Any news or interesting developments with the film scanning industry for 2024?

[Daniel D. Teoli Jr.]

20 hours ago, Tyler Purcell said:

We're working on it. Been trying some unique 3D printed ideas first, stuff that doesn't touch the film directly outside of PTFE material. I'm not sold on the design, but it's close to something that works at least. The pinching gate is tricky to manufacture and it also allows for any dust/dirt on the film to be pushed deeper into the film itself. Sometimes we clean stuff 4 times or more and its still got plenty of grime. So I get worried about a straight metal clamping gate. Our design doesn't clamp that much, just enough and it seems to be ok. I'll send pix once I feel we've got it working well. I used gaf tape to hold it together for our last scan because the hinge doesn't work right. lol ?

Interesting to see your setup once it is cleaned up...or not. Good to archive the process...warts and all.

What is PTFE? | AFT Fluorotec

...had to look it up

[Daniel D. Teoli Jr.]

19 hours ago, Tyler Purcell said:

Yea, I've used Phoenix for years now.

Sadly, most clients can't afford a full scene to scene/shot by shot restoration.

We're doing mostly 16mm, mostly films that just a bit of cleanup, maybe a day of dirt removal and some automated tools. Phoenix is just too slow to preview finished scenes fast enough for me. I want instant results, which I can do in Resolve, right off the 4k DPX files. So most of the time I just use Resolve. I'll run the film through Phoenix's automatic dust/scratch removal overnight and then toss it into Resolve for stabilization and frame by frame dirt removal. Results are ok. Not the best, but they're good enough for 90% of the clients out there. 

Diamant would be nice, but they charge too much money for something (yes I've tested it) that isn't THAT much better for OUR workflow. I guess if all you did all day long was film restoration, if that's your ONLY business and you lived in the software 9hrs a day, 5 days a week, YES! Diamant is the way to go, 100%. But if you're doing basic restoration here and there, want something to throw the film into, hit render and come back later to hand off to the client, then I don't know if it's worth the money. Phoenix full license today is $350/month, which is a STEAL for how much ya get. That's worth the price of admission. Diamant doesn't offer anything like that from my understanding. 

But I agree... with faster hardware, Phoenix maybe ok. We just haven't invested in that yet. It will be something we do, if we get more restoration jobs. 

Also, I appreciate your feedback. 

 

"Sadly, most clients can't afford a full scene to scene/shot by shot restoration."

What are the costs for full restorations? Are you talking frame by frame? Or do these software packages fix most problems without going frame by frame?

[Tyler Purcell]

10 hours ago, Daniel D. Teoli Jr. said:

 

Thanks for the rundown Tyler! Did BMD lose interest in their scanners? Their price point is good. Couldn't they just upgrade the imager or is the whole machine a mess?

I heard from a little birdie, that imager they're using now is very special and they'd have to re-design the entire camera/thunderbolt interface. They actually do the registration in the scanner, not on the computer. That hardware is specifically written for that imager as well. So it becomes a real issue, not something that can be updated easily. They could easily use the 6.5k imager that's in the Scan Station, but the data bandwidth maybe too much for thunderbolt. 

10 hours ago, Daniel D. Teoli Jr. said:

Impressive work you did to get the scan on that film. Was the sound done with the Film Fabriek optical reader? I remember you said it had problems with sound.

 

No more optical reader, we just use AEO-Light now. Works way better. The audio in that sample sucks compared to the quality we CAN deliver. 

[Tyler Purcell]

9 hours ago, Daniel D. Teoli Jr. said:

Interesting to see your setup once it is cleaned up...or not. Good to archive the process...warts and all.

Once we're happy enough and delivering decent product, I will gladly show. I think our constantly in-flux business model, precludes us from sharing too much. Not because I don't want to, oh no... I share a lot. But because I'm just not settled/happy with some of the solutions. Our gate is nice tho, I have shared many pix with people. 

[Tyler Purcell]

9 hours ago, Daniel D. Teoli Jr. said:

What are the costs for full restorations? Are you talking frame by frame? Or do these software packages fix most problems without going frame by frame?

We offer 3 services; 

- Clean + wet gate scan, with light color grade. 

- Clean + wet gate scan + basic automated restoration. This is usually done with Phoenix. We add the effect and hit render. Once rendered, we playback and anything that seems too screwy, we'll clean up. Tho we won't do scene to scene. We do a more advanced grade, but only if there is something wrong. 

- Clean + wet gate scan + frame by frame restoration. SO this one is the same as the one above, but we do frame to frame restoration. Remove splices, remove scratches, remove dirt, remove artifacts, basically it'll look not too bad. We do a scene to scene grade as well. 

