed out, you may want to do this in full HD and put on Blu-Ray to get the best quality. You can also output to DVD for people who do not have BR players, but if you are putting anything on YouTube or Vimeo, you want full HD (1080), so your project would be set up for 1920x1080.

8mm

In what resolution were your 8mm films digitized? I did all of mine for 1080.

How do you find the quality of the 8mm files? Is there digital noise and dust? Colour correction required? Will you have to crop any of them? I have many where the tracking was slightly off, so I cropped them.

I apply Neat Video to all 8mm files and most Super8 files. This gets rid of digital noise (looks snowy, dots, not smooth). Many clips require stabilization. So what I do is break up the file into scenes, delete any unusable or not required scenes, crop where necessary, do any other editing like colour correction, use stabilization on scenes requiring it, and then apply Neat Video (in that order). You may find that you need to tweak the NV settings as not all scenes are equal, however, you may be able to just copy the NV effect from the first one and apply it to all scenes. NV will slow down the entire process for playback and export, which is why it is best to not do this in a big project; do it in advance.

If the 8mm film was digitized without concern for subject material, after breaking up the files into scenes, you may want to move parts to separate movies before exporting. Give each movie an appropriate name.

Use the Scene detection feature in MEP. I recently worked on a 20 minute Super8 file and Automatic Scene Detection gave me about 600 scenes. I had to reduce the sensitivity to 1, which gave me about 500 scenes. Still using the scene detection interface, I went through them one by one and removed any scene changes where they were not really scene breaks, just one bad image or something moved quickly and the tool detected it as a scene change. Once applied, the object was split into a few hundred scenes. Then I went through scene by scene and deleted those that were not usable or needed. Why scenes? Other than making it easier to delete scenes, some require stabilization, not all. Most require different brightness and colour adjustments. Some were about different topics, so I moved them to separate movies. Example - Christmas gatherings vs summer vacations vs graduation ceremony would each be in separate projects, so I would move those scenes to the corresponding movie.

Now you have a choice, export each movie entirely, or ranges, or scenes to Magix format mxv, never mpeg. This way you will have intermediate files to be used in the long projects that will not require correction, just editing like trimming and transitions. The files will have been split into scenes or groups of scenes, pre-sorted, and labelled, making it easier to know what they are, for use in the long projects. If you have gone through the exercise of scene detection, you likely don't want to have to do it again, thus you may want to export individual scenes or groups of sequential scenes by using ranges. If you do this using separate movies due to different subject matter, then you should also set up corresponding folders in advance and then export to them.

Do not use takes as a take will just give you the clip with all of its effects, not a rendered version, as far as I know.

Of course, save the project with an appropriate name. I have used a project into which I imported multiple digitized films, and done the sorting into multiple movies, along with the main editing mentioned, before rendering to mxv.

Now you will be set up to import the mxv files into the actual project.

Your camcorder files will need similar treatment, starting with scene detection.

John CB

Wow guys, thank you for the great suggestions. I have been "learning" Photostory Deluxe for about six months and just have recently tried the trial version of Movie Edit Pro. I was frustrated by the other video editors I have used over the last six months but have been very happy with MEP for the clip editing I need to do and will be buying soon!

John EB - using MEP exclusively is a revelation. I thought it would be overkill but I get it now. I must admit my heart rate went up thinking about all the "projects" I have in process and what I would have to redo. But it seems they covert and load into MEP without a hitch so that is really cool! Thank you!

John CB - I am doing this to share with friends via DVD on their flat panel TVs or computers so no thoughts at all about YouTube or Vimeo. Almost all do not have BluRay or the latest HD tv so DVD it will be. I may burn to BluRay for my own personal use. I have been told that the really old stuff I have wouldn't benefit from HD. Would you say different? I have tried several houses for the 8mm and some have been done at 720x480 and others at 1280x720. What do you think I should be asking for including frame rate. It seems a lot a places are happy to digitize and just sell you junk. I am waiting on the next delivery of a batch of film from a shop that has done the best work so far. I plan to experiment with MEP to enhance color, etc and see what it can do. So far, I haven't had any need for cropping. I do need to slow down the playback speed every time which I believe is easily done in MEP. I will look into Neat Video as well. I think I get your suggestions about selecting scenes. It is essentially what I have been doing manually, then trimming them and importing as clips into the project. I have lots more photos than I have videos but they really enhance the story. I will go through your suggestions again in detail when I get into editing with MEP on this next batch. Thank you!

Thanks, guys, you have been a great help. I really feel like I now have the tools and plan to really do this well.

jim@MAA

@MAA

Hi Jim,

MEP has more and better tools than PhotoStory and more tracks. The editing tools make life a lot easier. More tracks may come into play if you start using collages, especially if you make your own. I made some up for series of photos with a curl transition effect to better go through photos, including 4 photos on the screen at once with each transitioning off at different times. I made them for different quantities so all I do is put the desired number of photos on the timeline and apply my collage to the first one and it does them all, etc. Stuff like this, making, saving and using your own effects in not available in PhotoStory, IIRC.

