Daniel D. Teoli Jr. Posted January 18 Posted January 18 (edited) Well, I guess there are only so many ways to skin a cat. Internet Archive: Digital Library of Free & Borrowable Texts, Movies, Music & Wayback Machine What is the verdict on MWA? Looks to be marketed mainly to the Europeans. <><><><> Daniel D. Teoli Jr. Archival Collection Daniel D. Teoli Jr. Small Gauge Film Archive Daniel D. Teoli Jr. Advertising Archive Daniel D. Teoli Jr. VHS Video Archive Daniel D. Teoli Jr. Popular Culture Archive Daniel D. Teoli Jr. Audio Archive Daniel D. Teoli Jr. Social Documentary Photography Edited January 18 by Daniel D. Teoli Jr.
Premium Member Tyler Purcell Posted January 18 Premium Member Posted January 18 Not MWA, no they aren't the same. FF seems to have purchased another company (name I forgot) and those scanners DO look identical. It took them a while to come out with the Pictor, something that is 100% all unique to them and very much a good machine for 8mm formats. I have a feeling whatever they make next for the larger formats, will also be 100% all unique. It's hard to sell scanners, especially in the HDS+ price range. The big guys will spend the money for higher quality and the lower end guys won't spend that much ever. 1 1
Dan Baxter Posted January 21 Posted January 21 On 1/19/2025 at 6:59 AM, Tyler Purcell said: FF seems to have purchased another company (name I forgot) and those scanners DO look identical. Here's the story with FF: https://britishcinematographer.co.uk/filmfabriek/ The scanner you mean is the Müller HM73, the first model made by the late Daan Müller. FF were set up to commercialise the project/make it a commercial reality, but according to the webpage he unfortunately passed away about a year into that partnership. 2
Premium Member Tyler Purcell Posted January 22 Premium Member Posted January 22 On 1/21/2025 at 5:51 AM, Dan Baxter said: Here's the story with FF: https://britishcinematographer.co.uk/filmfabriek/ The scanner you mean is the Müller HM73, the first model made by the late Daan Müller. FF were set up to commercialise the project/make it a commercial reality, but according to the webpage he unfortunately passed away about a year into that partnership. Oh got ya, thanks for the clarification.
Daniel D. Teoli Jr. Posted January 25 Author Posted January 25 On 1/18/2025 at 2:59 PM, Tyler Purcell said: Not MWA, no they aren't the same. FF seems to have purchased another company (name I forgot) and those scanners DO look identical. It took them a while to come out with the Pictor, something that is 100% all unique to them and very much a good machine for 8mm formats. I have a feeling whatever they make next for the larger formats, will also be 100% all unique. It's hard to sell scanners, especially in the HDS+ price range. The big guys will spend the money for higher quality and the lower end guys won't spend that much ever. Yes, good evaluation on the price point with the scanners Tyler. I've been waiting for the new FF scanners you alluded to a while back, but have not seen anything new from them. I wanted to buy one of the FF 8mm scanners. But US price is like $20K last time I checked. I have never seen a used on come up on eBay in years of looking. I got rid of most of my 8mm film, but still have maybe 400 reels to scan. If Cintel made a scanner like the LG Archivist for $20-25K, then you would have something. But the bottom line is; selling film scanners does not seem like a growth biz to me as it revolves around film. Even so, that fact has not helped me out one bit over the years acquiring an affordable half-ass decent scanner.
Premium Member Tyler Purcell Posted January 25 Premium Member Posted January 25 9 hours ago, Daniel D. Teoli Jr. said: Yes, good evaluation on the price point with the scanners Tyler. I've been waiting for the new FF scanners you alluded to a while back, but have not seen anything new from them. It's a long process, I was hoping to see something last year, but we should see it this year. I know it's a tough business and making something much better than what they have, will take a long time and cost a lot of money. The Pictor is a great little scanner that clearly has a lot of the functionality one would expect in a new 16mm scanner. Making it all work flawlessly, is going to be a challenge. 9 hours ago, Daniel D. Teoli Jr. said: If Cintel made a scanner like the LG Archivist for $20-25K, then you would have something. But the bottom line is; selling film scanners does not seem like a growth biz to me as it revolves around film. Even so, that fact has not helped me out one bit over the years acquiring an affordable half-ass decent scanner. BMD absolutely have a new scanner, but they've been delayed for multiple reasons. Their project engineer died a few years ago and BMD haven't given them the resources to move fast. They've designed a few new bits like a lamp source, gate and updated software control, but the BRAIN which does all the work on board scanner, is very old. Developing a new one will be a huge nightmare, as it does all the work internally, spitting out a CRI that's already corrected in real time. It's an amazing machine when you think of the technical aspects, considering nearly all other scanners do that work in the computer's GPU. Needless to say, until they can make that new brain, there won't be a new scanner. I know it's coming, along with a new imager, but it's going to be a hot minute. I wouldn't expect anything released this year. We may see a prototype at some point, but BMD generally does not like showing something they can't sell. It will be expensive tho, closer to $50k my guess is. But if it works well, I will absolutely buy one.