We find the first option to be the most popular. It's the cheapest and it's very easy for us as well. The results are WAY better than just running film off on the scanner. Even with a very light dirt and dust removal in Phoenix, it comes out very nice. Most people won't complain about a few dirt hits and some hard scratches now and then. So those two are the most popular services. I've only gotten a hand full of frame by frame touchup jobs. It's why we haven't invested in a new system yet. We may have one coming in soon tho, so gonna have to suck it up and buy something shortly. Hopefully by then the new motherboards will be out for the threadripper. 

Edited January 13 by Tyler Purcell

[Dan Baxter]

On 1/13/2024 at 10:54 AM, Tyler Purcell said:

I heard from a little birdie, that imager they're using now is very special and they'd have to re-design the entire camera/thunderbolt interface. They actually do the registration in the scanner, not on the computer. That hardware is specifically written for that imager as well. So it becomes a real issue, not something that can be updated easily. They could easily use the 6.5k imager that's in the Scan Station, but the data bandwidth maybe too much for thunderbolt.

Blackmagic wouldn't put a competitor's camera in their scanner, and nor would they need to really as they have other cameras that are decent and have better dynamic range.

Once you go above 4K pixel camera resolution you increase the hardware requirements too far of the host computer, and the Blackmagic scanners don't have a host computer - they're designed to run on MacBooks and other consumer-grade desktops. But yes I've heard from those that know their stuff that changing the camera is not straightforward and would require total reprogramming in Resolve to support it in addition to what you say about the hardware support. If they do change it for a new camera in the next model it will likely be exclusive to the Cintel 5, you won't be able to put it into existing Cintels as there's no upgrade path and it would cost Blackmagic too much to support such upgrades. It'd be good if BMD moved their price-point to $50K and included a host computer, but I don't see that happening.

In any case, as we've seen, they're not going to change the camera unless their limited R&D resources allow for it, and they haven't too date. They're still working on getting the 8mm gate to market right now and probably other things that are a higher priority to them, BMD has a very large existing customer base with them now so they're probably focused more on the needs of their existing customers compared to prospective new ones who have to purchase other scanners as it is.

On 1/9/2024 at 5:08 PM, Tyler Purcell said:

I mean, has there been in the last decade? Not really. 

Well CMOS has improved in quality and overtaken CCD imagers in the primary choice for film scanners, so that has been a major advancement. The 6.5K Sony Imagers you mention are 5 years old now (with the cameras that are used in the scanners not yet 5 years old), and they're the ones that most in industry would say are true CCD quality with anything CMOS before them having less dynamic range than CCD would deliver natively.

On 1/9/2024 at 5:08 PM, Tyler Purcell said:

Laser Graphics dominates the mid tier. They make THE BEST machine for the money, period. 

I'd agree with that. They have their own limitations of course, but they are definitely the best bang-for-buck.

[Tyler Purcell]

On 1/15/2024 at 4:42 PM, Dan Baxter said:

If they do change it for a new camera in the next model it will likely be exclusive to the Cintel 5, you won't be able to put it into existing Cintels as there's no upgrade path and it would cost Blackmagic too much to support such upgrades. It'd be good if BMD moved their price-point to $50K and included a host computer, but I don't see that happening.

Yes, thats the only path forward is a more expensive scanner and yes, at $50k they'd sell them I believe. 

[Daniel D. Teoli Jr.]

On 1/12/2024 at 6:54 PM, Tyler Purcell said:

I heard from a little birdie, that imager they're using now is very special and they'd have to re-design the entire camera/thunderbolt interface. They actually do the registration in the scanner, not on the computer. That hardware is specifically written for that imager as well. So it becomes a real issue, not something that can be updated easily. They could easily use the 6.5k imager that's in the Scan Station, but the data bandwidth maybe too much for thunderbolt. 

No more optical reader, we just use AEO-Light now. Works way better. The audio in that sample sucks compared to the quality we CAN deliver. 

Thanks Tyler. Sounds like no hope for BM to come out with an affordable scanner.

AEO Light?? Terrible, that is what us Retroscan people have to use. OK, it works, but who wants to bother with it for thousands and thousands of films? Why doesn't FF fix their audio reader? Anything happening in the works? 

How do you use AEO Light? Overscan and crop down or scan the optical track separately and marry audio to the full scan? Fast way is overscan, but you lose res with cropping. 

Edited February 3 by Daniel D. Teoli Jr.

[Daniel D. Teoli Jr.]

