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Is FilmFabriek aware that their sound scanner has audio problems?


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On 3/10/2022 at 7:31 PM, Dan Baxter said:

No it's not - what are you comparing it against? When I get a chance I'll put a piece of sound film through a ScanStation followed by a better audio machine. The Lasergraphics is very hissy. I personally think the software audio extraction (which is a free inbuilt software feature) does a better job than the Optical/Keykode reader, but I'll admit I haven't done a side-by-side test on that. It just seems obvious because of how hissy the optical audio reader is.

Why not do your own side-by-side test sometime instead of accusing me of spreading misinformation?

Most of the FT_Depot Youtube videos have the audio straight off their ScanStation with no cleanup, people can judge for themselves if the audio sounds right to them or not.

 

Yes, side by side tests are the best Dan. It takes out the personal prejudices of being a fanboy. But the tests must be honest and not skewed because of personal likes or dislikes. Ego can be a problem. People get attached to their 'thing' and it must be the best or their ego gets hurt. if their 'thing' gets attacked, it is an attack on them personally, as their 'thing' is an extension of them. 

I talked with Perry ages ago about putting up actual moving image sample scans of his work to show this or that service he offered. But you know Perry, he is set in his ways. He won't do it, he only likes still photo samples from the scans, which look the worst, as compared to the moving image scans which smooths things out. That is why I sent in a post a while back about Perry regarding 'divorcing the ego' from your work or it can skew your thinking. 

Now, I don't know who is telling the truth with this Lasergraphics subject. But I hope to dig deeper into this thread. I just started to inventory my film Archive on the computer on Friday. I'm up to #307 out of thousands of films that need to be inventoried. So not much time for forums...but I hope to get a few posts done.

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Kodak%20Geophysical%20Recording%20Produc

Selection from Eastman Kodak Archive DDTJRAC

 

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On 3/10/2022 at 8:15 PM, Tyler Purcell said:

They have double flywheels, that's what I was referring to, that's what helps smooth out the playback. 

 

Flywheels?

How is it a cheap projector, with no flyweels, can reproduce the sound and not cost $45k?

That is what I don't get Tyler. What does FF have to do to fix the sound problem?? Can it be fixed by the user? Maybe if you send a sound sample to FF they can understand the problem. Which is terrifying in itself...that a company can't understand a simple problem like that.

And speaking of sound samples, put the defective FF sound sample up at the I.A. for us to hear. (If it has not already been posted here. Still trying to catch up.)

 

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On 3/11/2022 at 5:11 AM, Andrew Wise said:

I’ve been happy with the sound from my HDS. I try to adjust the azimuth of the sound head to match the original recording head, just like when I digitise magnetic audio tape. 
 

the HDS does have a flywheel behind the capstan, it’s about 5 inches in diameter. I’d guess the audio quality could be improved by adding dancer arms. I’m no expert, but I would assume the dancer arms would take out inconsistencies with reel tension etc to reduce speed changes affecting sound. But who knows! 

 

You got some sound samples Andrew?

Let's hear them.

Some people are very picky, maybe the sound with the FF is OK, just don't know. All I'm looking for is decent, undistorted sound reproduction mainly of people talking. 

On another, but still related topic with the FF, how is their software?

Is it easy to use? Does it offer adjustments to the sound reproduction that would help?

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On 3/11/2022 at 11:47 AM, Tyler Purcell said:

The quality of the sound head is fine, it's the inconsistencies of the film being pulled through it, which is the problem. 

It can be done as many other scanners use a very similar design. I have not really investigated what's wrong, but it's pretty serious, not something I feel confident in giving clients as a high quality final sound. Plus, it does not stay in sync from the first frame to the last frame, if you capture in DPX and capture the audio on another pass. 

I don't understand Tyler. You have the same inconsistences in the film being scanned in all scanners. So the film's inconsistencies can't be blamed on the FF. Or are you saying the FF is not good at handling inconsistences in film as opposed to other scanners?

What do you mean by capturing in 2 passes?

I'd like a scanner that can scan in one pass. Is there an issue with scanning sound in one pass with the FF? I've had enough out of synch issues with my Russian post software. The synch gets out of whack many a time with MP4 conversions. But it is $75 software, not a $45K scanner.

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On 3/11/2022 at 1:26 PM, Perry Paolantonio said:

The Lasergraphics is not "hissy."

