I am about to begin work on an outstanding project I have had here for quite some time. I received a film almost a year ago now where the soundtrack really wasn't up to scratch, if you pardon the pun.
It isn't helped by the fact it is printed on post striped stock using the grey paste, but in this particular case, i feel even if I cannot replicate the best I can achieve on pre striped brown magnetic striped stock, there is much room to improve upon what i already have here.

With this in mind, starting from the very beginning, I thought I would share here the whole process I use for doing this.
It is quite a long drawn out process from beginning to end, but nevertheless works well for me and hopefully can inspire others to have a go at doing likewise in such similar circumstances.

The film is a Don Bluth animated production from after he left the Disney camp entitled "The Secret Of N.I.M.H."
It fits into the category of most of the later Derann animated films in that it has come from excellent master material, has beautiful vibrant colour and is a pin sharp print. It is only spoiled in my case by a terribly recorded original sound track and can surely be improved upon in this particular case.

As with any re recording or over dubbing task, you really need to do a sample test at the beginning of the film just to check you stand a chance.
i am fortunate with this one as it carries a very long introduction original leader so I will be able to test on that when the time comes.

First though must come the preparation.

Step one, for me is always to decide how the film is to be spooled for recording purposes. In this particular case, the film originally was spooled as 4x 400ft complete feature. When I purchased it, it was already mounted to 2x 800ft Bonum spools in cases.
This is the manner in which I prefer these 4x 400ft films to be library stored so in this instance, I was happy enough to keep everything as is before attempting to record the tracks again.

Step two for me now, is to view the first half of the film again just to act as a reminder of the very point where the first half of the film ends.
It is this point that we need to search and find on the digital DVD copy to be able to approximately split the digital copy into two separate halves
when carrying out the raw initial 25fps rip from the DVD.

You can of course rip the entire DVD in one run and it equally can be uploaded into the VJ software I use to record the soundtrack from come the time, but one of the problems I have encountered in doing this, is that it isn't as easy to go back to a certain point in the film without sending the sound and vision on the digital copy out of sync when using my VJ software, Therefore I try to limit my digital rips and subsequent VJ uploads to around 35 minutes of film. Generally more than 600ft and hopefully in this case, just enough to cover the first half of the actual film mounted onto an 800ft spool.

Step Three. Once the film has been viewed through to the end of reel 1 and a finish point has been established and memorized, using the pc I insert the dvd disc into the drive and quickly run through the chapters until I find the half way point in the film.
In this case it worked out at a tad over 34 minutes as was mounted to reel.
I now have to count the chapters from the index markings at the bottom of the screen frame to get to that point and then go to the next marking. Once this is found, that is the chapter number I will create my first raw rip to. (see below)



Step Four is now to open up a piece of DVD ripping software to obtain this first raw rip. In my case, I use DVD Decrypter.
When you very first click onto the Decrypter software icon, as always you hear the disc loading up to speed and are then greeted with the following display:



From the destination folder icon within this front page of Decrypter, you now have to choose a destination folder for the rip to finish up in:



Then, i my particular case, I always choose "Desktop" as an initial destination place.



You then need to be able to select all the chapters and sound options you want to rip. In this case I ticked all the chapter boxes until I got to 35 minutes into the film.



The first thing you will notice is the right hand boxes are divided into two sections. The upper segment VTS 1,2 &3 is the way the disc is complilled. You first have to decide which VTS will provide you with the section of the disc you are interested in ripping. In this case it is the movie itself from beginning to end eventually, so in this case it turns out to be VTS 02.
Once this sub catagory has been selected, the bottom segment on the RHS will open up all the available chapters from beginning to end on the film. In this case 32 chapters.
please observe the photograph above and notice the total time is written in the corner.In this case 1:18:54:04

Now by deleting each chapter sequentially, you will notice that the time reduces each time a chapter is de selected. (see below)



Continue deleting the chapters until you are satisfied you have just the portion of the film you are looking to rip plus a little extra by going to the next chapter. In my case I was seeking to rip the first 35 minutes worth of film but as I deleted, i went from 37 minutes to 32 minutes so I went back to 37 minutes.
This can of course be established in any way you wish ie you don't have to de select from the end of the movie backwards. You can initially de select all chapters and monitor the time increasing as you select each chapter, it matters none which method you use, only that you find the correct point in the film you want your rip to end at.

Now just before you begin ripping, you will need to select only the languages that you wish to rip from the disc. In this case English 2 CH stereo only for my purposes.

Do this by clicking on the "Stream Processing " icon at the top RHS of the programme. (see below)



You can see clearly from this photo above, that a new window now opens, in this instance, containing 4 options.
The top option is always the video itself, so this HAS to be always selected.
In this case, the next 3 options are all language options. In my case I want to keep the original English language track so I just select boxes one and two and de select boxes 3 and 4 for German and Spanish language options.



Now you are in a position ready to make your first raw digital rip which will playback at 25fps when viewed.
Do this by clicking on the file box in the top LH corner of the programme and select decrypt. (See Below)



You will now see and hear the DVD ripping to it's destination folder.



Once completed, you will hear an acknowledgement alarm chime and the file will be there on your desktop ready to view.

In my case here today, I repeated this entire process for the second half of the film so I had reel 2 at the same stage.

Next we move onto processing this raw footage into what we really want. 24fps digital replica of our films.
To do this, I use a programme called "Any Video Converter" which again is a free download and this will prepare your files sufficiently so that they can be sent to the VJ player to match up at something like the exact running speed of any D.C. electronically driven projector running at 24fps.
With or without physical sync capability.

More on Any Video Converter later.

