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Blackmagic Cintel Film Scanner....


Robert Houllahan

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Remember though, that .30-.50/ft covers more than the cost of the scanner. Other than basic overhead (rent, electricity, salaries, ongoing support and maintenance costs, computer upgrades, etc), there's the experience of the operator of the machine.

 

Believe me, there are systems out there that can make 16mm scanning happen cheaply (the Muller scanner for instance - it's about the same price as the Cintel), but it's got a very basic control interface and requires a fair bit of post-processing to get a good image - for example, there's no stabilization but they provide software that does it. It has to run overnight, for just a few minutes of film (on the other hand, scanners like the ScanStation and Director just do this while scanning). It automates almost nothing about the process, and is very bare bones. But even on scanners that automate many of the basic setup processes, like our ScanStation (base calibration, focus, primary grades, etc), it's pretty easy to produce a bad scan if you don't know what you're doing or what to look out for.

 

Like I said, I do think the Cintel will shake things up a bit, and there are some for whom it will be an ideal scanner (We have clients who only want 2k 35mm scanning because they only release their films in HD, so this might be perfect for that kind of work). The quality of the scanner remains to be seen, as does the reliability of the machine. While this may be based on Cintel's past hardware, it's a new machine so there's really no telling yet how well it will work.

 

My hunch on how this will play out: When Apple bought Spruce to acquire their high end DVD Authoring system (Maestro), they released it as a mac version for about $1000. As Spruce Maestro it was about a $30,000 system. The Apple version wasn't the same though, leaving out key features in the name of making the system simpler and easier to use. For many, it was good enough, and we saw a serious dip for about a year or two in our DVD authoring work, at the height of the DVD boom. Then something happened: clients started coming back to us to do their authoring because they were either in over their heads or they weren't able to get the same quality as we were, using essentially the same authoring system (Maestro). There are potentially a lot of parallels with Cintel - in the end it will make it possible for those who want to do things themselves to do it - more power to those folks. But for people who need to get the work done on time and on budget, with the work just done right the first time because of other pressures (deadlines, for example), that work will still be farmed out to companies with more experience. This has happened over and over again in the film industry for many years.

 

-perry

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Perry, I respect what you and Robert say. But I still think there is a certain amount of disconnect between you two and the mind of a practically no-budget production. It is this disconnect that makes your industry much less successful than it could otherwise be. I am not trying to be rude or disrespectful but I am not the only one who says these things.

 

The digital crowd who shoot bmc cameras and used to be the dslr crowd and the dvx/xl2 crowd before that secretly have always wanted to shoot film. They just didn't have the money, connections, and general back-door savvy to do it for the same price and accessibility as those inferior cameras/format. A few people, like myself, will not generally settle for less than film, so we fight to find a way to make it happen. Many wont though. In fact, I had messaged Adrian about digital recommendations because I thought I was going to have to shoot my first feature that way. I wasnt happy about it but I didnt think I had another choice. Thankfully, that isn't the case anymore. I have about half of the film I need for a feature because I got a deal of a production that fell through and they decided to go digital at the last minute. A dime a foot for good stock.

 

I understand the labor that goes into your business but, like most businesses, if you cannot find a way to eek out a profit, you will either go under or get far less business than you would otherwise. I imagine Robert will come back with "we get all the business we can handle!" Great, that means that this message isn't for you then. But I am amazed at how this huge potential niche is untapped on a non-shady, up to the level, and accessible way.

 

You think in quality, others are looking at possibility of even keeping film as an option. Quality becomes secondary to money.

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Trust me, I understand where you're coming from in terms of budgets. No disrespect, but frankly your argument doesn't really make sense - on the one hand, you want to shoot film for the quality of the image. On the other, you say you're willing to compromise on the quality of the scan to save some money. I guess I just don't follow the logic.

 

I went to art school for filmmaking, so I not only understand the budget constraints, I've been there myself and have had to deal with the same trade offs. We also do a lot of work for students, so the budgetary constraints are well understood.

 

Maybe a little perspective will help make my point: Pre-digital editing, you'd have had to rent a steenbeck, pay for multiple prints along the way (workprints, answer prints, release prints, optical tracks), not to mention audio mix houses, mag tape dubs, someone to do your titles and any optical effects, negative cutting, the list goes on. All of the above were expensive but necessary steps. And all of the above can now be done with inexpensive, off the shelf computers (which you probably already have) with pretty inexpensive software.

