R16 to HD or higher 4:3 resolution

[Michael Millette]

I shot a short film over spring break on regular 16mm. I want to bring it up to HD, but I'm not positive that I framed every shot accordingly since my widest focal length was 12mm.

 

Is there a higher 4:3 aspect ratio resolution that I could get telecine or DI, transferred to a hard drive? So then I would be able to crop the frame and keep that same HD resolution? either 1080 or 720?

 

I'm a film student. Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

 

Thanks!

[Will Montgomery]

You'll have to shop around and beg, borrow and trade cases of beer but the best approach might be a 2K scan of your full 16mm frame. Then you wind up with a 2048×1556 pixel scan that you can then crop and frame as you like to 1920x1080. OR if you want more side to side framing options go back down to 720p and you can "zoom in" without loosing quality (except that you're at 720p instead of 1080p of course :rolleyes: )

 

But that can be very expensive so another route would be to do an HD transfer that you sit in on and adjust the framing in the transfer. Making the commitment at that point has it's upsides, one less thing to think about when you are editing. Sitting in on a transfer session can be worth more than a week in film school if you have a good colorist who is willing to educate and most I've met will.

[Robert Houllahan]

I have recently run a few films, including a feature, through our Y-Front which were cropped to 16:9 and recorded to Pro-ResHQ 1080p and they looked surprisingly good. If you want to do this on a budget give us a ring at Cinelab. Our LA built 2k/4k scanner is getting closer every day and it operates with optics similar to an optical printer so it will be able to do a full 2K (2048x1556) scan on STD-16mm when it arrives.

 

-Rob-