See this thread for what I did for 8mm and Super8. I figured that it would cost me more than 2000$ to send everything out vs 5-600$ for the machine. My labour is free. I digitized at 1080; I could see no point is doing 720 as it's just a setting on the machine. Of course, for Super8 Sound, I already had the projector and the transfer box so I was able to record video with a camera (not a great method) along with audio to the camera and to the computer (excellent sound) to use for lining up audio with video.

As for output, I think that most everyone has a digital flat screen TV, and for the last 10 years and longer, the base was full HD(1080), not SD (720) - the base for the last few years is 4K; and they came with USB ports. So, if you output to MP4 at 1080, you can distribute on USB memory sticks. I mentioned YT because it's free, most people have access, including on their smart TV's, and you can make the videos private and just distribute the links. I have made some web sites (subsites) for various relatives and put the links on their webpage. No one loses anything and everything is accessible from one location.

Of course, you will need music and you should do some narration. MEP is excellent for this, especially audio editing.

And, you should take a look at Travel Maps (Edit, Wizards, Travel Map Animation) if your videos include travel, locations that people might not know, etc.

One other thing to consider is identifying people. I now put credits at the end with a photo or image from a video clip used in the movie of each person, along with their name. However, with many people in just a few photos, I put their name on the screen, sometimes with an arrow pointing them out (you have arrows and other presentation items under Templates).

Not to discourage you, but projects like this will take you probably more than 2 hours of work per minute of output, but it's worth it!

John CB

Hi John,

I have been looking at the Movie Edit Pro tutorials. Now I understand screen recognition and takes. Great feature. Also see that MEP allows for chapters in the DVD menu; that feature seems to be missing in Photostory. I see that the Plus version has more color correction effects but otherwise don't see its benefits (for my purposes) over the basic version.

Also looked at the link to the prior thread. I thought about the Wolverine but decided to just go with video shops. I may regret that by the time this project is over. It has already taken a ton of time just getting to the point where I have a clear vision and plan on how to get this project done. But the fun part that makes it all worthwhile is reliving some great times and memories. So now it is time to get this project done and out to share with friends.

Other good points I get: I will go to 1080p going forward. What movie setting should I use in MEP - NTSC 1080i 16:9 (1480x1080) 29.97 fps? If I export to 1080 in MP4 format on a thumb drive will that provide better image quality than export to a standard DVD? Everybody can handle a DVD disc in a player so while it may not be the highest image quality, it seems to me it would work without need for "tech support". I came to the same conclusion that 0.8 is a good speed adjustment for 20fps converted film. Funny thing but I too came across a bottle of film cement that must be 40 years. It looks OK but really hope I never need to use it!

Thanks, again, John. I really appreciate your help.

jim@MAA

I have been looking at the Movie Edit Pro tutorials. Now I understand screen recognition and takes. Great feature. Also see that MEP allows for chapters in the DVD menu; that feature seems to be missing in Photostory. I see that the Plus version has more color correction effects but otherwise don't see its benefits (for my purposes) over the basic version.

 

Other good points I get: I will go to 1080p going forward. What movie setting should I use in MEP - NTSC 1080i 16:9 (1480x1080) 29.97 fps? If I export to 1080 in MP4 format on a thumb drive will that provide better image quality than export to a standard DVD? Everybody can handle a DVD disc in a player so while it may not be the highest image quality, it seems to me it would work without need for "tech support". I came to the same conclusion that 0.8 is a good speed adjustment for 20fps converted film. Funny thing but I too came across a bottle of film cement that must be 40 years. It looks OK but really hope I never need to use it!

@MAA

Hi Jim,

There are other editing features not in the basic version that you will quickly run into as obstacles. Look at the comparison chart on Magix.com. You would quickly be disappointed.

8mm film is 16frames per second, so if your file from the shop is 20, just change it to 16 in the Speed effect, which, as you point out, will give you 0.8.

I use 1920x1080. This leaves black at either side of the 8mm image. For photos, I usually make them full width, cutting of some of the top or bottom. Since most TV's are 1920x1080, either way, you get black borders, so I figure that I may as well use that part for photos. Since you're in North America, the normal frame rate is 29.97fps.

I suggest that you try out using a USB memory stick with a video on it plugged into your TV. If the only files are videos, this will show up on your TV, select the one you want, play. No tech support needed.

Watch out for cheap labels for DVD's that come unglued. My brother-in-law experienced one of my failures after he left the DVD in the machine for a few months (that's how often people use DVD players now). The label came partially unstuck, blocking ejection of the disk.

John CB

@MAA

To add to @browj2 comment

. . . . Watch out for cheap labels for DVD's that come unglued . . . .

I use full face printable DVD and Blu-Ray discs, this entirely eliminates the label issue, it does however require an inkjet printer that can print direct on to the disc.

I have always used Epson printers for this, my current printer is an Epson Expression Photo XP-750 (about 5 years old and no longer available) and withstands long period of none use without ink issues.

HTH

John EB