On 1/12/2024 at 6:56 PM, Tyler Purcell said:

Once we're happy enough and delivering decent product, I will gladly show. I think our constantly in-flux business model, precludes us from sharing too much. Not because I don't want to, oh no... I share a lot. But because I'm just not settled/happy with some of the solutions. Our gate is nice tho, I have shared many pix with people. 

Well, I always say don't put crap online. It can follow you forever. But that is your call.

As an archivist, I like to see the process from beginning to end.

[Daniel D. Teoli Jr.]

On 1/12/2024 at 7:00 PM, Tyler Purcell said:

We offer 3 services; 

- Clean + wet gate scan, with light color grade. 

- Clean + wet gate scan + basic automated restoration. This is usually done with Phoenix. We add the effect and hit render. Once rendered, we playback and anything that seems too screwy, we'll clean up. Tho we won't do scene to scene. We do a more advanced grade, but only if there is something wrong. 

- Clean + wet gate scan + frame by frame restoration. SO this one is the same as the one above, but we do frame to frame restoration. Remove splices, remove scratches, remove dirt, remove artifacts, basically it'll look not too bad. We do a scene to scene grade as well. 

We find the first option to be the most popular. It's the cheapest and it's very easy for us as well. The results are WAY better than just running film off on the scanner. Even with a very light dirt and dust removal in Phoenix, it comes out very nice. Most people won't complain about a few dirt hits and some hard scratches now and then. So those two are the most popular services. I've only gotten a hand full of frame by frame touchup jobs. It's why we haven't invested in a new system yet. We may have one coming in soon tho, so gonna have to suck it up and buy something shortly. Hopefully by then the new motherboards will be out for the threadripper. 

When you run the scan through Phoenix, does it affect the resolution any? Are you basically getting back what you put in for res and file size, just cleaner?

What formats do you import and export, generally speaking?

[Daniel D. Teoli Jr.]

On 1/15/2024 at 7:42 PM, Dan Baxter said:

Blackmagic wouldn't put a competitor's camera in their scanner, and nor would they need to really as they have other cameras that are decent and have better dynamic range.

Once you go above 4K pixel camera resolution you increase the hardware requirements too far of the host computer, and the Blackmagic scanners don't have a host computer - they're designed to run on MacBooks and other consumer-grade desktops. But yes I've heard from those that know their stuff that changing the camera is not straightforward and would require total reprogramming in Resolve to support it in addition to what you say about the hardware support. If they do change it for a new camera in the next model it will likely be exclusive to the Cintel 5, you won't be able to put it into existing Cintels as there's no upgrade path and it would cost Blackmagic too much to support such upgrades. It'd be good if BMD moved their price-point to $50K and included a host computer, but I don't see that happening.

In any case, as we've seen, they're not going to change the camera unless their limited R&D resources allow for it, and they haven't too date. They're still working on getting the 8mm gate to market right now and probably other things that are a higher priority to them, BMD has a very large existing customer base with them now so they're probably focused more on the needs of their existing customers compared to prospective new ones who have to purchase other scanners as it is.

Well CMOS has improved in quality and overtaken CCD imagers in the primary choice for film scanners, so that has been a major advancement. The 6.5K Sony Imagers you mention are 5 years old now (with the cameras that are used in the scanners not yet 5 years old), and they're the ones that most in industry would say are true CCD quality with anything CMOS before them having less dynamic range than CCD would deliver natively.

I'd agree with that. They have their own limitations of course, but they are definitely the best bang-for-buck.

Thanks for the rundown, Dan!

[Daniel D. Teoli Jr.]

On 1/17/2024 at 3:27 PM, Tyler Purcell said:

Yes, thats the only path forward is a more expensive scanner and yes, at $50k they'd sell them I believe. 

Upgraded and at $50K, what would be the benefits of the BM over the Lasergraphics Archivist? 

Doesn't the Lasergraphics offer better registration with broken sprockets than the BM could?

Edited February 3 by Daniel D. Teoli Jr.

[Tyler Purcell]

23 hours ago, Daniel D. Teoli Jr. said:

Thanks Tyler. Sounds like no hope for BM to come out with an affordable scanner.

A "good" scanner is more important. I think they could easily dominate the sub $50k market with a scanner that has a movable lens system like the Scan Station. Even if they did a basic update to the imager, like the 5.2k IMX imager, that thing is really good. I just think they have to re-write everything for it to work and the budget is low. 

23 hours ago, Daniel D. Teoli Jr. said:

AEO Light?? Terrible, that is what us Retroscan people have to use. OK, it works, but who wants to bother with it for thousands and thousands of films? Why doesn't FF fix their audio reader? Anything happening in the works? 

