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Phil Rhodes

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Not being flippant, but why are you trying to determine this?  Do you just like/not like the quality or ???

Used to be scanning out to the edge of the film was an unusual characteristic; more in line with an archival-purposed scanner, but now I am unsure if this is a unique quality with among the latest generation of motion picture film scanners.

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42 minutes ago, Frank Wylie said:

Used to be scanning out to the edge of the film was an unusual characteristic; more in line with an archival-purposed scanner, but now I am unsure if this is a unique quality with among the latest generation of motion picture film scanners.

That's my confusion. I could see including a bit of a sprocket hole, but the whole width of a standard 16 print?!

And yes, this is from a sequence. It's animation.

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What's funny is a Curator who asks for a 4K scan and wants to see the entire area of the film, but still thinks they are getting a 4K program image.  No amount of explanation will seem to convince them otherwise...

 

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2 hours ago, Frank Wylie said:

What's funny is a Curator who asks for a 4K scan and wants to see the entire area of the film, but still thinks they are getting a 4K program image.  No amount of explanation will seem to convince them otherwise...

 

 

You have to look at it more like megapixels. A 4K scan has a certain amount of resolution and you are getting that resolution, just not the full 4K width. 

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2 hours ago, Phil Rhodes said:

Terra

Close. Terrahawks. I'm just trying to figure out why it was scanned that way.

If it a few frame clip, it is easier to scan bits of it on the flatbed scanner or light box that run it though a scanner to extract samples.

I didn't read this whole thread. If the entire film was scanned like that then maybe they wanted to be 'artsy.' If you use AEO Light to extract the sound you have to scan the optical track as well, but not much else.

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7 hours ago, Frank Wylie said:

Yes, this is a selling point for archival scanners.  Curators want to see everything;  out to the edge of the film to capture edge codes and even inked sync numbers.

 

 

Yes, there is important info on the edges. 

Amazon.com: Physical Characteristics of Early Films as Aids to Identification: New expanded Edition (9782960029697): Bolt-Wellens, Camille: Books

Here is a piece of damaged film from a 1931 stag film called 'The Radio Man.'

I scanned it on the flatbed scanner. Download and magnifier OP. Or click on it and scroll it up sized.

nsfw

Broken 16mm Film D.D. Teoli Jr. A.C. : Daniel D. Teoli Jr. Small Gauge Film Archive : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive

 

 

Edited by Daniel D. Teoli Jr.
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Here is a scan I did on a flatbed scanner. I just put it up for you...even has a hair!

Flatbed Scan Of 16mm Fujicolor Cine' Film D.D.Teoli Jr. A.C. : D.D.Teoli Jr. A.C. : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive

Click on it to see full res.

Edited by Daniel D. Teoli Jr.
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Hard to tell without seeing the overscan of the scanner gate, which is cropped in this pic.

Has to be a newer machine which can image the full or most of the film gauge width so a Kinetta or Xena (full width) or a Scan Station (almost the full width) with our Xena I can scan the full 16mm width at 6464 pixels for example.

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  • 1 month later...
On 3/29/2021 at 1:13 PM, Frank Wylie said:

What's funny is a Curator who asks for a 4K scan and wants to see the entire area of the film, but still thinks they are getting a 4K program image.  No amount of explanation will seem to convince them otherwise...

 

A while back, we ended up doing a blog post on this, in part because of the issue you raise, but also because some other ScanStation 6.5k owners were saying they'd do 6.5k of the *frame* -- that'd mean they're scaling up from the native 4.8k (for the full aperture of the frame) for 16mm. And that would be dishonest. Also, all kids of wrong if you're doing archival scans. 

https://www.gammaraydigital.com/blog/lasergraphics-scanstation-65k-maximum-resolutions

 

Quote

You have to look at it more like megapixels. A 4K scan has a certain amount of resolution and you are getting that resolution, just not the full 4K width. 

@Daniel D. Teoli Jr. - what Frank is saying here is that some people think they're getting a 4k scan of the image when they order a 4k scan with full overscan. The resulting file is 4k, but because of the stuff outside the (film) frame, the frame is actually much smaller. In the case of the link above, with the ScanStation 6.5k and standard 16mm film, you get 4.8k for the film frame, within a 6.5k file. That means about 74% of the width of the file is the film frame, the rest is the stuff outside the frame. If you were to do a 4k scan (a 4k *file* that is), the full aperture area would be about 3k.