Your implication with this statement is that it is the scanner that is introducing noise that wasn't there, and this is incorrect.

What you are hearing is an accurate representation of the soundtrack as it exists on the film - that white noise is there. It is a part of the soundtrack that has always been there. In an analog playback system (say, theatrical projection), that would get cut out in the sound reproduction path so you wouldn't hear it. But you'd also be losing some information in that process. 

And as audio isn't my area of expertise and I don't want to be speaking about things I don't know about, I did a test this morning: I captured the 16mm mag mix, the 16mm optical neg and 16mm Print of a short film I made 30 years ago. I sent the files to a friend of mine who is an audio mastering engineer. Here's what we found:

DD_Mag-OTN-Print.thumb.jpg.0f18ceb557460fd19a1dd94cd266fad5.jpg

On the left you see the mag. This is the mix, which is obviously the cleanest version with the most dynamic range. This mag is a dub of the same mix as the element that was sent to the lab that made the OTN (which in this case was a Nagra tape), so the sound hasn't been compressed into the frequency range required for 16mm audio (about 100Hz-6kHz). That was done by the lab when the Nagra master was played into the optical track recorder. The Track neg and the Print are in the middle and right, respectively. 

Horizontal axis is time. Vertical axis is frequency. The audio is the same ~2 minutes from the beginning of the film. All three were captured at 24bit/96kHz to WAV files. The brightness of the color indicates the level, and as you can see the optical tracks have brighter backgrounds, which we perceive as hiss. the line at about 5kHz in the optical tracks is an artifact of the Nagra tape (the pilot tone that's reference below). Here's their explanation:

In other words, because of the limited frequency range of the optical track, most everything above about 5kHz is noise. And because that's all higher frequency, and because there's little to no signal there, we perceive it as extraneous hiss.

The ScanStation is capturing the sound as it exists on the soundtrack, and not processing it further to remove that. As an archival scanner, this is the correct way to do it, and I wouldn't want it to behave differently. If you don't want the hiss to be there in the captured audio, you have the option of applying noise reduction to the capture. We don't do this, because from an archival perspective it's the wrong way to approach this problem. The right way is to do it post-scan, on a copy. Again, I defer to the audio expert for an explanation:

This is trivially easy to do even with free software. Resolve has a pretty decent de-noise filter and it does a nice job most of the time with just the default settings. 

Again, I would ask you to please stop spreading misinformation. The scanner is doing exactly what it's designed to do, and if that isn't what you want, then there is the option of applying noise reduction at the time of scanning.

Though, anyone thinking they can use a modern film scanner to create a final product directly off the machine, is using that machine in the wrong way, 

 

 

 

Nice report Perry...Thanks!

Getting back to my earlier post...it would be nice to have the sound samples to hear.

But...

Would you say the Lasergraphics reproduces optical sound similar in quality to a projector or not Perry?

That may be an issue than Dan B is referring to. Maybe the Lasergraphics is reproducing a lower 'perceived quality' sound as compared to projector?

I would think the scanners job is to reproduce the experience as close as possible to the projected film. But it may be as you say Perry. The Lasergraphics scanner gets it all down, including the warts, and you have to remove them in post.

Edited by Daniel D. Teoli Jr.
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On 3/12/2022 at 2:55 AM, Dan Baxter said:

Fine Perry if you want to argue I'm going to call out your BS on this. You're a service provider and you're in a position to know better, and telling people that LG audio is "among the best optical soundtrack reproducers currently available" is false, deceptive, and misleading advertising and no different IMO to a company with a Retroscan or a Tobin or a Ventura Images scanner that claims their scans are top-shelf off the most professional scanning systems etc. Do you want to know how many times I've heard that claim in the past 12 months - half of it from the mom-and-pop companies and half of it from their customers that don't know any better that say things like "I don't think there's a problem with the scan I think the problem is with the film"? Too many times, that's how many. And I mean no disrespect to anyone, and especially the end-clients that just don't realise how their film should look or what the scan is missing. I might add here that MOST of the time someone makes a claim like that they're literally comparing downstream not upstream - i.e. comparing against a Wolverine rather than against a ScanStation.

The professionals that I know transfer optical audio separately off the best machine they have available. In the past the go-to machine used to be the Sondor and in fact when I first heard about it I just thought/assumed the Sondor was literally an audio machine like a dubber (to be fair, they look like a dubber!) DFT even advertises in the Scanity brochure that they use the Sondor audio components (DFT bought-out Sondor). You will also hear from time-to-time people talking about "Sondor audio units" and what I think they usually mean is old machines that no longer capture video at all that are just set up for professional audio transfer.