Dan Baxter Posted January 26 Posted January 26 7 hours ago, Tyler Purcell said: It will be expensive tho, closer to $50k my guess is. But if it works well, I will absolutely buy one. Tyler, what's the price on the Spinner S2 do you know? 16 hours ago, Daniel D. Teoli Jr. said: If Cintel made a scanner like the LG Archivist for $20-25K, then you would have something. But the bottom line is; selling film scanners does not seem like a growth biz to me as it revolves around film. Even so, that fact has not helped me out one bit over the years acquiring an affordable half-ass decent scanner. The Archivist is a ScanStation with bits removed/replaced. The only reason LG can sell it at all is because the ScanStation exists and they were able to cut it down into a cheaper product. It works on the same software, functionally the same transport module, etc.
Premium Member Tyler Purcell Posted January 26 Premium Member Posted January 26 15 hours ago, Dan Baxter said: Tyler, what's the price on the Spinner S2 do you know? No, but I would assume it's not worth it because it doesn't have stabilization.
Site Sponsor Perry Paolantonio Posted January 27 Site Sponsor Posted January 27 On 1/25/2025 at 5:59 PM, Tyler Purcell said: Developing a new one will be a huge nightmare, as it does all the work internally, spitting out a CRI that's already corrected in real time. It's an amazing machine when you think of the technical aspects, considering nearly all other scanners do that work in the computer's GPU. This seems in keeping with the design of the BMD Cintel overall - a really dumb idea. Why on earth reinvent the wheel, when GPUs and the ability to process images at very high speeds are available off the shelf? Custom building something like this is a terrible idea, for so many reasons. Also, BMD already has extensive programming experience with GPU-based image processing, with Resolve to draw upon.
Premium Member Tyler Purcell Posted January 28 Premium Member Posted January 28 On 1/27/2025 at 6:25 AM, Perry Paolantonio said: This seems in keeping with the design of the BMD Cintel overall - a really dumb idea. Why on earth reinvent the wheel, when GPUs and the ability to process images at very high speeds are available off the shelf? Custom building something like this is a terrible idea, for so many reasons. Also, BMD already has extensive programming experience with GPU-based image processing, with Resolve to draw upon. Simple; to get real time FPS at decent resolution, you either need onboard processing or host processing. Host processing is expensive as well, it also requires support to keep running. Onboard processing is an engineering challenge for the company, but when you can use a brainless host, it means you don't need to do as much support. So for clients, it's actually a win-win. 1
Site Sponsor Perry Paolantonio Posted January 28 Site Sponsor Posted January 28 41 minutes ago, Tyler Purcell said: Simple; to get real time FPS at decent resolution, you either need onboard processing or host processing. This logic makes no sense. I don't even know where to start. Do you have any concept of the work involved in building an embedded system from the ground up with that kind of horsepower? No sane engineer would propose such a thing, when the exact same result can be had using off the shelf, readily available, easily interchageable parts. The engineering resources involved in designing such a beast, and then having to maintain it in small quantities as available components come and go, is absolutely massive.
Premium Member Tyler Purcell Posted January 29 Premium Member Posted January 29 2 hours ago, Perry Paolantonio said: Do you have any concept of the work involved in building an embedded system from the ground up with that kind of horsepower? Spirit, Scanity, Arri Scan, Cintel II, this is how they work. I'm not building it, so what do I care.
Site Sponsor Perry Paolantonio Posted January 29 Site Sponsor Posted January 29 1 hour ago, Tyler Purcell said: Spirit, Scanity, Arri Scan, Cintel II, this is how they work. I'm not building it, so what do I care. You're comparing apples to oranges here. Spirit, Arriscan, and Scanity are in a completely different league from the BMD Cintel. They sell for 10x - 20x the price. The Cintel scanner is at the price point it's at precisely because it's not using the kind of custom hardware those other scanners use. All of those high end scanners were designed (at least in their initial iterations) in a time before it was possible to offload all the work to a GPU so you had no choice but to roll your own. A pretty strong argument can be made that that's an outmoded way of designing this kind of hardware given the current state of cheaply available GPUs. I'm not saying they're bad at what they do, but if the engineers who designed them started now, odds are they wouldn't be building it entirely from scratch, they'd be repurposing existing hardware (in fact, this is what the later generation ArriScans do - it's basically an Alexa in there).
