Tapless Film to Hard Drive option?

nitejrny282 · November 26, 2006

Has anyone tried Bono film labs new tapeless transfer option? Taking processed 8mm, 16mm or 35mm negative and transferring it straight onto a hard drive for editing?

I've been using Fotokem to process all my 16mm, where they then transfer it to Betacam, and use Blackmagic hardware to transfer it onto a pair of eternal firewire 800 drives in stripe format. (The striping of the two 800 drives allows my G5 to handle up to 10-bit prossessing speed.)

But now Bono film labs says they have a Raid kit (at 1600 dollars) that will allow a dual G5 to handle uncompressed footage in native HD format.

If anyone has any experience with this new process, please let me know what you think.

Thanks in advance,

Enio Rigolin

nitejrny282 · November 26, 2006

TRIED TO EDIT MY POST, BUT GOT AN ERROR. HERE'S THE EDITED VERSION...

I found a post here showing the results of using Bono film labs new tapeless transfer option. And it seemed clear that transferring your film negative to Betacam to Hard Drive is still the better option.

But now Bono film labs says they have a new Raid kit (at 1600 dollars) that will allow a dual G5 to handle uncompressed footage in native HD format.

Has anyone installed this new Raid system and gotten better results than film to tape to hard drive?

I've been using Fotokem to process my 16mm, then transfer it to Betacam, then use Blackmagic hardware to put it on a pair of eternal firewire 800 drives in stripe format. (The striping of the two 800 drives allows my G5 to handle up to 10-bit prossessing speed.)

But if this new Raid kit is as good as they say, I'd skip the tape option.

If anyone has any experience with this new process, please let me know what you think.

Thanks in advance,

Enio Rigolin

Stephen Williams · November 26, 2006

TRIED TO EDIT MY POST, BUT GOT AN ERROR. HERE'S THE EDITED If anyone has any experience with this new process, please let me know what you think.

Thanks in advance,

Enio Rigolin

Hi,

From what I've seen on CML, its not the transfer medium but the telecine that is the issue.

Strange thing, Mr Bono has written on CML, but never replied to the problem thread there!

Stephen

nitejrny282 · December 1, 2006

Interesting. Do you know what the details on the telecine would be? (i.e. Which codecs, pci cards and post-houses produce the best quality.)

Hi,

From what I've seen on CML, its not the transfer medium but the telecine that is the issue.

Strange thing, Mr Bono has written on CML, but never replied to the problem thread there!

Stephen

Eugene Gekhter · December 1, 2006

Interesting. Do you know what the details on the telecine would be? (i.e. Which codecs, pci cards and post-houses produce the best quality.)

My company also offers tapeless HD uncompressed telecine. We use blackmagic codec and results are really good, considering we only charge $.30/ft for 16mm and $.40/ft for 8mm/s8mm. Message me in private as we can setup do to a test roll free.

~Eugene

www.filmtransfer.com

nitejrny282 · December 2, 2006

How do I message you? Thru your site?

Thomas Worth · December 2, 2006

But now Bono film labs says they have a new Raid kit (at 1600 dollars) that will allow a dual G5 to handle uncompressed footage in native HD format.

FireWire 800 does not have the bandwidth to support realtime playback of uncompressed, 10 bit, 1920x1080p/24 footage. 720p may be possible (up to 30p only), but forget 1080:

1920x1080p/24, 10 bit, 4:2:2: 118.65 MB/sec

Keep in mind this is the raw picture rate and not a practical working rate. Audio and file format / codec overhead will increase this.

I also do not recommend that anyone store anything of value on a RAID0 array. RAID0 does not store data with redundancy, so if one of the drives goes bad, you're done.

Chris Burke · December 2, 2006

FireWire 800 does not have the bandwidth to support realtime playback of uncompressed, 10 bit, 1920x1080p/24 footage. 720p may be possible (up to 30p only), but forget 1080:

1920x1080p/24, 10 bit, 4:2:2: 118.65 MB/sec

Keep in mind this is the raw picture rate and not a practical working rate. Audio and file format / codec overhead will increase this.

I also do not recommend that anyone store anything of value on a RAID0 array. RAID0 does not store data with redundancy, so if one of the drives goes bad, you're done.