That is the point I was making regarding why Filmfabriek doesn't perfect theirs - the R&D to do it and the fact that it's 16mm-only would make it a fool's endeavour when you can literally buy the best 35/16 optical audio machine for ~$35K and half that on the used market (the Cintel that is - a used Sondor would be even less but either option will handle both formats).

Really - is that how it works? So what about the base damage - would you prefer that the backlight is not designed to minimise the visibility of the damage in-camera so that you can then try to remove all the scratches after the scan artificially because the scan is preserving the film exactly as it is? You don't get to have it both ways there. I don't pretend to understand exactly how the audio capture is different - but whether the hiss is on the film or not doesn't change the fact that you don't need to pick it up with a well designed audio capture device. My understanding on it (and I may be mistaken) is that just like with the actual scan in the gate you need the film to be perfectly flat to get a perfect audio capture - it's doing the same basic thing that the image-scan does which is run the film under a sensor (imager) with a backlight. If you can get the film perfectly flat you get a perfect capture, and if not you get hiss - again I'm sure that's not the whole story but part of it that contributes towards getting perfect audio.

You've absolutely no evidence backing up your claim that the LG optical audio reader has been engineered perfectly - please do a proper comparison sometime then report back.

That's the same thing that people with Retroscans etc say about the picture - whether that's about noise or dynamic range or anything else "you can just fix it up in post - our scanner gets you exactly what's on the film". Again do you want me to tell you how many times I've heard people say in one variety or another "oh it's not worth doing 8mm on something better because you're not going to get any more detail out of the scan anyway"? Honestly it's the same claim except made about audio instead of video - you should not need to do any digital de-noising either way with a good capture.

 

Jeeeesus...I don't know what it all means. Film work is sooo complex. I just need some half-ass decent 4K scans and to get the sound synched up similar as to how a projector with an exciter bulb would play sound. 

Originally, I thought to run the films through the projector and capture the sound, then marry audio to the films. But a lot of my films don't project well. So, I got AEO Light. But I'd like to make things easy on me and scan the film in one pass to do it all at once.

Sure, people in business may have skewed views. Some are honest, some are not. And with more and more people getting into the get rich quick scanning biz, maybe some are not as honest as they could be while trying to grab an ever decreasing share of the film scanning pie.

I don't have many delusions about gear / equipment. It comes under the auspices of...it is what it is. If I can get better gear, I will, if it fits my budget, space and time. But it usually always depends on the $$.

$$ is stored energy. $$ buys space and time

I guess the only way to get some settlement on this Lasergraphics sound issue is to hear audio samples comparing various scanners. Then people can decide which is more pleasing. But, more pleasing may not be the most complete reproduction.

I think most people ordering scans want a decent sound and not something that need more audio doctoring. So pleasing is a big deal with me. But with archival work, being true to the original is also important. It just depends. It is a balancing act. 

Sometimes the original is such a mess you don't try bothering with keeping it true to its current condition. Even so, you need to do a good job recording it in its original state so you can 'work' on it.

 

ballerina-pre-restoration-d-d-teoli-jr-a

 

ballerina-daniel-d-teoli-jr-archival-col

Attributed to Myers S.F.

DDTJRC Ballerina Archive

Maybe the deal with the Lasergraphics audio is this...

You want to do audio work on your film...scan with the Lasergraphics to get a complete capture of the audio. 

You want a finished scan, that has pleasing audio, with no additional audio work...scan with something else.

But I'm just guessing. Without audio sample comparisons to study it is all a crapshoot as to who is right.

I'm about done for today. Got to get back to work.

...God, why couldn't FF just have made a proper audio capture on their scanner. It could have saved us all this hassle!

 

Edited by Daniel D. Teoli Jr.
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6 hours ago, Daniel D. Teoli Jr. said:

I don't understand Tyler. You have the same inconsistences in the film being scanned in all scanners. So the film's inconsistencies can't be blamed on the FF. Or are you saying the FF is not good at handling inconsistences in film as opposed to other scanners?

