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Problem on telecine footage


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Hi guys!

 

Was shooting a student film couple months ago - and was just checking out the rushes.

And noticed a weird smudge (?) type of artefact on three frames. They all are just one frame long and don't appear anywhere else.

The first one is the real big one (never had a problem like that - dust/hairs seem to be usual after student telecine), the other two seem to be just dust. Right?

 

So, out of your experience - what could be the first one? And where could it occur - loading, processing, telecine?

Shot on 16mm, processed normal, telecine to DigiBeta.

 

problemu.jpg

 

problem3.jpg

 

problem2h.jpg

 

Thanks!

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I haven't seen anything like that before myself, but it almost looks like a form of scratch, especially on the first on, as though the tock rubbed off, and if memory serves, the fact it's a white-ish color means it happened in camera. Can you look @ the actual frame in any way?

 

I may be wrong in that assumption, but that's what my gut kinda says.

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i've never seen anything like that, but I agree with Adrian, it almost seems like the film itself is damaged, at least in the first example. Perhaps the loader dropped or nicked the roll. I'd give the lab and kodak or fuji a call and see if you can email the stills to them, maybe even the camera manufacturer.

Edited by Michael Kubaszak
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This looks like glue or some other substance that was either added on the bench or was in the telecine gate and stuck to the film. Stuff that is white in a negative transfer is in the gate or adhered to the film and not in the picture on the emulsion. A hair in the telecine gate turns white in the picture if scanning negative. Have the lab or post house ultrasonic clean the film and it might come off.

 

-Rob-

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The last two are well touch-outable, the first one might be a bit of work!

 

I hate to drag this offtopic, but I really have to ask: how can people look at this sort of stuff, and complain that a 5D is soft and noisy? What was this shot on, ten year old super-8 at ISO 500, stored in an oven then processed in molten lava? I mean, I know nobody at labs or transfer houses in the UK gives a short poop, but good grief.

 

P

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The last two are well touch-outable, the first one might be a bit of work!

 

I hate to drag this offtopic, but I really have to ask: how can people look at this sort of stuff, and complain that a 5D is soft and noisy? What was this shot on, ten year old super-8 at ISO 500, stored in an oven then processed in molten lava? I mean, I know nobody at labs or transfer houses in the UK gives a short poop, but good grief.

 

P

 

It definitely looks underexposed... I don't really mind the image you get from a 7D or 5D, what I hate is that they are not intuitive at all to moviemaking and all the problems that causes( it's been covered over and over again so I won't be redundant).

 

edit:

 

film, RED, Alexa, 5D, 7D etc. can all look bad if you do not completely understand the format and how to get the most out of it.

Edited by Michael Kubaszak
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Like Rob said, since it's white, it's just a piece of dirt from the transfer. A full ultrasonic cleaning may be overkill if it's just in those three instances. Dirt management software like Revival can temporally remove those (through manual operation) in less than 5 minutes. They should probably just lay off those fixed selects to another tape.

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The last two are well touch-outable, the first one might be a bit of work!

 

I hate to drag this offtopic, but I really have to ask: how can people look at this sort of stuff, and complain that a 5D is soft and noisy? What was this shot on, ten year old super-8 at ISO 500, stored in an oven then processed in molten lava? I mean, I know nobody at labs or transfer houses in the UK gives a short poop, but good grief.

 

P

 

 

I think, that's what they call "one-light-didgibeta-rushes-burnt-to-dvd-print-screen" :)

These jpeg do look dark though, I agree.

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This looks like glue or some other substance that was either added on the bench or was in the telecine gate and stuck to the film. Stuff that is white in a negative transfer is in the gate or adhered to the film and not in the picture on the emulsion. A hair in the telecine gate turns white in the picture if scanning negative. Have the lab or post house ultrasonic clean the film and it might come off.

 

-Rob-

 

Thanks!

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The first picture is definitely physical damage. In my experience, the way the yellow and red (plus the crackling) show up on the image indicate damage to the emulsion layers and into the base. An experienced retoucher can very likely reconstruct it in Photoshop from the frames before and after.

 

The second and third images are more puzzling, since the spots are semi transparent, and dirt usually shows up as opaque when projected. It can still be retouched out by a good PS artist.

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I think I will be paying a visit to the lab - really want to see how this looks on the emulsion.

 

 

I don't think it is a mark on the emulsion, there would be more blue showing (blue layer on top) it is probably a few bits of glue for hot splicing. Definitely look at it on the bench a rewash of the negative may get some or all of it out depending on what it is and how it is stuck to the emulsion.

