Is this a true frame-by-frame 4k scan or just a telecine?

[Ben Fruen]

Hi all,

back in April I found an odd reel of 35mm film in a skip. Turned out to be a rare 1968 film with no DVD/blu release.

Sent it off to a UK transfer company and waited months (despite a cited 7 day turnaround time). Every inquiry was met with, "My colleague will scan that next week", "My colleague has been slowly working through it" etc, and then a few months later said they'd only just opened the can for examination. Finally 7 months later, after having to pester them every step of the way even when it came to sending the scan file, I have the scan back and... I'm not that impressed with this "4k scan" (albeit compressed to 1080p).

Their site basically says: "Other companies will just use a camera to film a projection on a screen, whereas we use a 4k frame-by-frame scanner. The former (inferior) method causes cropping on the edges and dropped frames". Well the transfer they sent me has those issues along with others.

Grain and fine detail have been wiped away, maybe from bad file compression, but I've a feeling it's because it's not the 4k scan they advertise. Things that absolutely should be sharp (such as film artifacts) aren't. They've left off 5 seconds of footage at either end, annoyingly. Spinning airplane propellers have a blotchy pattern as they spin (frame blending?). About half of the transfer is incorrectly horizontally flipped. There's evidence of repositioning from shot to shot, like they've shifted the frame up or down. Evidence of sharpening too (haloing around objects).

What's everyone's opinion on this? Have I been duped into paying for a frame-by-frame 4k scan that really is just a bog standard telecine? I only paid £150 so can't complain that much, but still would be very dishonest of them.

 

Plane propeller issue:

 

 

Comparisons between my DSLR taken pics of the film frames (top) and the actual transfer (bottom).

This comparison is merely meant to show the cropping, rather than detail level as the DSLR pics aren't perfectly in focus:

 

I took quick phone pics of random frames before I sent the reel off, and comparing those with the same exact frames in this transfer, there's extra dirt (and even lines) visible, so not sure they handled my reel very well 😕

[Tyler Purcell]

Well, clearly they're not a post house of any kind what so ever. If it took 7 months, they probably sent it out somewhere to get it done. They are probably not professional data wranglers, so they probably got the files back and couldn't even play them. I've met these home movie guys before, they literally have no idea what they're doing. They work in highly compressed .h264 1080p and when given anything higher quality, they basically have no idea what to do with it. 

So if I were to hazard a guess, it's probably just cropped wrong because the guy who did the work didn't know what they were doing. I can't think of a single 35mm scanner or telecine that can create such artifacts. You're just dealing with incompetence, not necessarily a bad scan. I would ask them for the 4k scanner originals. 

[Dan Baxter]

Looks to me like they use a Retroscan. Just ask for your money back.

[Aapo Lettinen]

The propeller issue looks like they maybe have added optical flow effect or similar and it was adjusted very wrong.

A scan taking many months means that they are sending it to someone else for scanning to another country. Places who own their own telecine or scanner get the film scanned in from one day to one week

[Dan Baxter]

4 hours ago, Aapo Lettinen said:

A scan taking many months means that they are sending it to someone else for scanning to another country. Places who own their own telecine or scanner get the film scanned in from one day to one week

They quite literally sell aftermarket parts for the Restroscan Universal Mk2, I think it's fair to say that's what they used and that they had technical issues running a large 35mm reel through it.

[Perry Paolantonio]

There are clearly artifacts in the scan that are a result of some kind of post processing. Or possibly pre-compression processing. But it looks like the old DVNR501 we had, or our orignal Teranex, which both had some filters that would do realtime cleanup of the footage. More often than not they made more of a mess of the footage than they cleaned, leaving behind artifacts and falsely identifying "defects" -- the propeller is a good example of that. It's an algorithm thinking that fast moving object is not supposed to be there, and then removing part of it. Whether this was done in the scan or after is an open question. 

The only scanner I'm aware of that can do realtime cleanup without an IR dust map is the old Cintel DSX with OLIVER, which would leave these kinds of artifacts. A few years ago, a client had a low budget sci fi film scanned locally to him (tons of explosions, cheesy ones using sparklers, so a nightmare for cleanup) and sent it to us for grading and restoration. It had to be re-scanned because they did it on a DSX with OLIVER and half the picture was just ...gone. It mangled it. 

As for the scratches: you are comparing a photo of a frame that looks to have really bad compression with a scan made using probably a decent lens and sensor. The scan is going to show up more defects like those base scratches than your photo will, so that's to be expected. 

[Daniel D. Teoli Jr.]

Put up a flatbed scan on some frames to compare it to your scans.

[Ben Fruen]

Thanks for the detailed responses everyone, so seems like they used a very low-end scanner (did some reading on the Retroscan and does sound like it's not the best), then made the scan worse with post-processing.

I guess it's also possible that they had trouble scanning it themselves and sent it elsewhere. On one end the film is folded over  onto itself and on the other the frame is diagonally sliced in half. So I imagine not the easiest to feed into a scanner, or put a leader on to facilitate that (which would require snipping off the compromised frames).

That makes sense re: the propeller blades being affected by automatic dirt removal - have actually seen that kind of issue on blu-rays of movies (though not as obvious).

Have requested the 4k file from them, hopefully that clears things up a bit (in both senses).

[Robert Houllahan]

That is a terrible looking scan get your money back and go find a shop with a Scan Station or a Scannity.

 

My scan tech Grace would have had that done in two or three days on a Scan Station.

Edited November 19, 2025 by Robert Houllahan