The capstan motor does not run at a consistent speed. It's close, but not perfect. So as a consequence of there being no flywheels around the audio head, which is very common on sound recording devices, there is a lot of wow/flutter going on, especially at any speed below 24fps. It seems to be "ok" at 24, but if you're doing S8 for instance at 18fps, no way. I've been using my projector and syncing it later. 

6 hours ago, Daniel D. Teoli Jr. said:

What do you mean by capturing in 2 passes?

You can't scan at real time @ 4k with the FF, it does not work. So you have to do one pass for the 10 bit DPX or 16 bit tiff, which captures much slower than real time, between 3 - 14fps. Then another pass for just the audio. If you're ok with 8 bit 4:2:2 1080p, then yes you can scan in one pass in real time. 

6 hours ago, Daniel D. Teoli Jr. said:

I'd like a scanner that can scan in one pass. Is there an issue with scanning sound in one pass with the FF? I've had enough out of synch issues with my Russian post software. The synch gets out of whack many a time with MP4 conversions. But it is $75 software, not a $45K scanner.

If you don't care about quality yes... you can scan 1080p with any of these scanners with audio. 

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6 hours ago, Daniel D. Teoli Jr. said:

Flywheels?

How is it a cheap projector, with no flyweels, can reproduce the sound and not cost $45k?

Flywheels are huge. Have you taken apart a 16mm or 35mm projector? The flywheel weight is probably the heaviest single thing in a projector. Notice that big drum the film wraps around on a projector? That's attached to a shaft and at the end of the shaft is a flywheel. You can't put a big flywheel into a scanner for many reasons, the biggest of which is the sound head would need to be permanently installed, which nobody really wants to do. I have not taken apart the LG or Cintel optical boxes to see what's inside, but I have a feeling they aren't just plastic rollers. 

6 hours ago, Daniel D. Teoli Jr. said:

That is what I don't get Tyler. What does FF have to do to fix the sound problem?? Can it be fixed by the user? Maybe if you send a sound sample to FF they can understand the problem. Which is terrifying in itself...that a company can't understand a simple problem like that.

The motor not being smooth you'd think is easy to fix, but that may help. I think putting two big flywheels that stick out forward, towards the operator, would 99% fix the issue. They could just snap on with magnets and little shafts, once the film is threaded. We honestly do so little audio, that it doesn't matter for us. But if you did a lot of audio, I could see how it would be kind of a headache. Maybe someday if we have any time, we can take a look and develop something. 

6 hours ago, Daniel D. Teoli Jr. said:

And speaking of sound samples, put the defective FF sound sample up at the I.A. for us to hear. (If it has not already been posted here. Still trying to catch up.)

I don't have much of a "bad" sample because we don't really save them. Here is a sample of a project we did recently from a print made in 1968? This was a pretty tricky project with lots of broken splices, it was very dirty and we had to clean/wet gate it. We did no other cleanup, all pre-scan. It was done in 4k DPX 10 bit and then we added the out of sync sound. We just corrected the sound by changing the speed slightly and it lined up. I've had to deal with out of sync sound issues for my entire life, so fixing them is super easy in any normal NLE. We use Resolve for everything. 

This dropbox link will require you to select the gear at the bottom and go to 1080p quality to see what it actually looks like. 

https://www.dropbox.com/s/dll8a4xbvvryref/Rave Up final.mov?dl=0

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21 hours ago, Daniel D. Teoli Jr. said:

I talked with Perry ages ago about putting up actual moving image sample scans of his work to show this or that service he offered. But you know Perry, he is set in his ways. He won't do it, he only likes still photo samples from the scans, which look the worst, as compared to the moving image scans which smooths things out. That is why I sent in a post a while back about Perry regarding 'divorcing the ego' from your work or it can skew your thinking. 

Daniel, we last scanned film for you 4 years ago and haven't spoken other than via these forums, since. So I don't recall what you're referring to. That being said, we don't put up example scans for the following reasons:

  1. To do it properly you need to post, at minimum, ProRes files, or something uncompressed. These need to be viewed on the local machine and *not* streamed. If you put stuff on YouTube or Vimeo, the compression they apply to make it streamable is out of your hands and there's no guarantee it looks correct. Also, the compression applied will in many cases destroy the film grain, so it's not an accurate representation. 
  2. Every reel of film is different. Posting a test scan from one reel is not representative of how another will look, because there are too many factors involved (type of film, number of generations from the original, damage to the film, fading, quality of the print or intermediate, sharpness of the original footage, etc). 