AEO Light works great. 

The FF audio reader is fine, the scanner doesn't run at a constant speed. I've bitched to them about this, but unfortunately, there isn't anything they can do. There is no crystal lock or anything of that nature. So it's kind of a re-design for them, with a much bigger capstan system that has better grip on the film and a crystal feedback motor design. The motor varies by around one tenth of an FPS all the time, so you get WOW and flutter in all the audio. You may not notice it, but I do. Drives me nuts.

23 hours ago, Daniel D. Teoli Jr. said:

How do you use AEO Light? Overscan and crop down or scan the optical track separately and marry audio to the full scan? Fast way is overscan, but you lose res with cropping. 

Every client is different. However, we've found that nobody actually wants or cares for 4k Super 8 or 16mm PRINT transfers. Most people request 2k because archives don't want to store all that excess data. Plus, 16mm prints never get close to 2k anyway. So over scanning in 4k and then cropping to 2048x1400 or so (depending on the frame size) is what we normally do. Believe it or not, you aren't losing much res by doing this. The actual image area is still around 2.8k or so. 

We generally TRY to scan with perforations visible on those prints, so if there are any jumps or issues caused by splices, we can easily just automatically fix them in post. We need the perforation in frame to do that. So keeping the soundtrack in frame, is very easy. Our workflow using Resolve is very fast. It's practically real time and allows us to walk away and work on something else whilst it's chewing. 

AEO delivers us perfect audio and then we simply marry it to the picture. It's not perfect, but I'd say 80% of the time it lines up fine. 

I think audio is one of the biggest issues with lower end scanners. It's why the Blackmagic is so great, because it has excellent audio and can scan 2k prints in real time. It's just, our scanner allows for instant real time cleanup of the image in the form of a wet gate. This is really and critically important for digital post. Starting with a really good clean image, is the best way to insure you won't have major problems in digital cleanup. The last job we did, was insane. Extremely tight deadline, every roll was falling apart and needed work just to scan, it was bad. However, we worked around the clock and got it done. A testament to our abilities and the client was so happy and impressed, they're probably going to give us the rest of their library work. 

[Tyler Purcell]

23 hours ago, Daniel D. Teoli Jr. said:

As an archivist, I like to see the process from beginning to end.

The process is always different. Not two rolls are the same. Not to clients are the same. 

There are really 3 types of clients we deal with when it comes to print film; 

- Consumers who want to watch their films digitally. 

- Archives who want to get a quick scan so they can understand the value of their assets. 

- Consumers and Archives who want to never go back to the film again and are most likely throwing the elements away.

Obviously the first two are a quick scan to get done fast. 

The latter, is what we really do customized workflows for. 

We do shoot video of some things, but most of the time we're so busy, we never get a chance. 

 

Edited February 4 by Tyler Purcell

[Tyler Purcell]

23 hours ago, Daniel D. Teoli Jr. said:

Upgraded and at $50K, what would be the benefits of the BM over the Lasergraphics Archivist? 

A 5.2k imager and movable optical element, would allow full frame scans at 5.2k of all the major formats. Plus, capturing in a raw format in HDR, with direct access to resolve, is killer. I love the workflow of the BMD scanner. I think it works great. The only issue is the imager. 

23 hours ago, Daniel D. Teoli Jr. said:

Doesn't the Lasergraphics offer better registration with broken sprockets than the BM could?

I don't know the answer. BMD does have a capstan based system today, so they probably have less of an issue than in the past. 

[Perry Paolantonio]

15 hours ago, Tyler Purcell said:

AEO Light works great. 

AEO Light is only as good as the resolution and sharpness of the scan because it's taking the sound from that image. If you're scanning on a low quality machine at low resolution you won't get nearly the same quality you'll get from a 4k or larger scan. 

 

15 hours ago, Tyler Purcell said:

Every client is different. However, we've found that nobody actually wants or cares for 4k Super 8 or 16mm PRINT transfers.

The vast majority of Super 8 scans we do are at 4k. Nobody really scans Super 8 prints at all except some museums who have very specific work (usually art films). Super 8 prints were about the home entertainment market mostly: condensed versions of hollywood films, or maybe a reel you could buy at some major attraction to cut into your own home movies. But we scan 16mm prints at 4k all the time - It's rare these days that we do anything at lower resolutions, to be honest. Just doesn't make any sense to scan at 2k anymore. 

 

15 hours ago, Tyler Purcell said:

I think audio is one of the biggest issues with lower end scanners. It's why the Blackmagic is so great, because it has excellent audio and can scan 2k prints in real time.

