When you need to splice film together or add some white lead-in (leader) to the beginning of the film, the only way you can accurately join the two is with a splice tool. They align and space the sprocket holes perforations precisely then you may apply either film cement or splice tape.
I have a splice tool for Regular 8 but not for Super 8; I had a piece of white leader come unglued from a Super 8 movie. Instead of trying to align the sprocket holes and cement the leader back on the film without a proper tool it is better left off, and I explain what I did to bypass this in the next paragraph. If they are not perfectly lined up you may have a host of troubles. A couple of the problems you might encounter is your film starting to walk off the sprocket or it may turn it into an accordion, then it's a ruined beyond repair.
I clipped off the end of the film with the cutter on the projector, mainly to cut off the cement and using the projectors trimmer gives you the best feed alignment for that machine. Then I fed the film thru the projector after first starting the video camera recording, when more than enough of the film came out to be attached to the take-up reel I paused both projector and video camera and secured it to the reel. Then I Reverse the projector a few frames and start the video camera recording and then start the projector in the Forward motion and continue to film.
If you are fortunate enough to have a self threading take-up reel you won't have to stop everything, the projector I have does self thread with Super 8 sometimes, but never with Regular 8. It is very easy to join the two with a Video Editor program and no one will ever know that there was a pause in the cause.
Also you can use the above method to join breaks in the film or where one is fluttering real bad and you had to stop production. Sometimes when it starts getting uncontrollable flickering and or fluttering in the forward direction I switch it to Reverse and keep filming with the video camera because with a Video Editor program you can reverse the direction of the movie, as long as you aren't working with a talkie.
You just need to make sure when going from Forward to Reverse that the Framer Knob is adjusted to get the top and bottom of the screen realigned, mine changes the end view when I go from Forward to Reverse and vice versa.
Keeping a camel hair or a real soft brush and a can of compressed air (that only shoots air and no liquids) is always easier and less time consuming than redoing what has just been done. The Aperture and Film Channel must be kept as clean as possible so you don't get dust, hairs and other undesirables transferred to your digital copy.
Most of the old Super 8 and Regular 8 Movie Cameras didn't use the thru the lens view mode so occasionally you might find a few movies in a row with the same hair in the same part of the frame. Anyway I found a few films that way but before determining that it was on the film I had cleaned the projector lens a few times and took the film out of the projector and cleaned the film advance more than once. That's a bummer but that was life in the 50's and 60's and possibly still is depending on what type of video camera you are utilizing at the present time.
I will be updating my website with some helpful information and some views of how some of my transfers turned out on some 8mm film that was taken in 1956 at http://danstrobel.com/8mm_to_Digital.html.
Thank you for taking time to read my article
Daniel D. Strobel
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