Back in the day, when I worked for a company that made one of the early computer-based nonlinear edit systems, we participated in several "shootouts" of these systems. Ours against all the others, using the same footage. Mostly it was about the quality of the picture, which was often coming from an analog tape source like BetacamSP. So you could objectively test, because you were looking for things like the level of compression for the same size image, etc. The people doing the tests were objective third parties.

I would be happy to have someone who knows what they're talking about (not Dan Baxter) send us a reel to scan, with specific parameters, if it's going to be compared with other scanners and presented objectively. This means each scan should have the same cropping, should be scanned to the same format, and should be scanned in similar ways (eg: all flat scans). Then someone who knows what they're doing should take those files into a color grading system to look at them a bit deeper and see what they have to work with: push the grade as hard as you can to see where the image falls apart, stuff like that. I'm only willing to do this if it's someone credible doing the work though, because it's too easy (as you can see from the Fleugicker paper you posted in another thread) for someone's assumptions about what's happening to color their conclusions. 

That being said, I think you'll find that it's impossible to truly, objectively compare these scanners. They all have their strengths and weaknesses. Some are optimized for negative, some for print. They're all going to have different features, so you may not be able to do some tests on certain machines that you can on another, and so on. 

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On 4/2/2022 at 5:21 AM, Dan Baxter said:

As an example, this claim:

RDwQvz8.png

Which I've referenced to before, isn't just likely to mislead customers - it's anti-competitive because they're effectively stating "you don't need to buy a professional colouring suite, you can do everything you need with our in-built software". So any company that makes the professional post-production software products could make a complaint if they wanted against that claim IMO

I just need to address this specifically because it's been bothering me all weekend. Let's break down Lasergraphics' text, shall we? 

"Built in color grading tools for easy dye fade correction":  This exists, and works to the extent that many people require. 

"applied during scan, eliminates secondary post processing step": This is also true. If your goal is to make an access copy of a print that has corrected for dye fade, you can do that and it saves a step. 

If, however, your goal is to make an archival scan of the film, then this is the wrong approach. But this gets back to something we've discussed before: The person operating the machine has to know what they're doing and if you're using the scanner to make archival scans with grading done in the scanner, I would submit that you don't know what you're doing and should do a little bit of reading about how this is all done first before proceeding.

The dye fade correction tools are there primarily as a convenience and anyone who is spending $50,000 - $200,000 on a film scanner ought to know that. Even Lasergraphics will tell you this and they will tell you that you shouldn't be relying on their grading tools for mastering work. They are rudimentary controls and there's no way to properly monitor the image because it's all being displayed on a computer screen that is subject to Windows' color management. Basically, don't do that. If you know how to grade footage, you know this is not how it's done. 

This feature is there for people who want to make a quick access copy. We don't use it, but could, and it works fairly well if the film is consistent (such as a print made from one element with uniform fading). It does not work well if the film is spliced together from multiple sources. We often make a secondary MP4 file alongside a master flat scan, with a one-light grade done in the scanner for the access copy, though we do that one-light manually, arriving at an average grade that doesn't clip or crush anything, even if there are multiple sources. That wouldn't work with this tool, but one should know that before using it. 

This morning we captured 30 seconds from a short dye-faded 16mm print and I just slapped this video together. The HD version should be done processing soon, but you get the idea even if you're limited to SD playback from YouTube.

 

On 3/31/2022 at 3:05 PM, Perry Paolantonio said:

I am still waiting to hear back from BMD

I am no longer waiting. BMD confirmed on their forum that the soundtrack reader in the cintel is essentially what you get in a projector: a red light source with a photocell. There is no camera there. They are compensating for wow and flutter by monitoring the capstan with an encoder. 

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23 hours ago, Daniel D. Teoli Jr. said:

What does FF have to do to fix the sound problem??

Motors do not run at perfectly consistent speeds and can speed up or slow down in small or large amounts while running due to a variety of factors. A rudimentary way to adjust for minor fluctuations is to use a flywheel. Fluctuations in speed result in wow and flutter, which affect the sound quality by causing variations in pitch. 

The Cintel scanner gets around this by using an encoder on the captstan, which is used to measure the speed fluctuations and to compensate for them digitally. 

The Lasergraphics ScanStation uses a digital camera to take a picture of the soundtrack, and it also correlates the audio samples captured by the camera to the encoder's readings, to eliminate wow and flutter. 