BMD uses an old-school photosensor and a light source, like in a projector. The quality is ...not good. It's has a very high noise floor, and the high end is cut with a low cut filter. Also, you have to manually adjust (with a knob) the position of the pickup, so if you don't have it perfectly aligned it's not going to sound good. AEO Light on a sharp, high res scan will give you much better results than their optical track reader. 

 

15 hours ago, Tyler Purcell said:

I don't know the answer. BMD does have a capstan based system today, so they probably have less of an issue than in the past. 

Steadiness is not a hallmark of the BMD Cintel. We've re-scanned a lot of stuff done on these and they bob and weave like crazy. The steadiness of the lasergraphics scanners is dead on, and so is the Xena, from what I've seen. 

[Tyler Purcell]

14 hours ago, Perry Paolantonio said:

The vast majority of Super 8 scans we do are at 4k. Nobody really scans Super 8 prints at all except some museums who have very specific work (usually art films). Super 8 prints were about the home entertainment market mostly: condensed versions of hollywood films, or maybe a reel you could buy at some major attraction to cut into your own home movies. But we scan 16mm prints at 4k all the time - It's rare these days that we do anything at lower resolutions, to be honest. Just doesn't make any sense to scan at 2k anymore. 

Funny enough, the last THREE super 8 jobs I got were all prints. 

I guess in the 60's and 70's, companies offered a service where they'd make a print of your camera originals, so you didn't damage them? I can't fathom any reason why these prints would exist, but I've been seeing them more and more. Basically they're 400ft unspliced dupes of assembled camera originals. Man they look horrible tho, huge contrast and lots of issues with highlight blooming and lack of blacks. However, some people only have these, the source is long gone. I was shocked to see them interspersed with raw Ektachrome and Kodachrome rolls on our last 3 jobs. The clients mostly don't know because they're transferring their families home movies and they don't know how they got them. 

One of the rolls was a wedding, so the filmmaker who did the job, made an edit and print. But the other ones, they were so random. Maybe the idea was to stripe magnetic soundtrack and record music or something? None of them had soundtrack. I must have done 30+ reels of them as well, very strange. 

But yea, we scan everything in 4k, but our clients rarely ask for the 4k scans. The archives charge per gig to store and when they realize the 4k pro res files are huge, they balk and simply want the 2k. I think many of them don't really care about the quality of the finished work as long as they get it scanned and delivered. 

[Dan Baxter]

On 2/4/2024 at 9:13 AM, Daniel D. Teoli Jr. said:

Upgraded and at $50K, what would be the benefits of the BM over the Lasergraphics Archivist? 

Doesn't the Lasergraphics offer better registration with broken sprockets than the BM could?

Well, assuming that LaserGraphics will sell you a 35mm Archivist as it's not an official product, it will cost around $70-80K.

On 2/5/2024 at 8:56 AM, Tyler Purcell said:

A "good" scanner is more important. I think they could easily dominate the sub $50k market with a scanner that has a movable lens system like the Scan Station. Even if they did a basic update to the imager, like the 5.2k IMX imager, that thing is really good. I just think they have to re-write everything for it to work and the budget is low. 

Blackmagic's development team is tiny. They've been selling Cintel scanners since 2015 or 2016 and their priority now, as it should be, is supporting their existing users.

On 2/5/2024 at 9:05 AM, Tyler Purcell said:

A 5.2k imager and movable optical element, would allow full frame scans at 5.2k of all the major formats. Plus, capturing in a raw format in HDR, with direct access to resolve, is killer. I love the workflow of the BMD scanner. I think it works great. The only issue is the imager. 

You've said this for years Tyler! It's not the only issue. Even if you don't care about the quality of the final scan because, as you say you have an archive client that just wants to understand the value of their assets and needs a quick cheap "evaluation scan", a LaserGraphics can do 60fps but the Cintel can only do 30fps. Time is money. Obviously with setting up the reels, etc, you won't actually get through 2x the volume of film, but you might get through 60% more film or something like that in the same amount of time. Don't forget you also have 4 PTR rollers that are supposed to be cleaned between every single reel of film on the Cintel, and you can't bypass them.

There is no upgrade path either. That's a major limitation of the Blackmagic Cintels. Let's say they do upgrade the imager, you'll have to buy a brand new scanner to get it - it won't be available for older scanners, and there's no way they're going to support a zoom-lens optical module as you're suggesting. It is always going to be a fixed-camera system with the maximum resolution on 35mm only. Everyone who's main scanning biz is 16mm has been asking for that since the scanner launched, and you still cannot buy them for full-resolution 16mm with no 35mm support. LaserGraphics were selling 16mm ScanStation Personals in 2015 (drop the 35mm support for better resolution on 16mm and 8mm).

