Super 8 film scanner, 3d printed using OpenCV

[@ericarway]

This is amazing. I've spent days going down the rabbit hole of how to modify a projector, but this has inspired me to try a new approach. Using software to sense the sprocket hole is brilliant.

[@StuartPittaway]

Glad I could help!

[@thecaveofthedead]

I agree. I've played around a little bit with computer vision but it never occurred to me to use it for this - makes the mechanical solution so much simpler.

[@randytate]

Your results absolutely kick the crap out of anything less than $5,000 - easily. This stuff looks amazing for super 8mm and I've been at this for a quarter century. Well done!

[@WM-op6ml]

Great work. I am about to setup my own project with this knowledge. By the way, the second part of your Innsbruck movie is actually Salzburg in Austria.

[@StuartPittaway]

Thank you, the reel did have Innsbruck/Salzburg on it!

[@stevensexton5801]

Love the swanky music mixed with the sample videos.

[@StuartPittaway]

Thanks

[@gladiator6016]

Outstanding! I think your design and execution is a tremendous success. I am sure it would be competitive in the marketplace.

[@StuartPittaway]

Thanks

[@wayne8113]

Thanks Stuart, Brilliant They have come up really good. I wouldn't be to concerned about the quality of the images (light and color correction Yes ) adds to the character. Very impressed in the automated solution, well done Stuart. 👍👍

[@StuartPittaway]

Thanks 👍

[@largepimping]

Absolutely NOTHING to do with why I subscribed to your channel and Patreon, but fascinating and very cool! Thanks.

[@StuartPittaway]

Agreed, don't worry diybms returns in the next episode (sounds like a StarWars trailer!)

[@mikeydelamonde]

Great project! I might make one myself

[@StuartPittaway]

Thanks.

[@allTheSixes66]

Wow, thanks for sharing, just love it :)

[@StuartPittaway]

My pleasure 😊

[@Super8Rescue]

This is spectacular. Well done. I wish I had that talent. Film9 or avisynth will deal with the scratches and grain.

[@StuartPittaway]

Thanks for the comment.

[@Multi_ToBi]

Very, very well done! I am pondering on the idea to make a filmscanner out of old Fischertechnik parts - as a challenge. Because I played with that as a kid. Have to make avideo out of that project...

[@StuartPittaway]

Go for it!

[@boywithadolphin]

You can buy old projectors and editors very cheaply on eBay. The editor is good for rewind. I am building a scanner. I found webcams do not give a flat field but a digital microscope works well. Will use magnets to hold the camera in place so I can position just by moving it.

[@StuartPittaway]

Good ideas.

[@danlscan]

Your results are very good. I've been playing with a circuit that varies the lamp brightness with the measured brightness through the film. This helps compensate for under and over exposure on the film itself. I built it and it works well enough to incorporate into the Rube Goldberg I've cobbled together. I'm hoping to try it out before Spring. I too use Davinci Resolve for post. I find it quite fun to capture old family films. An excellent cure for the doldrums of Winter.

[@StuartPittaway]

I had a lot of fun doing this - I remember watching the films as a child, so very nostalgic to restore them in the digital world.

[@ViniGiovanni]

you can try to take 3 pictures one over exposed and other under and merge them so you have an hdr imge with the with rage of the film. Also if you add another with an IR light you can run a dust remove filter in photoshop. that is how all my 35mm scan works

[@andreasglaus5865]

Great Project!! New work for my 3D Printer😉. Thanks and looking forward to see the Movies of my Dad.

[@StuartPittaway]

Awesome! Thank you. Let me know if you need any help.

[@colinscotland2887]

@@StuartPittaway I made this Super 8 video with an app on my phone kzbin.info/www/bejne/n5Kmfaqhg6ySgZI

[@StuartPittaway]

@@colinscotland2887 that's really cool. Looks like good quality film in the first place as well

[@filmneri]

This is Outstanding! thanks for sharing this with us! I'll definitely try that!

[@StuartPittaway]

Thanks

[@MrSango123]

very clever only wish i had your talent

[@StuartPittaway]

Thanks for watching

[@BenMitro]

Excellent results Stuart...I imagine this took a while to do, but hopefully useful to others too.

[@StuartPittaway]

Thanks. It was about 5 days work in the end.

[@hausofwheat]

Very cool! Y'know you can have Davinci detect cuts as you import the clip (or frames) via the Media tab. You can adjust the tolerance of the what is detectable as a cut and after its done, you can go thru what it had generated as cuts and remove or add any more cuts that it neglected.

[@StuartPittaway]

Great tip! Thank you

[@Threemicsrecords]

So Amazing! Now If I new how to install OpenCV!

[@StuartPittaway]

Thanks for watching

[@RogerHyam]

Thanks for sharing this - and your github repo. I'm just setting out to do the same thing having bought a scanner off Amazon and sent it back thinking I could do better myself! It kept adding a kind of flutter to the top of some frames and they were really over sharpened. Having studied pictures of the Retroscan commercial scanner I'm going to try not using a pinch roller first. It seems to just pull the film through a set of friction rollers. Time will tell.