 

-Rob-

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Yeah, Rob! Really want to take a look at it on the bench - just for a personal experience and curiosity, really :)

Will report as soon as come back from the lab.

 

Unfortunately, had some bad experiences with the lab before on student shoots regarding how clean the rushes come back/light levels/colours... So not really surprised. Unfortunately.

Edited by Edgar Dubrovskiy
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First one definitely looks like an emulsion scratch (more properly a gouge), possibly lab-caused. I say this because it looks like the emulsion itself migrated, probably when the film was in solution or drying.

 

 

I was going to say incompletely-removed rem-jet on the latter two, but Rob is far more knowledgeable.

 

 

 

 

 

And Phil, who EVER, once said that S16 or, pfft. S8 outresolve a 5D. A 5D outresolves 35mm, for the most part. It's using a chip the size of an 8-perf. frame of 35mm. A proper comparison would be a Vistavision camera, loaded with 5201 or Fuji 64D scanned at 6K and lasered out onto Vision Premiere :-p

 

 

Only claims I've heard about 16 here is that it is said (rightly) that S16 is more than ample for 720P, and can be made to work at 1080.

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I think you and Rob have it right, all three have a dried liquid on neg look. The first also has something that looks like a positive scratch, but being on negative, it must be a piece of crud of some kind stuck to the film, probably a fiber.

 

Nothing like this could have happened in camera, so the finger points at the lab or telecine facility. Look at the actual film, see if it can be cleaned. If not, take it to a post house that has the MTI dirt and scratch removal system. Because the hits are just one frame each, a good MTI operator can give you a really amazing fix on all of them.

 

http://www.mtifilm.com/digital-film-restoration#dust-busting-and-scratch-removal

 

... and one with pictures:

 

http://www.mtifilm.com/storage/pdfs/CorrectV9_Brochure.pdf

 

 

 

-- J.S.

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  • 2 weeks later...

I think, that's what they call "one-light-didgibeta-rushes-burnt-to-dvd-print-screen" :)

These jpeg do look dark though, I agree.

 

Yeah, it looks maybe underexposed, then telecined standard def one-light, then recorded in real time to DVD (which a lot of labs do for dailies and makes for horrible compression artifacts), then enlarged above SD and re-compressed as a JPEG. That's a lot of image loss. You can't judge 16mm based on footage that has gone through all that. Most of that "grain" is actually a really poor DVD compressor chewing the the crap out of the more subtle grain present in the film. Those real-time DVD compressors actually blur the image as well to help compress it, so you end up with resolution more like 320x240 rather than SD (which is limited enough).

 

I think the DVD dailies are mostly to blame here. Labs often intentionally make video dailies look bad so that people wont use them as the final product.

 

In regards to 16mm films I have worked on there can be drastic differences in image quality from project to project. Some look absolutely god-awful, soft, and grainy, most look good, and some look absolutely fantastic. There are so many factors involved. You need to keep the quality of the work up all the way through the process. It starts with a good DOP. I've seen too many directors hire DOPs who are not very experienced and only have experience shooting with prosumer digital to shoot on 16mm for them. The results can be sickening. A good DOP can make 16mm look fantastic.

 

Although these days, a lot of the stuff is 35mm, because we often find there is little price difference between 35mm and 16mm for a short or music video. So why not shoot 35mm?

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Hi guys!

 

Was shooting a student film couple months ago - and was just checking out the rushes.

And noticed a weird smudge (?) type of artefact on three frames. They all are just one frame long and don't appear anywhere else.

The first one is the real big one (never had a problem like that - dust/hairs seem to be usual after student telecine), the other two seem to be just dust. Right?

 

So, out of your experience - what could be the first one? And where could it occur - loading, processing, telecine?

Shot on 16mm, processed normal, telecine to DigiBeta.

 

Hey Edgar. If you don't find a way to clean or repair the actual film and have to fix it in post shoot me an email. I just repaired a 16mm short where the DOP screwed up and scratched several ROLLS. It ended up being about 2000 frames in the final cut that needed to be repaired. It looks like in your case it is a lot less. I can give you some advice on fixing it based on my experience with that project, but I would need to see actual video clips rather than stills to asses what needs to be done.

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  • 4 weeks later...

Cheers!

 

The end of the story (sort of - still dragging) is that the lab admitted that some scratches have appeared on the neg after processing and telecine, plus, some dust got stuck to the neg - unfortunately, emulsion side. They tried to clean the roll after the whole issue was raised. But in couple places the frames appeared to be damaged on the emulsion side after the process...

So producer is negotiating at the moment what will happen next.

Edited by Edgar Dubrovskiy
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