Premium Member Tyler Purcell Posted January 29 Premium Member Posted January 29 5 minutes ago, Perry Paolantonio said: All of those high end scanners were designed (at least in their initial iterations) in a time before it was possible to offload all the work to a GPU so you had no choice but to roll your own. A pretty strong argument can be made that that's an outmoded way of designing this kind of hardware given the current state of cheaply available GPUs. Sure, but what would you the user rather have? A scanner that's all in one, that basically requires a basic non-workstation to operate, or a scanner that requires a specially built computer with licensed software that needs to be maintained. At least with the Cintel, you can drop a new host system in by simply walking down to the Apple Store buying a new system and installing Resolve Studio. Nothing else required. Having dealt with never ending windows issues for decades (nothing has ever changed), I can't imagine relying on a PC as a host system to get work done. I'd rather have the plug and play thunderbolt solution with the transparent user interface like Resolve. Anyone can sit down and run film through it. No "specialist" needed, which is the entire point. Now, I'm not gonna sit here and say the Cintel is a great scanner. It's a great concept that is letdown simply through a bad imager. They fixed the lamp source. The fixed the gate issues. They fixed the transport issues (it's now both capstan or sprocket less). The only thing they need to fix now is the imager and that of course, will require a new black box. So when they do, it will be $50k probably and I feel it will be a good scanner for most people. HDR, decent lamp source, decent resolution imager and perhaps optical format changes instead of punching in on the imager. That's all you really need. Pro Res on the output is cool, but modern Mac's transcode so fast, it's really irrelevant. Being in Resolve the entire time you're scanning and being able to do scene by scene correction during the scan AND THEN again before delivery, it's pretty powerful.
Site Sponsor Perry Paolantonio Posted January 29 Site Sponsor Posted January 29 9 hours ago, Tyler Purcell said: Sure, but what would you the user rather have? A scanner that's all in one, that basically requires a basic non-workstation to operate, or a scanner that requires a specially built computer with licensed software that needs to be maintained. the latter. The only things I care about are that the image quality is good, the software is reliable, and the machine just works every morning when we come into the office. We pay for software updates and get them regularly. We get support when we ask for it. That's worth it. Who cares what computer it runs on? We have scanned millions of feet of film on our ScanStation in the past 12 years.The PCs they supply with the computer (or with major upgrades) are turnkey and they have worked flawlessly since they arrived. And these are just Win 10/11 machines running on gaming motherboards - I built a few workstations internally using the same hardware because it's been pretty reliable. I'm not about to based the purchase of a scanner on the OS the software runs on, or on waiting for a company to come out with a Mac version vs something that works, immediately, without fail. That's money lost and not a very smart way to run a business. Quote Being in Resolve the entire time you're scanning and being able to do scene by scene correction during the scan AND THEN again before delivery, it's pretty powerful. I would argue that very few scanning services work this way. We scan on our ScanStation to the local RAID. Files get copied up to our SAN if we're grading/restoring the film, or they get copied to the client's hard drive if not. We have the scanner in a different room that's just for scanning. Resolve is in a room that's set up for grading - proper monitoring, lighting, wall color, etc. If we do them in the same room, we're tying up the scanner PC to do grading, or we're tying up the grading machine to to scanning. That's the old Telecine model in a sense, and part of why it used to cost $600-$800/hour to do telecine. Because you're tying up hardware that could otherwise be used to do something else at the same time. 1
Premium Member Tyler Purcell Posted January 29 Premium Member Posted January 29 6 hours ago, Perry Paolantonio said: I would argue that very few scanning services work this way. We scan on our ScanStation to the local RAID. Files get copied up to our SAN if we're grading/restoring the film, or they get copied to the client's hard drive if not. We have the scanner in a different room that's just for scanning. Resolve is in a room that's set up for grading - proper monitoring, lighting, wall color, etc. If we do them in the same room, we're tying up the scanner PC to do grading, or we're tying up the grading machine to to scanning. That's the old Telecine model in a sense, and part of why it used to cost $600-$800/hour to do telecine. Because you're tying up hardware that could otherwise be used to do something else at the same time. Absolutely, but I always find myself cleaning up things in resolve before delivering. It takes what, maybe 10 minutes to clean up a 1200ft roll. So you scan for the day, do the clean up after the scan on the same system and hit export before ya leave the building at night. Ya don't need it to be perfect most of the time, you just need a decent grading monitor that's calibrated and a lightweight grading specific control surface. With the Cintel II, you can run it just like a VTR, it's just outstanding how well it works. Part of the reason why I like looking through the original raw files on the system we scan on, is simply to check for errors. Sometimes you set everything at the first scene, walk away and come back and mid roll, there is something way over or under exposed. Catching that BEFORE you unload the reel, is really good. Then you can simply rewind to the spot (which is automatic on the Cintel II) and re-capture that section with different settings. Even with HDR mode, there are times where basic changes in exposure can be problematic to deal with in post and you will want to rescan. 