[@StuartPittaway]

Did it work?

[@RogerHyam]

@@StuartPittaway The 10 million dollar question! I ended up ripping up an old standard 8 projector and using two sprockets directly on two stepping motors either side of the gate plus a third stepper for the take up spool. I controlled these and a camera with a Raspberry Pi. It "kind of" worked. I think the hardware set up was more or less OK but it needed a lot of work on the software to get over how crude it was. Late one night I was struggling with it when I realised I really didn't want to be doing it any more. My day job is as a software engineer and it really isn't good to end up programming into the evenings. Maybe when I was younger but not anymore! I gave up on it and went to do something more analogue in my time off. Here is a quick phone video of it "working" before it went into the parts bin kzbin.info/www/bejne/qmjXaaNpgtZmgrs

[@easylawncare]

Cool I like this project. Good job man 👍

[@StuartPittaway]

Thanks

[@darklord_ice]

Very nice! Could you maybe please provide some more technical details (or even a video) on the actual assembly process of the scanner? Which screws / parts are being used / how to make anything spin and such? And how to connect power and the Raspberry - thanks a lot! What's the reason that two stepping motors are required? PS: i'm originally from Tyrol, very nice old footage of Innsbruck there!

[@StuartPittaway]

Hello, thanks for watching. I really don't have the time at the moment to expand on the building process. If you can take a look at the Freecad files, it should be quite simple to see what screw holes there are and how the parts align. I used 2 stepper motors simply because I had them spare. This could have been done with a single motor.

[@pekaway]

Great work!

[@StuartPittaway]

Thank you! Cheers!

[@Doug1313]

Great project! Lol I was thinking the same thing about the pi microscope lens, that it would be good for something like this

[@StuartPittaway]

That's exactly the lens I used with the advanced camera

[@Doug1313]

@@StuartPittaway Yep, as I saw in your video 👍 I was excited when I saw you using it!

[@StuartPittaway]

@@Doug1313 works very well.

[@bryngerard4334]

Excellent! That looks like it was fun to do ;) Have you thought about adding support for 16mm?

[@StuartPittaway]

It wouldn't be difficult, but I don't have a reel to try

[@bryngerard4334]

@@StuartPittaway I could see right away that you could. Your approach to this problem has been 1st class. It is only dimensions at this point. Does anyone have a 16mm reel to give to Stuart? Or even 35mm :o) :)

[@XxmattitudexX]

@@bryngerard4334 i have 16 mm reels i saw a model for a reel on thingverse also if he can print one may be easiest

[@nickoppen]

Great project Stu. It is very reassuring to see your approach getting such a high quality result. I'm in the process of doing the same thing but making my rig more general to cater for 8mm, Double 8, 16mm cinefilm and 35mm stills. Have you thought about using HDR images to pull out more detail in the shadows and high lights? The library that the pi now uses (libcamera) has a built in HDR function and OpenCV has included an number of HDR algorithms as well. I believe that the libcamera routine adds 2-3 seconds per frame which is quite expensive and would add a couple of hours onto scanning a 4 minute film. I've seen some still images and it seems to do a good job. I've done some reading and tests with the OpenCV routines. It (like everything) seems to need a good understanding of the process and some experimentation to get all of the settings tweaked.

[@StuartPittaway]

I did look quickly at HDR, but decided it was too slow and the original quality of my film wasn't great. Let me know how you get on

[@nickoppen]

@@StuartPittaway I certainly will. Thanks.

[@jean-noelthomas]

I got a similar scanner made by myself.. and Your approach is slightly different.. I'll pick you some ideas... Mine is working for 4 years at this time.. And I am trying a new releaes with Graphic interface.. And it's on my own "programmer's" limits...

[@StuartPittaway]

Thanks for leaving the comment. I only built the scanner for a one off conversion of the old tapes, good to see you have a reliable solution working for 4+ years

[@alexlandherr]

Could you have used a B&W sensor and a color filter wheel in front of the camera to take 3 exposures/frame and then merge them later on? For the alignment maybe leave a gap in the wheel so that only a B&W image is captured for the sprocket detection and when aligned capture R, G & B frames.

[@StuartPittaway]

Yes this would have been possible

[@seeyouinmystar]

Hi Stuart, really fantastic work here. I'm interested in taking a similar approach towards scanning 16mm film. I've been trying to wrap my head around how I'd handle sprocket hole detection on this format, given that the hole sits in between frames. Do you know if there is a way to align the frame using two sprocket holes rather than one? I apologize if this is a dumb question, I have no experience using the OpenCV library. Thanks!

[@StuartPittaway]

It should be possible, you detect the square shape and then use that to align the overall image.

[@bogeytron]

Looks brilliant, I've been looking for a DIY film scanner project to scan films that my parents and grandparents made many, many moons ago! One quick question, how well would this work with regular 8mm film? Would I need to change the gate window or could it be done via the software?

[@StuartPittaway]

I suspect it should be okay, you can always crop the image in software later on

[@strongxmind]

Great stuff! Is that possible to produce 4K videos this way? I need that to match the resolution with other scenes recorded using a regular 4K digital camera :)

[@StuartPittaway]

You could definitely upscale the frames. Not much to be gained though as the original footage isn't good enough resolution

[@chandershekhar9103]

Great Work and I want to know which type of lans and camera are you using ??

