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anyone tried bono labs' HD telecine to hard drive?


Jaan Shenberger

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i dunno if this is too sensitive of a topic, since they're an advertiser on this site, but... has anyone gotten a HD telecine direct to hard drive, flat or best light, particularly 16mm, from bono labs?

http://www.bonolabs.com/

 

feel free to private message or email me if you don't feel like discussing it on the board...

 

thanks,

jaan

Edited by jaan
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We recently used them for a commercial project. Kodak 7245 and 7212 transferred direct to hard drive. Tim Bono is great to work with and very informative. Excellent service and so much better than BetaSP or Digibeta.

 

Four main guidelines:

 

1) You must make absolutely sure your editing system can handle the 10-bit uncompressed footage. It will not play in realtime without a server array with a fiber channel card (like the Xserve RAID). We're running an Apple system with Dual 2.7 GHz and 8 GB of RAM and an Aja Kona2 card. You'll have to downcovert the footage otherwise. They also offer a DVCPro HD codec.

 

2) If you get the flat transfer, make sure you have a good color correction program and plenty of time to spare. From experience, I'd have them do a best light and match to a grey card. You get more information from the flat transfer, but it's a trade off.

 

3) Make sure you have plenty of time to complete your project. They do not rush their services and only conduct business through the mail and UPS/FedEx.

 

4) Read EVERYTHING on their website. It really answers every question and is highly informative. Take note of their policies and procedures. He's got a great history of HD on there, too.

 

Best regards,

 

Ashley Dean

 

Cage XXI Enterprises, Inc.

www.cagexxi.com

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Guest Chainsaw

Sure, I'll pull some stills off tomorrow and post them. I was really left breathless the first time I viewed the footage on our 30" HD monitor, even with the flat transfer. I will never go back to BetaSP or Digibeta transfers.

 

Ashley Dean

 

Cage XXI Enterprises, Inc.

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It appears that they are too large to post. I'll email them to you instead.

 

Ashley Dean

Ashley,

I was considering BonoLabs as well. Would you mind emailing me the sample images, too?

If you want, I can host them for you on my server so you can link to them from the forums - that way you can avoid bothersome requests from folks like me. :)

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Ashely,

I hate to bug you as well, but i am also considering Bono labs, thanks for your tips so far, fantastic stuff. Do you know anything about how good the DVCpro HD codec is? Any possibibity you could also email pics or just let me know when they get posted? stevie_o54@hotmail.com. Thanks for your help:)

steve

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I emailed tiff's to both of you from the un-corrected, 10-bit uncompressed anamorphic flat transfer.

 

As to the DVCPro HD codec... we also had them send some test footage to us with that codec a while back. It's more than suitable and if you're going back out to D5 for broadcast, etc. that's the codec you would use.

 

Bono Labs requires that new customers do a 'test drive'. They'll send you a portable drive with various examples of their transferred footage, both 10-bit uncompressed and DVCPro HD. Of course, you'll have to provide them with a credit card for a refundable deposit plus a few bucks for shipping and handling. By doing this you can compare the footage directly and find out if your editing system can handle it.

 

Let me know if you've got any more questions :)

 

Ashley Dean

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Guest Chainsaw

For all of the interested here, in a few days (Friday at 3:00 actually) the footage in question will be completely timed, corrected and edited so either Ashley or I can show before and after shots. I can also provide processing, exposure, filtration, lighting and other relevant cinematographic info for said shots.

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For all of the interested here, in a few days (Friday at 3:00 actually) the footage in question will be completely timed, corrected and edited so either Ashley or I can show before and after shots. I can also provide processing, exposure, filtration, lighting and other relevant cinematographic info for said shots.

 

Sounds great, I'm very interested to see how the stuff looks, any of your impressions about the final footage would be great. Any images you can post would be helpful also. Thanks!

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Sounds great, I'm very interested to see how the stuff looks, any of your impressions about the final footage would be great.  Any images you can post would be helpful also.  Thanks!

 

 

I have delt with Bono on three occasions now and have nothing but praise and a tinglely feeling inside. Serious though, I have used the SD transfer to hard drive and for lower budgeted stuff that look great as well. the telecine to hard drive is the way of the future I believe. I will be using them for a short I have coming up. we will be using the HD to hard drive option. I recommend them to anyone, but as it has been stated before, you need to check out everything with your system before proceeding.

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Guest Chainsaw

Well the editing is done and both the client and ad agency love it. I took around sixteen frame grabs from the original flat-pass uncompressed footage, the color-corrected re-framed NTSC edit, and even a few BTS shots taken from a DVX-100 for comparison. I tried to get the exact same frames from both the original uncompressed and the corrected NTSC downconversion. I put all of these on a memory stick and of course I forgot it at the office. If I have my wits about me around this time tomorrow I should have these images either posted here or on an FTP site. The file size is rather large and should probably be kept that way for an objective comparison. Hopefully these shots (while not the most exciting in the world) will prove somewhat enlightening.

 

I will also try and dig up my lighting plots and camera reports and post those as well. All in the interest of completion.

 

Until tomorrow...

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did you and ashley manage to post corrected and hi-res stills? Definitely want to see how it looks!

 

 

Well the editing is done and both the client and ad agency love it. I took around sixteen frame grabs from the original flat-pass uncompressed footage, the color-corrected re-framed NTSC edit, and even a few BTS shots taken from a DVX-100 for comparison. I tried to get the exact same frames from both the original uncompressed and the corrected NTSC downconversion. I put all of these on a memory stick and of course I forgot it at the office. If I have my wits about me around this time tomorrow I should have these images either posted here or on an FTP site. The file size is rather large and should probably be kept that way for an objective comparison. Hopefully these shots (while not the most exciting in the world) will prove somewhat enlightening.

 

I will also try and dig up my lighting plots and camera reports and post those as well. All in the interest of completion.

 

Until tomorrow...

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hey ashley & tony, thanks for posting those for us.

 

i was able to get the "X6.tiff" flat transfer sample, but the other flat transer samples seemed to have problems when i downloaded them. it looks like they are only partial files. when uploading them, your session may have gotten cut early... or am i the only one that can't open them?

 

thanks again,

jaan

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