7 hours ago, Perry Paolantonio said: Who cares what computer it runs on? We have scanned millions of feet of film on our ScanStation in the past 12 years.The PCs they supply with the computer (or with major upgrades) are turnkey and they have worked flawlessly since they arrived. And these are just Win 10/11 machines running on gaming motherboards - I built a few workstations internally using the same hardware because it's been pretty reliable. Do you pay the yearly support contract? Is the system connected to the internet? Are you running regular windows updates? I guess if the system is an island, perhaps it would just keep running. I think most small businesses would struggle to do that, mainly because sending clients samples on the same system they scan with, is kinda nice. I guess if you have a bunch of employees who can take care of that work for ya, then that's why you can isolate the PC. I find myself going into clients places on a regular basis and supporting their post workflows, many of them have Cintels and they absolutely have internet on those systems for this exact reason. We have found over the 20 years of using windows systems for this sort of specific work, that they generally break constantly. My partner is a windows expert and keeping our scanning system running, has been a nightmare. Not due to the scanner software, but due to updates that break specialized hardware that we need to scan. Obviously, just plugging a computer into a thunderbolt connection and installing Resolve, kinda helps with this.
Site Sponsor Perry Paolantonio Posted January 29 Site Sponsor Posted January 29 9 minutes ago, Tyler Purcell said: Sometimes you set everything at the first scene, walk away and come back and mid roll, there is something way over or under exposed. Catching that BEFORE you unload the reel, is really good. Then there's a problem with either your scanner or your scanning methodology because this shouldn't happen. If the first shot is set up correctly and you're doing a flat scan, nothing should ever be over or underexposed. 9 minutes ago, Tyler Purcell said: Do you pay the yearly support contract? Is the system connected to the internet? Are you running regular windows updates? We pay for an annual support contract. The system is technically connected to the internet but we don't use it for anything other than scanning. It gets security updates only. We don't touch any other Windows updates on that machine unless necessary, because it works. Quote . We have found over the 20 years of using windows systems for this sort of specific work, that they generally break constantly. I don't know what to say. We have half a dozen windows machines here and they're fine. I've been using Windows since the 1990s and while I don't especially like the operating system, it's not something I'd ever describe as "constantly breaking." We are a small shop - 3 of us. I do all the hardware and software maintenance myself. It's not that hard. 1
Daniel D. Teoli Jr. Posted January 29 Author Posted January 29 1 hour ago, Perry Paolantonio said: Then there's a problem with either your scanner or your scanning methodology because this shouldn't happen. If the first shot is set up correctly and you're doing a flat scan, nothing should ever be over or underexposed. We pay for an annual support contract. The system is technically connected to the internet but we don't use it for anything other than scanning. It gets security updates only. We don't touch any other Windows updates on that machine unless necessary, because it works. I don't know what to say. We have half a dozen windows machines here and they're fine. I've been using Windows since the 1990s and while I don't especially like the operating system, it's not something I'd ever describe as "constantly breaking." We are a small shop - 3 of us. I do all the hardware and software maintenance myself. It's not that hard. Does the LG scanner need to be connected to the internet to work? All these Bill Gates Windows updates constantly cause issues, Perry. I liked it when updates were not forced on you. Too bad a brainiac does not make a Windows operating system replacement that does not rape you like MS.
Premium Member Tyler Purcell Posted January 30 Premium Member Posted January 30 9 hours ago, Perry Paolantonio said: Then there's a problem with either your scanner or your scanning methodology because this shouldn't happen. If the first shot is set up correctly and you're doing a flat scan, nothing should ever be over or underexposed. Well yea, if you're perfectly exposed. LOL If you've got a roll of 50D at the head of the 1200ft scan roll and you're over by 2 stops, then later in the same 1200ft roll, you've got 500T and you're under by a stop or two, yea its not going to be an optimal scan. 8 hours ago, Daniel D. Teoli Jr. said: All these Bill Gates Windows updates constantly cause issues, Perry. I liked it when updates were not forced on you. Too bad a brainiac does not make a Windows operating system replacement that does not rape you like MS. We coded out software updates, we pointed the servers to 172.0.0.1 and it STILL does auto security updates. On average, it breaks two or three times a year. We were down just a few days ago and had to restore. I have windows clients across the nation that we support and they're always a problem.