 

My point is that just like choosing a good camera and lens, or processing your OCN, the scan is not a good place to try to do things on the cheap, when there are so many other ways one can save that don't affect everything that happens downstream in post.

 

Scanning costs *have* been steadily declining for years. Personally, if it were me and my own film (and I didn't have access to a really nice scanner) I'd pay someone else to do that because it's too important a step to try to save a few bucks.

 

-perry

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Ok

 

I think that we at Cinelab have tried to do everything and anything possible to make film affordable and relevant for all types of film people with all budgets. Running a film lab is a difficult and at times exhausting business, scanning film is just a part of it. We (and other small labs) consistently work with filmmakers to try to fit services to budgets, including but not limited to volume discounts and payment plans. Cinelab is always happy to have more jobs in house and we try to get the work we have done at the highest quality with good turnaround, this is balanced with staff, overhead and heat electricity, etc. as Perry also said.

 

So I am going to cite a good example of a recent film made with Cinelab for low budget, probably even a budget Matthew would be able to swing.

 

 

Jeff Wedding's 'A Measure of the Sin" made on 16mm and developed and transfered to HD with us, I think Jeff shot somewhere around 15000ft to make this film and I think we charged him about $0.25/ft for develop and transfer and then I did a final pass on it in Resolve for maybe $400 and a bottle of Bourbon.

 

http://www.ameasureofthesin.com/Home.html

 

 

It's picked up for distribution.

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No disrespect, but frankly your argument doesn't really make sense - on the one hand, you want to shoot film for the quality of the image. On the other, you say you're willing to compromise on the quality of the scan to save some money. I guess I just don't follow the logic.

 

 

What is so hard to understand about it? It is no different than wanting to purchase a Honda Accord. Your counter argument is akin to "If you care about quality enough to not want a Daewoo then why not purchase a Maserati?" There is a market for the middle. I understand it may not make sense to you but the market is there. The attitude of the film chain is what is killing the industry...nothing else. The other arguments such as speedy editing and general impatience and all of that might be it for a few newbies who are still immature but the true motives of many (of whom I have spoken with on various forums, as well as in person) are the things I am telling you. You can choose to ignore it and call me silly or you can address it and remain relevant.

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Ok

 

I think that we at Cinelab have tried to do everything and anything possible to make film affordable and relevant for all types of film people with all budgets. Running a film lab is a difficult and at times exhausting business, scanning film is just a part of it. We (and other small labs) consistently work with filmmakers to try to fit services to budgets, including but not limited to volume discounts and payment plans. Cinelab is always happy to have more jobs in house and we try to get the work we have done at the highest quality with good turnaround, this is balanced with staff, overhead and heat electricity, etc. as Perry also said.

 

So I am going to cite a good example of a recent film made with Cinelab for low budget, probably even a budget Matthew would be able to swing.

 

 

Jeff Wedding's 'A Measure of the Sin" made on 16mm and developed and transfered to HD with us, I think Jeff shot somewhere around 15000ft to make this film and I think we charged him about $0.25/ft for develop and transfer and then I did a final pass on it in Resolve for maybe $400 and a bottle of Bourbon.

 

http://www.ameasureofthesin.com/Home.html

 

 

It's picked up for distribution.

 

I respect a Bourbon fan and that makes you an awesome mate in my book. :D

 

But yes, if you can cut me a deal like you mentioned then I can certainly swing that. You may be a friend I need to have right now.

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Perry let me quote you “the scan is not a good place to try to do things on the cheap “ but that's the whole point of this -- it should be, and thanks to BMD it will be.

CanoScan 9000F Mark II is canon's top of line stills scanner it cots 199.99 dollar, and that will get your picture scanned to your computer, and there are a lot more still film scanners out there in the world used by completely normally people without any special training everyday, that are able to make perfectly good scans, and has been for years.

There is no difference in color grading for a still or a moving picture except for matching, I mean hell when I grade in AE the picture doesn’t move, so there is no difference.