Well said, although the RAID that Bono is offering is a SATA II which will handle uncompressed HD. When working with hard drive stuff, it is always a good idea to have a back up. RAID 5 scenario is probably best for both speed and parity. However, you will need a larger RAID for this, probably one with 8 drives.

Phil Rhodes · December 2, 2006

Hi,

> the RAID that Bono is offering is a SATA II which will handle uncompressed HD.

The fact that it's SATA II doesn't mean anything. All that says is that the drive interfaces are at 3Gbps, but the drive mechs themselves won't go anywhere near that fast.

We really need to stop throwing random terminology around without bothering to understand it. You can't have "10-bit speed". 10-bit is an expression of precision, not rate. Two drives won't do uncompressed 4:4:4; they might do 4:2:2, just barely, but that's not really uncompressed. The fact that they're "firewire 800" means nothing; again, the drives won't go as fast as the interface.

Pfeh, mac users!

Phil

Alessandro Machi · December 4, 2006

Hi,

> the RAID that Bono is offering is a SATA II which will handle uncompressed HD.

The fact that it's SATA II doesn't mean anything. All that says is that the drive interfaces are at 3Gbps, but the drive mechs themselves won't go anywhere near that fast.

We really need to stop throwing random terminology around without bothering to understand it. You can't have "10-bit speed". 10-bit is an expression of precision, not rate. Two drives won't do uncompressed 4:4:4; they might do 4:2:2, just barely, but that's not really uncompressed. The fact that they're "firewire 800" means nothing; again, the drives won't go as fast as the interface.

Pfeh, mac users!

Phil

Has anyone tried Bono film labs new tapeless transfer option? Taking processed 8mm, 16mm or 35mm negative and transferring it straight onto a hard drive for editing?

I've been using Fotokem to process all my 16mm, where they then transfer it to Betacam, and use Blackmagic hardware to transfer it onto a pair of eternal firewire 800 drives in stripe format. (The striping of the two 800 drives allows my G5 to handle up to 10-bit prossessing speed.)

But now Bono film labs says they have a Raid kit (at 1600 dollars) that will allow a dual G5 to handle uncompressed footage in native HD format.

If anyone has any experience with this new process, please let me know what you think.

Thanks in advance,

Enio Rigolin

I don't understand. The AJA Kona 3 Card will take a Betacam SP or Digital Betacam signal in component mode (which by the way looks amazing), and convert it in REAL TIME to 8 bit or 10 bit uncompressed, or DVC-Pro 50 codec. Isn't the explanations I am hearing above a much more complicated way of doing the same thing?

Thomas Worth · December 4, 2006

Well said, although the RAID that Bono is offering is a SATA II which will handle uncompressed HD. When working with hard drive stuff, it is always a good idea to have a back up. RAID 5 scenario is probably best for both speed and parity. However, you will need a larger RAID for this, probably one with 8 drives.

As Phil said, the type of interface used doesn't mean squat. Just because a drive physically connects to the host over SATA 3.0gbps, that doesn't equal "uncompressed HD." To max out the bandwidth of SATA 3.0gbps (375 MB/sec), you would probably need at least 6-8 7200 RPM drives, configured as RAID0. RAID5 (the only RAID level you should use for this purpose) might require 10 drives. Phil would be a better person to spell out on the actual drive requirements, as I know he has recently done some tests.

Eugene Gekhter · December 4, 2006

How do I message you? Thru your site?

You can email me direct at eugene@filmtransfer.com

stephen lamb · December 13, 2006

Hey,

I have used Bono twice before and was ok with it the first time, and extremely unhappy the second. Their work seemed a bit soft, had a lot of small scratches on it (could be other reasons of course for that) and the coloring was not only extremely flat, but had some very weird shifts in it on some shots. IE, the left 1/4 of the image had a strange cyan hue to it. The second time i used them was a disaster. They held my footage, which only 35 minutes worth of super16mm, for SEVEN WEEKS. no amount of calling or emailing would make them go faster, and even when i finely did get it, they offered no compensation whatsoever to the production. I used them because at the time they were the only ones who did tape to drive, and i had never worked with any kind of HD before. I got DVCpro HD files from them. I would highly recommend not using them, unless their situation has changed in the past year. I have had absolutely great success since then with Flying Spot Film Transfer in Seattle WA in getting film to disk transfers. Very happy with both their work, and their customer service.

Cheers