HDR is another issue with Blackmagic Cintels. Nobody who does commercial scanning actually offers HDR scanning on Cintels because it's highly unreliable. It's also designed to solve a problem that is better solved by changing the camera for one with better dynamic range.

If the Blackmagic Cintel moves to $50K, and that's a very big IF, it will move with all its current existing limitations. Do not get me wrong, for its price-point the scanner is incredible value and worth every cent. At $50K it will still be incredible value. But, it was designed as a cheap way to bring film to UHD streaming - commercial scanning was never its target. It is not a serious scanner in the commercial scanning market.

[Tyler Purcell]

10 hours ago, Dan Baxter said:

You've said this for years Tyler! It's not the only issue. Even if you don't care about the quality of the final scan because, as you say you have an archive client that just wants to understand the value of their assets and needs a quick cheap "evaluation scan", a LaserGraphics can do 60fps but the Cintel can only do 30fps. Time is money. Obviously with setting up the reels, etc, you won't actually get through 2x the volume of film, but you might get through 60% more film or something like that in the same amount of time. Don't forget you also have 4 PTR rollers that are supposed to be cleaned between every single reel of film on the Cintel, and you can't bypass them.

Sure but the LG is 197k  OTD
The BMD is $35K OTD
Zero comparison between them.
If you can afford an LG, you obviously won't need a BMD for anything. 

10 hours ago, Dan Baxter said:

There is no upgrade path either. That's a major limitation of the Blackmagic Cintels. Let's say they do upgrade the imager, you'll have to buy a brand new scanner to get it - it won't be available for older scanners, and there's no way they're going to support a zoom-lens optical module as you're suggesting. It is always going to be a fixed-camera system with the maximum resolution on 35mm only. Everyone who's main scanning biz is 16mm has been asking for that since the scanner launched, and you still cannot buy them for full-resolution 16mm with no 35mm support. LaserGraphics were selling 16mm ScanStation Personals in 2015 (drop the 35mm support for better resolution on 16mm and 8mm).

That's fine, we don't own one. 

A little lever on the side of the scanner to flip the magnifier around, is all you need to do on the BMD scanner in order to make it full frame 16 vs full frame 35mm. So put that on a tray, allow the user to do that work and you're good to go. I see it as a very basic re-design. 

If they still made that ScanStation personal and if it had the 5.2k imager, I'd probably already have one. The entire point is to have Super 8, 16mm and 35mm compatibility in a single machine. Obviously with a fixed lens, this becomes challenging. 

10 hours ago, Dan Baxter said:

HDR is another issue with Blackmagic Cintels. Nobody who does commercial scanning actually offers HDR scanning on Cintels because it's highly unreliable. It's also designed to solve a problem that is better solved by changing the camera for one with better dynamic range.

True, but I've tested it and it does work well WHEN It works. I was able to squeeze off two rolls of my first film we scanned with the Cintel II in HDR and I was very impressed. The issues with the imager went away and the details in the blacks expanded quite a bit. It's by far one of the best 35mm scans I've ever done. The ScanStation can do it better, but again, 197K. 

10 hours ago, Dan Baxter said:

If the Blackmagic Cintel moves to $50K, and that's a very big IF, it will move with all its current existing limitations. Do not get me wrong, for its price-point the scanner is incredible value and worth every cent. At $50K it will still be incredible value. But, it was designed as a cheap way to bring film to UHD streaming - commercial scanning was never its target. It is not a serious scanner in the commercial scanning market.

Let's be real, BMD doesn't understand market. Just look at their cameras. Every one is a total joke, as if their engineers have never seen a camera before. The Cintel II mechanically is a great scanner. The interface is awesome. The new lamp source works great. The PTR capstan drive also works flawlessly. They fixed everything it had wrong with it, but the bloody imager. The ONLY THING they need to do is swap that imager AND put the magnifying element on a try that can be easily flipped around. Problem solved. The problem they have, is re-aligning the perf detect system. But I bet with modern programming, they can do that no problem. 

I'm not holding my breath tho lol 

[Daniel D. Teoli Jr.]

On 2/4/2024 at 4:56 PM, Tyler Purcell said:

A "good" scanner is more important. I think they could easily dominate the sub $50k market with a scanner that has a movable lens system like the Scan Station. Even if they did a basic update to the imager, like the 5.2k IMX imager, that thing is really good. I just think they have to re-write everything for it to work and the budget is low. 