Millions of people tweak digital pictures every day, this is not rocket sciences people, if you want to learn it doesn’t take long. And at the end of the day we are talking about art here so it's all subjective in the end, no matter how you slice it.

Now for people who prefer film like me, the single biggest stumbling block, to shooting film has been the scanning, which makes absolutely no sense since it a none issue in the stills world.

 

You have always been able to budget for rental costs and processing. But when it comes to something simple as scanning, it's suddenly a black hole, no prices no thing.
(Well expect Robert who actually has list prices, thank you very much.) And when you finally get hold of them trough some dark art search wizardry the prices are out of whack.

That lead me to my research on used film scanners a very good site for used prices.

Perry by the way I saw you had a scanstaion what's the price on those?

Well of to see Manu, so could be even cranker when I come back : )

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I consider what I pay for transfer to simply be for the colorist's time. I know a (formerly) million dollar Spirit is involved, but honestly I'm much more concerned about the colorist rather than the scan. I've worked with Resolve for several years but cannot come close to what a pro can do.

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Our website pricing is a bit unclear right now, it's basically from a few years ago. We are working on clarifying the web site and it will have clearer pricing and include the Pin-Registered data scanner, the new pinless fast 3K scanner and HD.

 

It takes time to become a good colorist and it helps if you do it every day and if your mom is a art school grad who teached color theory when you were two.

 

-Rob-

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Well I can tell you that there is allot of used scanning equipment out there right now, most of it from the heyday of big iron film in the 1990's machines like the Northlight (which was born from the Domino scan in the 80"s) or the original SDC-2000 Spirit which is only HD in B&W and the color channels are all 1/2 res. These machines were mostly built with no care about power consumption and with the understanding that they would be in climate controlled facilities running 24/7/365 at about 2kw for a machine. You could pickup a Cintel Millenium or DSX, which are both fantastic machines, for about $20K only to find that you need a $25K CRT Replacement to run it.

 

I am glad I chose the different path I did in bringing high quality scanning to Cinelab, working with the guys in LA that build our scanners from the newest modular off the shelf servo motors and drivers with exchangeable sensors and low power consumption. Newer technology had made it's way to scanning which means faster scans, better quality and lower maintenance and ownership costs. Ultimately that means lower cost scans.

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If color is more important than the scanning then why not offer cheap scanning so we can at least edit footage digitally and send the finished product back to you for grading? Or does it not work that way because you must grade as you scan? I am not sure how the chain works so correct me if I am wrong. Thing is, I would rather pay for a colorist's time for only the scenes I wish to use.

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These machines were mostly built with no care about power consumption and with the understanding that they would be in climate controlled facilities running 24/7/365 at about 2kw for a machine.

Yeah, you pretty much need your own nuclear reactor to power those puppies. As soon as one thing fails, and it will, it will cost you $20,000 just to have someone look at it. You'll have to put the guy up at a hotel and pay air fair as well.

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If color is more important than the scanning then why not offer cheap scanning so we can at least edit footage digitally and send the finished product back to you for grading? Or does it not work that way because you must grade as you scan? I am not sure how the chain works so correct me if I am wrong. Thing is, I would rather pay for a colorist's time for only the scenes I wish to use.

That's where it's going. Colorists like to work that way too; just color what you need to color.

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Perry let me quote you “the scan is not a good place to try to do things on the cheap “ but that's the whole point of this -- it should be, and thanks to BMD it will be.

 

Well, this remains to be seen. It may be a fine scanner. It may have issues. we won't know until it's in someone's hands.

 

 

Perry by the way I saw you had a scanstaion what's the price on those?

 

It depends entirely on the options you get. Between about $100k-$200k, though, is the range for that scanner. It can be customized in many ways, so the final cost depends on multiple factors.

 

-perry

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If color is more important than the scanning then why not offer cheap scanning so we can at least edit footage digitally and send the finished product back to you for grading? Or does it not work that way because you must grade as you scan? I am not sure how the chain works so correct me if I am wrong. Thing is, I would rather pay for a colorist's time for only the scenes I wish to use.

