Rank Cintel ADS-2: Seeking info

Ted Langdell · June 26, 2004

I have interest in acquiring a CCD telecine to transfer film to tape for a documentary project in order to be able to transfer a large amount of material without having to hock the house, wife, cat and the production gear to pay the transfer bills.

A Rank Cintel ADS-2 has turned up, said to be in working condition with:

- TC10010 ADS-2 Telecine Serial # in the low 20's

- TC10080 DIRT CONCEALMENT KIT

- TC10060 AUTOMATIC COLOR CORRECTOR

- Manuals

- RANGER TONE 16/35mm Mod. D106 dubber

What's the story behind the MarkIII's lesser-know relative?

Reasons to be interested?

Reasons to run and not look back?

Things it did well?

Didn't do well?

Other care and feeding issues?

Can someone with a good technical operating background (but not necessarily component-level engineering) successfully install, align, learn to operate?

Other recommendations as an alternative?

Thanks,

Ted Langdell

DanStewart · June 26, 2004

Where are you based Ted?

Ted Langdell · June 26, 2004

Marysville, north of Sacramento, CA.

Marc Wielage · July 4, 2004

I have interest in acquiring a CCD telecine to transfer film to tape for a documentary project in order to be able to transfer a large amount of material without having to hock the house, wife, cat and the production gear to pay the transfer bills.

I've always been told that the Rank ADS solid-state machines were problematic and didn't put out very good pictures. I never knew for certain, because as far as I know, nobody in LA bought one in the last 20 years.

I have a friend who used to work for NASA in Cape Canaveral, and he used one on a weekly basis. He told me it spent more time being broken than it was working. If I were you, I'd be very careful buying a potentially maintenance-intensive machine like this.

You might be better off just making a deal with a small (hungry) post house, and allow them to transfer your material at odd times of the day and night. As long as the material was handled by competent people, and the equipment is OK, it should be fine. I would think that, unless you have many miles of footage, it'll be a fraction of the cost of a complete telecine system.

Don't forget that in addition to the telecine, you need scopes, good monitors, tape machines, distribution amps, audio gear, test equipment, spare parts... it goes on and on and on. I can't imagine setting up even a basic broadcast-quality system for under a couple of hundred thousand dollars.

--Marc W.

Alessandro Machi · August 2, 2004

You can find good quality rank places for $150.00-250 dollars an hour. I guarantee by the time you reach a 20 K bill you'll probably be spending an equal amount on hard drives to store all that data at the highest quality for your NLE edit.

Michael Paradiso · March 23, 2016

Hi Ted,

I had a Rank Cintel ADS2 in Los Angeles for 15 years (2000 to 2015) in perfect working condition. The Rank ADS1 and ADS2 are very reliable systems. The ADS2 systems use a 1K resolution 3 CCD line array. A fourth CCD is employed for dirt concealment. The ADS2 is very gentle on 16MM or 35MM film. The system resolution is at least 400 lines from edge to edge. Unlike the Rank flying spot scanners, the ADS2 is not sharp in the center and soft at the edges. The only failure I ever had was one capacitor on the color corrector board.

The ADS2 has only a few things that need to be done to keep it running daily. First you must run it from a Sync Generator that is always on and stable. Let the ADS2 warm up for about 30 minutes. Once a month, power it off and reseat all the boards in the electronics rack to break any oxidation.

Lastly before you install and run the ADS2 you must install some cooling fans. Remember that the ADS1 and ADS2 were built in the UK and were intended to be in a machine room that never got above 60 degrees. You need to put a group of 6 Muffin fans above the top card cage to pull the heat from the three card cages. You also need to put a pair of Muffin fans behind the WFM and Picture monitors to keep them from overheating. If you have an ADS1 CCD array, you also need to put a cooling fan in the CCD head cover to keep the CCD preamp boards from overheating and drifting out of alignment.

Mike

Robert Houllahan · March 24, 2016

The film transport on the ADS machines is basically the same components as a Mk3 i.e. very good and can be reliable, as for the CCD it is an early CCD scanner so not the greatest picture but probably acceptable. I would not pay more than $2500.00 for a machine. I probably have some analog cintel servo and sound parts which will most likely fit it.