AEO Light works great. 

The FF audio reader is fine, the scanner doesn't run at a constant speed. I've bitched to them about this, but unfortunately, there isn't anything they can do. There is no crystal lock or anything of that nature. So it's kind of a re-design for them, with a much bigger capstan system that has better grip on the film and a crystal feedback motor design. The motor varies by around one tenth of an FPS all the time, so you get WOW and flutter in all the audio. You may not notice it, but I do. Drives me nuts.

Every client is different. However, we've found that nobody actually wants or cares for 4k Super 8 or 16mm PRINT transfers. Most people request 2k because archives don't want to store all that excess data. Plus, 16mm prints never get close to 2k anyway. So over scanning in 4k and then cropping to 2048x1400 or so (depending on the frame size) is what we normally do. Believe it or not, you aren't losing much res by doing this. The actual image area is still around 2.8k or so. 

We generally TRY to scan with perforations visible on those prints, so if there are any jumps or issues caused by splices, we can easily just automatically fix them in post. We need the perforation in frame to do that. So keeping the soundtrack in frame, is very easy. Our workflow using Resolve is very fast. It's practically real time and allows us to walk away and work on something else whilst it's chewing. 

AEO delivers us perfect audio and then we simply marry it to the picture. It's not perfect, but I'd say 80% of the time it lines up fine. 

I think audio is one of the biggest issues with lower end scanners. It's why the Blackmagic is so great, because it has excellent audio and can scan 2k prints in real time. It's just, our scanner allows for instant real time cleanup of the image in the form of a wet gate. This is really and critically important for digital post. Starting with a really good clean image, is the best way to insure you won't have major problems in digital cleanup. The last job we did, was insane. Extremely tight deadline, every roll was falling apart and needed work just to scan, it was bad. However, we worked around the clock and got it done. A testament to our abilities and the client was so happy and impressed, they're probably going to give us the rest of their library work. 

 

Thanks for the rundown on the sound options Tyler. 

[Daniel D. Teoli Jr.]

On 2/5/2024 at 8:58 AM, Perry Paolantonio said:

AEO Light is only as good as the resolution and sharpness of the scan because it's taking the sound from that image. If you're scanning on a low quality machine at low resolution you won't get nearly the same quality you'll get from a 4k or larger scan. 

 

The vast majority of Super 8 scans we do are at 4k. Nobody really scans Super 8 prints at all except some museums who have very specific work (usually art films). Super 8 prints were about the home entertainment market mostly: condensed versions of hollywood films, or maybe a reel you could buy at some major attraction to cut into your own home movies. But we scan 16mm prints at 4k all the time - It's rare these days that we do anything at lower resolutions, to be honest. Just doesn't make any sense to scan at 2k anymore. 

 

BMD uses an old-school photosensor and a light source, like in a projector. The quality is ...not good. It's has a very high noise floor, and the high end is cut with a low cut filter. Also, you have to manually adjust (with a knob) the position of the pickup, so if you don't have it perfectly aligned it's not going to sound good. AEO Light on a sharp, high res scan will give you much better results than their optical track reader. 

 

Steadiness is not a hallmark of the BMD Cintel. We've re-scanned a lot of stuff done on these and they bob and weave like crazy. The steadiness of the lasergraphics scanners is dead on, and so is the Xena, from what I've seen. 

 

Thanks Perry!

[Daniel D. Teoli Jr.]

On 2/4/2024 at 5:01 PM, Tyler Purcell said:

The process is always different. Not two rolls are the same. Not to clients are the same. 

There are really 3 types of clients we deal with when it comes to print film; 

- Consumers who want to watch their films digitally. 

- Archives who want to get a quick scan so they can understand the value of their assets. 

- Consumers and Archives who want to never go back to the film again and are most likely throwing the elements away.

Obviously the first two are a quick scan to get done fast. 

The latter, is what we really do customized workflows for. 

We do shoot video of some things, but most of the time we're so busy, we never get a chance. 

 

 

That is interesting about the Archives and the scan types they want.

Do you do much timed scans Tyler? Do you solicit the Archives much for work Tyler? Or is it word of mouth?

[David Sekanina]

@Daniel D. Teoli Jr. have a look at Friedemann's post, where he builds a Raspberry pi board for a 12 bit 4K frame scanner:

https://www.filmvorfuehrer.de/topic/31851-challenge-framescanner-für-350€-bauen/page/15/#comment-398126

For now he used a S8 projector, but plans to also document to use his board with a 16mm Bauer P8 projector. His personal website:

https://www.filmkorn.org/ein-12-bit-4k-filmscanner-fuer-ca-350e/

 

[Daniel D. Teoli Jr.]