 

What we do a lot of for independent filmmakers and students is flat scanning. Most people have access to at least rudimentary (often much more) color correction tools these days, whether in their NLEs or in free tools like Resolve. Doing a flat scan is relatively inexpensive and gets you the full dynamic range of the original film, without baking in the color corrections at that stage. This gives you maximum flexibility later. You can do a basic grade in your editing system to get it in the ballpark, then take your scans to a colorist to just do the final edit. This removes color correction from the transfer process, which lowers prices. Really, it's no different than all-digital workflows that use on-set grading tools to get a basic look, and a colorist later to finalize everything. That keeps the costs down, quite a bit.

 

That said, in order for this to work, you need a scanner that can give you the latitude you'll require later on to make those adjustments, and that isn't cheap. If you build your own, a proper 2k machine vision camera with a good sensor in it is many thousands of dollars (That's just for the raw camera, not including the transport, the control software, etc). Using the Müller scanner as an example, only because it's fresh in my mind from NAB, the whole unit is about $35,000 for small gauge scanning with the "2k" camera. And it's pretty cool, for what it is. Except that it's really only 1.6k, it didn't seem to have very good dynamic range, and it required a lot of manual tweaking that you simply don't have to do with more expensive scanners. So while the initial hardware may be relatively cheap, you'll have to spend a lot more time at the scanning stage making sure you're not losing any detail in the scan itself so that you can do exactly what you're requesting.

 

All that extra work makes for a costlier scan, negating much of the cost savings of the scanner itself.

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What Perry said.....

 

The upgrade for our Pin Registered Xena scanner to 6.6K (6600 x 4400 14bit monochrome Kodak CCD) with the Imperx Bobcat 6620 and medium camera link frame grabber is about $23,000.00 and the Bobcat 3340 3.3K color sensor camera in our fast scanner was about $7500.00 really really good sensors are expensive.

 

That is just the sensor, there is LED-IR Illumination system and servos and gates and etc.etc.etc. and the sophisticated software that makes a scanner run.

 

FYI I run, maintain and feed a last generation Cintel flying spot telecine and DaVinci hardware color corrector, it is a marvelous beast which can make an incredible picture but it is not a hobbyist machine.

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Thanks for the info Perry.

Two follow up question if I may. It doesn't do vista vision, and it's only 2K right? Do lasergraphic have any update path for it 4K, 8perf and son on?

And a more general question, I have read the old Cintel manuals, and as I understand it, flying spot machines can basically scan any pref or format size. (There is a certain warmth to Cintel scans that I really like.) Now with modern chip and line scanners, my question is can you build a machine that scans the whole with of 35mm, the whole frame sprockets and all, and is length independent at least 1-16 perfs.

I have not come across any machine that does this but maybe I haven't looked hard enough. I know that the bigfoot scanner do 65mm but it's slow and getting long in the tooth.

Edited by Alex Lindblom
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Two follow up question if I may. It doesn't do vista vision, and it's only 2K right? Do lasergraphic have any update path for it 4K, 8perf and son on?

If you mean the ScanStation, the machine is limited to 2k, so anything bigger than 4-perf 35mm would really be pushing it. I'd have to check with Lasergraphics because they don't get into specifics on 35mm specs on their web site about what formats they support, but I don't think it'll do anything larger than 4-perf. My guess would be 2- 3- and 4-perf, all at 2k. Our ScanStation is for 8mm and 16mm only (R8/S8/R16/S16/U16).

 

Their other scanner, the Director, is 4k with multi-flash HDR, the same kind of optical pin registration as the ScanStation and it handles 16mm and 35mm (2/3/4 perf). It's also twice the price of the ScanStation

 

And a more general question, I have read the old Cintel manuals, and as I understand it, flying spot machines can basically scan any pref or format size. (There is a certain warmth to Cintel scans that I really like.) Now with modern chip and line scanners, my question is can you build a machine that scans the whole with of 35mm, the whole frame sprockets and all, and is length independent at least 1-16 perfs.

I'll leave that one to Rob, who knows more about these machines than I.