FilmFabriek could use a stepper motor running at real time speeds to capture audio, in a second pass. With a simple microcontroller, a closed loop stepper can effectively maintain a consistent speed. This is how the Magnatech dubbers do it, and those are early stepper motors. With a newer motor that can microstep you can get it moving very smoothly. 

22 hours ago, Daniel D. Teoli Jr. said:

Would you say the Lasergraphics reproduces optical sound similar in quality to a projector or not Perry?

Better.

 

22 hours ago, Daniel D. Teoli Jr. said:

That may be an issue than Dan B is referring to. Maybe the Lasergraphics is reproducing a lower 'perceived quality' sound as compared to projector?

If you are not using the noise reduction feature in the Lasergraphics hardware reader, you are capturing all of the audio signal plus the randomness of the film grain and this randomness is the hiss that Dan is referring to. That hiss is there, part of the film. If you look at those spectrographs I posted, you'll see that most (but not all) of the signal is below 6kHz. So if you apply a low-pass filter at 6kHz, you are lopping off everything above 6kHz. Because we perceive white noise as louder when it's in the higher frequencies, removig it results in a more pleasing sound. However, it's also cutting off any valid signal above 6kHz that might be on that soundtrack. 

So you have two options: one is to capture with the noise reduction feature on, because that does grain removal on the picture of the soundtrack *before* that picture is converted to an audio signal. This removes the hiss and keeps the sound, even above 6kHz in the case of 16mm. 

Or, you can remove the hiss in a second pass in an audio workstation where you can fine-tune the noise reduction using appropriate tools. 

We've been doing a bunch of tests internally, and I have to say I'm pretty impressed with the Lasergraphics noise reduction. It only works with variable area tracks, but we will likely be using this going forward as the end result retains the underlying signal, which is harder to get to in post (though not that hard). 

 

22 hours ago, Daniel D. Teoli Jr. said:

I would think the scanners job is to reproduce the experience as close as possible to the projected film.

 

This is incorrect. The job of a film scanner is to capture the film as faithfully as possible so you can post-process the image and sound later.

What you're describing is a telecine, which is old-school and not used much anymore. In a Telecine, you are capturing the film to an analog or digital format (traditionally tape, but can also be files with the right setup), while applying color correction and audio sweetening during the transfer. this is done in real time and the end result is the final product. But, any decisions made are permanent, most telecines only work up to HD resolution, and the amount of equipment required to make it all work is why it was an expensive process, costing typically hundreds of dollars per hour because you're paying for the use of millions of dollars in equipment (telecine, color correction system, specially designed room, all the other computer and video hardware involved, the maintenance of that hardware, and so on), as well as the operator who is running it all and doing the color correction work. 

 

Edited by Perry Paolantonio
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1 hour ago, Perry Paolantonio said:

I just need to address this specifically because it's been bothering me all weekend. Let's break down Lasergraphics' text, shall we? 

"Built in color grading tools for easy dye fade correction":  This exists, and works to the extent that many people require. 

"applied during scan, eliminates secondary post processing step": This is also true. If your goal is to make an access copy of a print that has corrected for dye fade, you can do that and it saves a step.

Oh lord Perry could you be any more contrived? I said the claim is false and likely to be misleading because it does not work as advertised. Simple as that. I didn't say that the people buying the products already know this (they do) but the point is that it does not at all eliminate the need for post-processing in separate non-LG software.

1 hour ago, Perry Paolantonio said:

his morning we captured 30 seconds from a short dye-faded 16mm print and I just slapped this video together. The HD version should be done processing soon, but you get the idea even if you're limited to SD playback from YouTube.

Wow that's awful. Thanks for posting that it explains a LOT. Especially if that came off 6.5K HDR.

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2 minutes ago, Dan Baxter said:

Oh lord Perry could you be any more contrived? I said the claim is false and likely to be misleading because it does not work as advertised. Simple as that.

And you are wrong. 

 

2 minutes ago, Dan Baxter said:

I didn't say that the people buying the products already know this (they do) but the point is that it does not at all eliminate the need for post-processing in separate non-LG software.

You are inferring that the tool is designed to eliminate post production, which is not what they're saying. Nobody is forcing you to use this feature, but it's there if you want it, and they will tell you straight up that you shouldn't use it for master scans. Again, as you say above, people know this already because it's an archival scanner, and grading in-scanner isn't how you're supposed to use it for master scans. So you're contradicting yourself here. 