On 2/6/2024 at 2:47 AM, Dan Baxter said:

Well, assuming that LaserGraphics will sell you a 35mm Archivist as it's not an official product, it will cost around $70-80K.

Blackmagic's development team is tiny. They've been selling Cintel scanners since 2015 or 2016 and their priority now, as it should be, is supporting their existing users.

You've said this for years Tyler! It's not the only issue. Even if you don't care about the quality of the final scan because, as you say you have an archive client that just wants to understand the value of their assets and needs a quick cheap "evaluation scan", a LaserGraphics can do 60fps but the Cintel can only do 30fps. Time is money. Obviously with setting up the reels, etc, you won't actually get through 2x the volume of film, but you might get through 60% more film or something like that in the same amount of time. Don't forget you also have 4 PTR rollers that are supposed to be cleaned between every single reel of film on the Cintel, and you can't bypass them.

There is no upgrade path either. That's a major limitation of the Blackmagic Cintels. Let's say they do upgrade the imager, you'll have to buy a brand new scanner to get it - it won't be available for older scanners, and there's no way they're going to support a zoom-lens optical module as you're suggesting. It is always going to be a fixed-camera system with the maximum resolution on 35mm only. Everyone who's main scanning biz is 16mm has been asking for that since the scanner launched, and you still cannot buy them for full-resolution 16mm with no 35mm support. LaserGraphics were selling 16mm ScanStation Personals in 2015 (drop the 35mm support for better resolution on 16mm and 8mm).

HDR is another issue with Blackmagic Cintels. Nobody who does commercial scanning actually offers HDR scanning on Cintels because it's highly unreliable. It's also designed to solve a problem that is better solved by changing the camera for one with better dynamic range.

If the Blackmagic Cintel moves to $50K, and that's a very big IF, it will move with all its current existing limitations. Do not get me wrong, for its price-point the scanner is incredible value and worth every cent. At $50K it will still be incredible value. But, it was designed as a cheap way to bring film to UHD streaming - commercial scanning was never its target. It is not a serious scanner in the commercial scanning market.

 

Thanks Dan, great points. 

What is involved in cleaning the PTR rollers? Is it a big job? I wonder how they hold up over time when it comes to deterioration. Maybe not that big a deal unless replacements become unobtainable and scanner won't run without them.

Do any other scanners use the PTR rollers to clean film before it is scanned?

[Daniel D. Teoli Jr.]

On 2/6/2024 at 1:03 PM, Tyler Purcell said:

Sure but the LG is 197k  OTD
The BMD is $35K OTD
Zero comparison between them.
If you can afford an LG, you obviously won't need a BMD for anything. 

That's fine, we don't own one. 

A little lever on the side of the scanner to flip the magnifier around, is all you need to do on the BMD scanner in order to make it full frame 16 vs full frame 35mm. So put that on a tray, allow the user to do that work and you're good to go. I see it as a very basic re-design. 

If they still made that ScanStation personal and if it had the 5.2k imager, I'd probably already have one. The entire point is to have Super 8, 16mm and 35mm compatibility in a single machine. Obviously with a fixed lens, this becomes challenging. 

True, but I've tested it and it does work well WHEN It works. I was able to squeeze off two rolls of my first film we scanned with the Cintel II in HDR and I was very impressed. The issues with the imager went away and the details in the blacks expanded quite a bit. It's by far one of the best 35mm scans I've ever done. The ScanStation can do it better, but again, 197K. 

Let's be real, BMD doesn't understand market. Just look at their cameras. Every one is a total joke, as if their engineers have never seen a camera before. The Cintel II mechanically is a great scanner. The interface is awesome. The new lamp source works great. The PTR capstan drive also works flawlessly. They fixed everything it had wrong with it, but the bloody imager. The ONLY THING they need to do is swap that imager AND put the magnifying element on a try that can be easily flipped around. Problem solved. The problem they have, is re-aligning the perf detect system. But I bet with modern programming, they can do that no problem. 

I'm not holding my breath tho lol 

 

A while back they had a ScanStation Personal on sale at eBay for pretty cheap. Can't remember, maybe $20k - $25? Dunno. Anyway, too bad you couldn't get it Tyler. 

I thought the big boy ScanStation was $125K. They must have gone up a lot to hit $197K. You would think this market is hitting its peak somewhat. Or do the scanning companies have lots more headroom for price hikes?