 

 

-perry

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About Cintel flying spot scanners... There have been machines built which can handle 65mm and 70mm film, up to Imax size. The flying spot system is kind of like a variable sized sensor and a single pixel sensor at the same time. The patch on the CRT is variable in size and height-width so you can make it fit any size film the gate-servo can transport. The "sensor" in a Flying spot machine is a set of three Photomultiplier tubes which are setup as R,G and B by dichric filters. Photomultiplier tubes have more dynamic range than any CCD or CMOS sensor I know of, but they are expensive and have their own issues. I still think some of the best film transfer can come out of a flying spot machine like a Millenium2 or DSX if it has a new tube in it. Unfortunately a new tube is $25k and it's not ten years ago when post houses would put new tubes in machines at the slightest sign of wear.

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As far as the Imagica Bigfoot scanner goes, it may be "long in the tooth" but It makes a 8K x 12K true RGB scan and there is no real practical way to get a scan of that size other than using the Tri-Linear 8K Kodak CCD and sweeping it across the film at 12K to make the 12K Imax scan. The sensor used in the BigFoot is the Kodak-Trusense KLI-8023 ( http://www.truesenseimaging.com/products/linear/68-KLI-8023 ) which has giant 9 micron pixels. The bigger the pixels the more dynamic range and lower noise in a CCD.

 

The guys in LA that make our scanners have a 65mm/70mm Oxberry pin registered area sensor scanner they are setting up with a full frame monochrome CCD at 6600 x 4400 but that is about 1/2 the resolution of the BigFoot because that is about as big a monochrome area sensor that can be purchased without a aerospace or military budget.

 

EDIT: I think they are looking at this CCD too... (http://www.truesenseimaging.com/products/full-frame-ccd/64-KAF-50100) which is 8K x 6K monochrome at 1.0 FPS which means 3sec/frame for color.

 

There is no scanner manufacturer that makes their own sensor so all film scanners are selecting a Sensor/camera from what is commercially available.

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On the Vistavision question - there are some scanners that can do it at 4k and higher. The old Imagica 3000v (there's a broken one on ebay for $2500 if you're feeling adventurous/masochistic) has a vistavision option. But it's something like 90 seconds per frame to scan at 4k. The Imager XE (faster, more expensive) had a Vistavision option as well, that worked at 6k x4k. I believe they offered an 8K and 10K sensor upgrade as well. I'm not sure how many of these are out there in the wild at these resolutions, though.

 

I don't think they made a 2-perf gate for the XE, but they did have a 3-perf option. The "smaller" Imagica scanners work as Rob described on the bigfoot: the film is held in the gate for the duration of the scan, and the sensor sweeps the length of it. They're slow, but produce very nice scans.

 

Both of Lasergraphic's scanners use area imagers, and I doubt they have an 8-perf option for the Director, since that would require fairly significant design modifications to accommodate the gate, lens and sensor assemblies.

 

-perry

Edited by Perry Paolantonio
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The highest resolution Tri-Linear CCD is the 8K one I mentioned above, the Northlight-2 and later Imagica scanners used it, 10K or 12K scans would be derived from the sweep not a bigger sensor.

 

There are now a number of new fast scanners on the market or comming to market, the BMD Cintel machine that the thread started with is one of these as is the Scan Station, the Kinetta, the Mueller (Although with such a poor sensor it's not in the same class) our new fast Xena etc. The all have off the shelf color cameras and LED light sources and are much simplified compared to the older machines.

 

The new class of machines works with the same Bayer mask imager that the RED, Alexa, etc, use and that is how these new machines get their speed.

 

We chose this sensor (see below) for our new fast machine: ( http://imperx.com/ccd-cameras/B3340/ ) it is a 3.3K 17fps color 4/3" sensor with four taps, i.e. it reads our 4 quadrants to four pipes for speed vs. quality and because it will basically be "Super" 2K resolution.

 

Will a color mask machine ever be as good as a slow monochrome imager with a single tap? Or a 8K Tri-Linear CCD with big pixels? IMO no which is why I feel strongly about offering a monochrome imager based machine even though it is much much slower than what can be done with a Bayer mask color scanner.

post-15580-0-52541500-1397247066_thumb.jpg

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Kodak invented the digital camera, and just sold their division that makes sensors...

 

I don't know what CCD is in the Scan Station but it is probably a Kodak-Truesense CCD. I think the Scanity has Dalsa line array(s) and the Arriscan is an Alev-IV CMOS chip I am not sure who makes it for Arri though.

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