 
Edited by Perry Paolantonio
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  • 5 weeks later...
On 5/11/2021 at 4:57 AM, Perry Paolantonio said:

A while back, we ended up doing a blog post on this, in part because of the issue you raise, but also because some other ScanStation 6.5k owners were saying they'd do 6.5k of the *frame* -- that'd mean they're scaling up from the native 4.8k (for the full aperture of the frame) for 16mm. And that would be dishonest. Also, all kids of wrong if you're doing archival scans. 

https://www.gammaraydigital.com/blog/lasergraphics-scanstation-65k-maximum-resolutions

Is this blog post still available Perry? Appears to be unavailable to public on your website. Very keen to give it a read. I'm currently trying to find the easiest way to calculate overscan pixel resolution to maintain a 4k frame.

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9 minutes ago, Jameson Feakes said:

Is this blog post still available Perry? Appears to be unavailable to public on your website. Very keen to give it a read. I'm currently trying to find the easiest way to calculate overscan pixel resolution to maintain a 4k frame.

hmm. we've had some really weird issues with our server the past few days. Let me look into it. It should be there, but I'm not sure why it's getting that error.

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32 minutes ago, Jameson Feakes said:

Is this blog post still available Perry? Appears to be unavailable to public on your website. Very keen to give it a read. I'm currently trying to find the easiest way to calculate overscan pixel resolution to maintain a 4k frame.

Ok, should be up and running now. Sorry about that - looks like the permissions on the site got all messed up but I've given it a swift kick and now it's back. 

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13 minutes ago, Perry Paolantonio said:

Ok, should be up and running now. Sorry about that - looks like the permissions on the site got all messed up but I've given it a swift kick and now it's back. 

Thanks for that, working for me now. Have some questions around it if that's okay? I know we're moving quite far from the original thread topic however.

Started working with a 6.5k ScanStation recently so it's great to have some reading from someone who's worked with them from day one. Planning on forwarding this post on to archive clients as it explains this misconception very clearly.

When you provide a cropped-to-frame scan for clients are you using those pixel resolutions that are shown in the blog post (e.g. 4894x3528 for a std 16mm scan)? What bothers me about ScanStation's software is that it doesn't seem to intuitively change the resolution when manually adjusting the frame size of a cropped scan.

 

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On 6/9/2021 at 10:45 PM, Jameson Feakes said:

Planning on forwarding this post on to archive clients as it explains this misconception very clearly.

Thanks, feel free to link to it! We posted this originally because there are some ScanStation services that are (or maybe were, not sure) offering 6.5k scans of the film frame, which means they're scaling up. We had to explain to several customers that those other services weren't able to do something we couldn't do (we certainly could, but won't), they were just doing something you shouldn't do!

 

On 6/9/2021 at 10:45 PM, Jameson Feakes said:

When you provide a cropped-to-frame scan for clients are you using those pixel resolutions that are shown in the blog post (e.g. 4894x3528 for a std 16mm scan)? What bothers me about ScanStation's software is that it doesn't seem to intuitively change the resolution when manually adjusting the frame size of a cropped scan.

 

 

  • Make sure the Aspect Ratio pulldown is set to Unlocked
  • manually enter the desired output file size (say, 4096x3112)
  • Change the Aspect Ratio pulldown to "Locked to Image Size"
  • Drag a corner of the marquee around the image to the crop you want

This will automatically scale the image to the output file size you manually entered, maintaining that aspect ratio. 

There is a trick, too - the default editing tool for the scanner will scale things to fit based on Lasergraphics best guess at what you want. For more control, and to see the actual resolution, hold down the Ctrl key when you click the Edit button. This enables a hidden checkbox (which long ago was there by default but it was deemed too confusing by lasergraphics) called "Track film/file size". If you check this box and follow the steps above, when you get to the last step (dragging the size of the marquee), the image size fields will change with the scale of the marquee. So if you want to maintain the max resolution of the file but add some overscan, for example, you'd do this:

  • Load the film in 6.5k mode (assuming 16mm)
  • Hold down Ctrl while clicking the Edit button under the Output Presets
  • Make sure the Aspect Ratio is set to Unlocked
  • Change the preset to Full Aperture
  • Change the Aspect Ratio to "Locked to Image Size"

Now when you drag the marquee around, the full aperture of the frame will be the max supported for the mode you're loaded into (4.8k  for 6.5k mode) and going larger on the marquee means you're just adding some stuff to the outside of that. 

 

 

 

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