If anyone's being contrived in their argument, it's you. 

9 minutes ago, Dan Baxter said:

Wow that's awful. Thanks for posting that it explains a LOT. Especially if that came off 6.5K HDR.

I'd love to know what you think it explains, having never seen this particular reel of film before. 

In any case, you seem to live in a world based on assumptions, feelings and opinions, not facts. I wonder how that's working out for you? 

1) 2k scan, SDR, done in about 5 minutes from an incredibly crappy reel of film that's badly faded. It's never going to look better than that, even if it's graded from the flat scan because there is virtually no color left on the film. The intention is to show that the feature works as advertised, which it does. 

2) @Daniel D. Teoli Jr.: This is in part why we don't post example scans, because every last "expert" on the internet will pick it apart without knowing anything or having seen the source material. It's not worth the time or effort to have to argue with every last yahoo on the internet. (and yet, here I am).

 

Dan, honestly, what is your problem, man? Why do you insist on going on and on about stuff you so obviously know nothing about, even when multiple people prove you wrong time and time again? I simply don't understand what your deal is. 

 

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2 hours ago, Perry Paolantonio said:

This morning we captured 30 seconds from a short dye-faded 16mm print and I just slapped this video together. The HD version should be done processing soon, but you get the idea even if you're limited to SD playback from YouTube.

Very impressive for an automated tool!

I recently did this manually and it was a lot of channel pushing to get the colors back, the source was really faded. See the attached screenshots.

1 hour ago, Perry Paolantonio said:

Dan, honestly, what is your problem, man?

Just ignore him - there's a "ignore user" feature where you can block his posts. I've got a couple people on that list.

He's just trolling you, obviously he's completely out of his element - no need to deal with that.

Thanks for showing the example!

IMG_4303.JPG

IMG_4304.JPG

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Nice. Yeah it can be really hard to pull the color out of something that faded. There's a little bit left in there, but what remains is highly variable from film to film. So while two reels may look equally pink to the eye, there's a very high probability of never getting any color at all from one of them. I've found that Resolve's Auto Color feature is often a good starting point for this kind of thing, and I suspect BMD is doing something similar to what Lasergraphics is doing in that feature. 

 

14 minutes ago, Robino Jones said:

Just ignore him - there's a "ignore user" feature where you can block his posts. I've got a couple people on that list.

He's just trolling you, obviously he's completely out of his element - no need to deal with that.

Yeah, ignoring is a possibility and that's good advice. Normally that's exactly what I'd do. But there's a reason I respond to his posts: This site and some others come up as the first hit in a lot of google searches about scanning, and on more than one occasion I've had to spend an inordinate amount of time dealing with potential (or existing) clients who have questions about incorrect information they read here and elsewhere. Some of these are Dan's posts. 

Additionally, and this was in a private email thread on another forum, Dan accused us of being irresponsible to our customers because we scanned one reel of a film for a collector, instead of the whole film. This was the customer's choice, because of budget. His assertion was that we shouldn't accept work like that if we're not scanning the whole film, which is patently ridiculous. The customer only sent us one reel. Are we supposed to refuse to scan that on principal because it's an incomplete film? many of our customers engaged in long term restoration projects will send us a reel at a time, as they can afford to, and will work with what they have in the mean time, sometimes over many years. A lot of these projects are unpaid labors of love and take a long time to complete because of the costs and effort involved. This is an *extremely* common scenario. 

He had been conversing with this client privately, and relaying information to me without telling me what the film was or who the client was, telling me the client felt "ripped off." (the customer never contacted us with any complaints). His justification for this? The ProRes files seemed too small, indicating the customer didn't get the resolution they requested. They did. It was a 4k Scan to ProRes 422HQ with HDR. In fact, the files were smaller because it was ProRes 422HQ, vs 4444, and they are, well, smaller. But it's exactly the specifications the customer asked for. 

He also accused us of not scanning the film in focus, telling me and the customer that we scanned it "too fast" causing focus issues (a completely cockamamie idea. It just doesn't work that way), and then that we should have focused on the edges of the perforations, instead of the image (this is not how you do it and itself will result in an out of focus image), but he also told our customer as much, sowing confusion and doubt. The print in question was of low quality, and was a reduction from 35mm to 16mm, several generations removed from the original. The optical reduction was slightly out of focus - you could clearly see the film grain in our scan, indicating that we were in focus on the film. That, as you well know, is the only way to ensure it's in focus. 