Site Sponsor Perry Paolantonio Posted January 30 Site Sponsor Posted January 30 15 hours ago, Daniel D. Teoli Jr. said: Does the LG scanner need to be connected to the internet to work? no
Site Sponsor Perry Paolantonio Posted January 30 Site Sponsor Posted January 30 7 hours ago, Tyler Purcell said: Well yea, if you're perfectly exposed. LOL If you've got a roll of 50D at the head of the 1200ft scan roll and you're over by 2 stops, then later in the same 1200ft roll, you've got 500T and you're under by a stop or two, yea its not going to be an optimal scan. If this is how you're scanning film, you're doing it wrong. The exposure of the image on the film is irrelevant.
Site Sponsor Robert Houllahan Posted January 30 Site Sponsor Posted January 30 4 hours ago, Perry Paolantonio said: If this is how you're scanning film, you're doing it wrong. The exposure of the image on the film is irrelevant. Yeah the idea of a data scan has always been to capture Dmax to Dmin and scanner manufacturers actually have DMax specs that the machine is known to be able to capture relative to DMin. Multi flash really helps with DMax up around a 3.0 but you should be able to capture negatives with the full density range on a data scanner with a low noise sensor. Windoze is fine it works well if you keep it from talking to home, I keep my scanners / recorders on an internal network and have several Mac Mini machines to do uploads etc. The only problem I have had r.e. OS stuff with the LG or Xena machines was a recent drive crash on one Scan Station which required a fresh install of Win10 and the LG software but that was a physical drive issue not the OS. 1
Premium Member Tyler Purcell Posted January 31 Premium Member Posted January 31 On 1/30/2025 at 6:04 AM, Perry Paolantonio said: If this is how you're scanning film, you're doing it wrong. The exposure of the image on the film is irrelevant. So if you set exposure on the first scene, but it's 2 stops under, you won't have any issues when they're 2 stops over later on the same roll? I'm confused how that works. I've never heard of such a thing in an SDR, single flash workflow.
Site Sponsor Perry Paolantonio Posted January 31 Site Sponsor Posted January 31 16 minutes ago, Tyler Purcell said: So if you set exposure on the first scene, but it's 2 stops under, you won't have any issues when they're 2 stops over later on the same roll? I'm confused how that works. I've never heard of such a thing in an SDR, single flash workflow. you don't "set exposure" when doing a data scan. I suspect what you're doing is basically a one-light scan in the scanner, essentially grading the image post-capture in the scanner software. That's different, and is not how most scanners work. And that will definitely allow you to blow out highlights. It's just not how a data scan of film is done, but the FilmFabriek scanner probably doesn't work that way. It has nothing to do with SDR vs HDR scanning either.
Premium Member Tyler Purcell Posted January 31 Premium Member Posted January 31 1 hour ago, Perry Paolantonio said: It's just not how a data scan of film is done, but the FilmFabriek scanner probably doesn't work that way. It's how the Cintel II works. It's how the Spirit works. It's how the Imagica works. Those are the 3 other machines we use on a regular basis. All of them work the same as my Film Fabriek. You set the exposure based on the beginning of the roll and prey you're good. 9 times out of 10, it's fine. But in situations where the beginning of the roll is way off (you never actually know), we've found it can lead to a re-scan. So what is wrong? Looking at the waveform and seeing clipping on either side. Mind you, these are either 12 bit from the Cintel II, 16 bit from the Imagica or 16 bit from the FF. So it has nothing to do with imager DR. With the HDR pass, the problems entirely go away because you have extended the DR of the scan substantially. 1 hour ago, Perry Paolantonio said: I suspect what you're doing is basically a one-light scan in the scanner, essentially grading the image post-capture in the scanner software. I mean an optimal scan would actually be a compressed contrast scan, so you can hopefully fit more information. We have found it doesn't really matter tho, SDR scans will struggle with this issue, if the neg or positive density has wide shifts. The moment you do an HDR scan, the problems generally go away. With the Cintel II, we always do a one-light scan in HDR and it's flawless. Since I mostly shoot documentary style on S8 and 16mm myself, the exposure ranges can widely vary. On professional productions, you don't see this and the scans generally come out fine with a single pass for those guys. We just did 2 16mm features in the last few months, every single frame was perfect without needing to re-scan in SDR. Yet, quite a bit of the reversal camera masters we scan, need a lot of work to dial in, along with our own camera negative stuff, mostly due to a wide swath of exposure fluctuations.
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