Interesting, but what to to if the film and DVD/Blueray are different cut. Many 8mm prints are abridged. And will the projector keep the exact speed. Do you screen at 25 f.p.s? Most projectors don´t have that speed.

In that instance Mats, you need replicate the exact copy digitally you have of your actual film, still using these same procedures or similar but perhaps with different software if you prefer.

Do you take on dubbing jobs? ;-) I have a 3x400' Mountain of the Cannibal God, but hate hearing Ursula Undress (eh, Andress) screaming hilfe or something in German :-) Since it's a digest, there's such a job, I can't imagine starting it myself (and I would suck at it)

I will get to you Vidar and Mats on these questions, but my pc is busy doing the above for now so just give me until I ve completed the initial post please then I promise I will answer any questions.

Ok Mats based on my own experiences of doing this work here are my responses to each of your points raised:

1/ If the digital master is a completely different cut to your version on film, then clearly it cannot be used but I have not come across this much since attempting my re recording jobs.

2/If the print is abridged then you have to rip each section your film contains and begin recording on a similar cue point for each scene or make an exact digital replica in advance but this is both more difficult is is far too time consuming for me to do this in this manner, either for myself or others.
I have used the first method though for own needs.It takes time and a great deal of patience to piece over each section but the method works just the same. If a feature length recording begins to drift, you have to pull it back to an appropriate section when sync was good and start from there.
Typically if this occurs, i would begin again from the last good scene ending.

3/ By using the second programme which i will be going on to explain, the digital copy will already be converted to 24fps and as such will need little tempo adjustment later from the VJ hard controller used, though it is there to initially match the exact running speed in advance of recording on any given day. Very minor adjustments may also prove necessary mid run but this is easy to anticipate and predict I have found given a little practice and learning your equipments behaviours intimately over time.

Now onto Vidar's question. I have a massive backlog of work of my own for the time being, beyond that I will always help wherever I can but digests are not viable as a business activity and should purely be a labour of love project by an individual who owns and cares for that particular film. Hopefully by posting these methods used in detail, it will encourage members and guests to have a go themselves so long as they own a DC electronically driven stereo machine.

Any Video Coverter

Once you have your two files on your desktop from using DVD Decrypter, you are then ready to process these to 24fps in a suitable video and audio format to use easily on your VJ player/ software when making the finished recording.

Here you can see both files in waiting and the install and desktop icon for installing and then opening the free to obtain online version of "Any Video Converter



Begin by opening the software so you see this on your desktop.



Then in the dropdown tab in the top RHS corner marked "Profile", select "Customized AVI Movie" option as seen here:



Next you will need to carefully choose and select each of your parameters that best suits yourself. I will go through each of what I choose here and explain why, but these may not necessarily be the best options for yourself. Only YOU can decide these depending on what final results you are seeking.

Please study the following options before I explain each of my selections and parameters used:



Beginning at the top, Total duration, Start and Stop times should all say zero. If you find yourself with a stop time of around 15 minutes, you have downloaded the trial version and it limits you to only 15 minute clips of conversion. This is of course useless for our needs here unless just converting short 200ft films, so delete and obtain the correct version.

The Video Codec, i set to XVID, this is like MP4 in its make up, works well with my VJ software and produces more than good enough images for the purpose of this exercise, therefore as this works well uploading onto VJ, this is what I stick to here.

The Frame size, again isn't important here for my purposes. I don't need super high resolution as I am just using the resulting image as a monitor against the projected one to check for drift in synchronicity. The higher the resolution, the longer it will take for the file to convert. Therefore with this in mind, I choose only a reasonable and compatible resolution for these purposes, 720 x 576.

The same theory applies to to bitrate. Again for these purposes middle ground works well, so I choose 4000.

Now for the all important parameter as far as picture is concerned to us here...Frame Rate.
We want 24fps so this is what we select here.

Now onto the Audio settings...

As you can see I have chosen MP3 compressed audio but at a high bitrate of 320mbs. At 320, to the human ear, this is almost no different to the very large uncompressed audio WAV files. It speeds the programme up bu using 320 rather WAV and works more than good enough for our purposes. It will still blow your original soundtrack out of the water when recording on a good stripe.

I then select 2ch Audio for Stereo left and right channel playback. Leave the audio disable unchecked and select basic for A/V Sync, this works well on playback also.

At this point you are now ready to drop and drag each file from desktop into the programme. See below:



The programme will allow you to "queue" the files ready for conversion, therefore I add the second half of the movie at this point also just before setting the conversion into action as seen here:



Now to set the programme running, simply go to the convert tab in the top left corner and press this tab to start the conversion:



The programme starts to do it's converting now and shows you it's progress throughout by shading the bar green as progress is made. It also gives the percentage of completion as it runs as can be seen here and two photos back:



Once both are completed, you will need to open the output folder to drop and drag these newly created files into a folder on your desktop or elsewhere. Just as the programme ends, you may however see the following box open:



Simply click "no thanks" to keep your original free version running intact without paying for the professional version of this software which offers no advantages for what we are using this for here.

Next, you need to open the output folder containing the completed converted files. Go to file and click to obtain the following dropbox:



Once you have done this you will see your converted files looking like 35mm film frames!



Drag and drop these now wherever you want to keep these files and in my case I place them onto a large memory stick ready for use with the VJ software/ player for doing the actual recording.

This software can take quite a long time to convert. This is perfectly normal as it is doing a lot of work! However, to keep the time to a minimum, try to keep every parameter you select to a minimum specification for your needs, especially in the video conversion department simply because in this instance you are only using the video as a monitor.
The software took around 40 minutes to complete both the files into the converted 24fps ones this morning.

The recording method I use will now be done and covered here with photographs and description of the method soon.

Using PCDJVJ or similar for carrying out recording work to follow...