[@StuartPittaway]

Its a raspberry PI advanced camera and microscope lens

[@DerekReay]

Hi Stuart, I have been toying with the idea of transferring old Std 8mm to digital images for some time now. I had thought about converting a projector but I find that your design of a scanner, and the resulting images are awesome. I now have an old 'Illumitran' slide copier which would use a camera to capture the image. I would like to adapt this, by adding arms for the film transport system by powering them with Stepper motors, and using a 8mm size film gate.. But, I have to admit that computer programing/components completely mystifies me. If I use 2 Nema 17 motors, do I need 2 separate drivers ? I would replace the camera with a digital HQ Camera Board with a Microscope lens and wonder how a sprocket hole sensor could trigger off the camera Could all of this be powered by an Arduino ? The Raspberry system for programming seems quite complicated. Could I please ask you to provide a list of what Motherboards, Drivers, Controller/Smoothie Boards, Sensors etc that I will require. Sorry that this is rather long winded, but I would appreciate any advice that you may be able to provide. Many Thanks. Best Regards.

[@StuartPittaway]

Hi, I used an old 3d printer motherboard, nothing special it just runs marlin, and has several stepper motor drivers. You need a driver for each stepper motor. I then use the raspberry pi, and it's microscope camera to capture the images. Arduino isn't really suitable for this. Don't forget a good light source as well, it needs to be bright and uniformly lit.

[@mindaugasstankus5943]

Nice. Would project be easier or more difficult with Line Scan Sensor/Camera?

[@StuartPittaway]

I've no idea, not used one of those sensors. It was straight forward with a standard camera.

[@Ni5ei]

Awesome project! But why have you made it so it only takes 50ft reels? Do you have an estimate of how much it cost?

[@StuartPittaway]

I didn't need anything longer than the smaller reels! I built most of it from spare parts lying around the place. The raspberry pi and camera are the most expensive parts

[@carlosbarrera3201]

Gran trabajo, yo llevo años intentándolo sin éxito. He empezado a crear tu proyecto, pero me surge la duda ¿Dónde esta el código de Arduino para los motores?, Saludos.

[@StuartPittaway]

Los motores simplemente usan un firmware Marlin de una impresora 3D. El Raspberry PI usa GCODE para controlar los motores.

[@creativesamurai8372]

Hey, amazing video. im doing a very similar thing, but with a flatbed scanner. but i now have a scanned strip with about 30 frames and no way of splitting then up into individual frames. i was hoping OpenCV could help , but being new to python im finding it really hard. can you offer any advice?

[@StuartPittaway]

I was also new to open CV, it's not that difficult but trial and error paid off

[@creativesamurai8372]

@@StuartPittaway iv actually made some headway. I'm about to crop my frames now. But only on singular images. Need to setup iterating through my image folder next

[@EuropaSteve]

Thanks for sharing. This is pretty much the exact list of parts I have laying around. I don't see the cone for the HD camera in the FreeCAD files. Would it be possible to get the .STL files for printing? My CAD skills are weak at best. Thanks again!

[@StuartPittaway]

I'll have to double check, it might just be part of one if the freecad files as a separate body.

[@EuropaSteve]

@@StuartPittaway Yes! CameraMount-RaspPiAdvanced Select the body in left pane and tap Space bar to show. Time to get printing...

[@gioslg99]

@@EuropaSteve which program did you use to show the cone? I still can't

[@EuropaSteve]

KZbin keeps deleting my response. Google FreeCAD. It should give you the link.

[@geoff1740]

@@gioslg99 FreeCAD

[@zanders32]

Could this be modified for 16mm?

[@StuartPittaway]

No reason why not

[@jsfotografie]

hey Steward Awesome Project :) i tried to contact you through facebook but guess you didnt see it :) im about to print the parts and i have some questions. i have download the Cad files and assembled everything ind Freecad and it seems that the Microscope lens and sled design you show here in the video is not in the cad files? i also found in the files a "film_sproket" that i didnt see in the assembly? do you have perhabs a "final" assembly that you can upload? :) cheers and thx Janosch

[@StuartPittaway]

Hello, sorry didn't see the Facebook message. Probably easier to raise an issue over on GitHub for this and I can take a look

[@blamm5348]

Do you have actual STL files for the parts?

[@StuartPittaway]

All the files are on GitHub as freecad files. You can convert those into STL

[@LuciusGraciusMaximus]

Greetings , is there a way to buy one of these diy scanners online ? Or are you planing on selling them ?

[@StuartPittaway]

Unfortunately not selling these.

[@LuciusGraciusMaximus]

@@StuartPittaway thank you for the answer , that’s sad

[@RedStarRogue]

Hmmmm, pie...

[@BootyFebacca]

How is the depth of field on the camera? Is it super shallow? Or is it pretty forgiving?

[@StuartPittaway]

I wouldn't know how to check!

[@BootyFebacca]

@@StuartPittaway No worries. Thank you!