Meanwhile, I heard from that client, and we explained why everything was the way it was, and that seemed to end amicably enough that he asked for a quote on a new job. But it cost me half a day of digging through old files, emails and order forms, and a fair amount of stress, to ensure that we didn't screw something up. Then I had to explain to the customer the litany of things Dan was incorrect about. 

Unfortunately, it's hard to ignore the pathologically uninformed, who post stuff about you and about things they have no direct knowledge of on the internet, as if they're the expert.

Because once bad information is up there, it's up there for good. 

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10 minutes ago, Perry Paolantonio said:

Unfortunately, it's hard to ignore the pathologically uninformed, who post stuff about you and about things they have no direct knowledge of on the internet, as if they're the expert.

That's way too much stupidity to go through, better to leave it at that and not put more wood on the fire..  REALLY not interested in getting a schooling on how critical focus is achieved by looking at the perfs. 

As the saying goes, "It's difficult to win an argument against a genius, but impossible against an idiot."

 

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On 3/12/2022 at 9:31 PM, Dan Baxter said:

I do not think so. The audio is not an audio file on the print, it's a printed picture it's all about how you capture the picture and convert it to audio. The hiss is noise, and whether the noise is due to silver particles in the soundtrack or something else I'm not arguing about as I don't know exactly. One thing I can say though from my limited knowledge of electronics is that the power supply itself can introduce noise into an analogue signal, so one of the improvements you can do to projectors is change their power supply to something better. Some of my friends at the moment are working on getting perfect audio out of their projectors. Whatever the source of the hiss is though there's a science behind capturing the audio perfectly and it certainly not as simple as capturing hissy audio and then removing the hiss afterwards.

If it was doing noise reduction in the scan it would sound deformed. Try this - take some audio of a ScanStation and run it through free software like Audacity and see how well it cleans up. It'll sound deformed. Two of my mates bought their ScanStations last year, one has experience with every version going back to 2013, and so for my other mate I confirmed with him whether it's worth buying the Optical/Keykode reader right away or not. He said you don't need it, and he's right the current ScanStations come with perfectly good software sound extraction that works better than the expensive Optical reader which you would only really want for Keykode (which you can always buy later if you land a job that requires one). I may sound like I'm bashing the scanner, but I'm really not - it's a great design overall you can bypass the useless P/T rollers, they've put the capstan on the take-up side on the new ones which probably makes threading easier compared with having it next to the sound modules, and it's got a ton of good software features that are all free like in-scan stabilisation, optical audio extraction, and failed splice recovery.

 

Too bad they don't make a simple and affordable optical reader to extract the sound from films. Projectors fit the bill to extract sound good enough for me, but they also cause wear and tear, and many films can't be projected any longer. Almost all the films I get are very rough. So luckily for me I don't need to fine tune things that much trying to polish a turd to the n'th degree. 

A stock footage guy traded me some archival audio files for something. He used Cedar noise reduction on the files. The files were pretty impressive with hiss reduction. (But I'm no audio expert.) With all the $$ Lasergraphics charges I'm surprised they didn't wire in a Cedar machine into their high-end scanner.

Their auto color correction for red films is impressive. Just too bad Lasergraphics is so shitty to deal with for responding to their emails.  That says a lot about a company when they never respond.

Now on another subject Dan, does Lasergraphics have a sales company and repairman in your country? If not, how much do they charge to fly someone there?

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On 3/14/2022 at 9:53 AM, Perry Paolantonio said:

Honestly, Dan.This is the second time you've accused me of something like this (once in a private message on another forum) and it's getting really old, bordering on libel. I use this machine day in and day out. We've run well north of 3 million feet of film through our ScanStation. And you're making claims about things that seem to be primarily based on third-party information rather than first hand experience. I think I'm in a better position to speak about the quality of the audio on this scanner than you. 

The bottom line is: If you're using an archival film scanner like the Lasergraphics machines, as much as is possible, you don't want the scanner affecting the image or the sound when capturing.

I'm not going to argue that the audio from a Sondor is likely to sound better directly off the machine . Of course it is, because it's filtering out that hiss on the film. I do not know what methods it uses, but it's likely (at least in part) a low pass filter, which means it's cutting off any frequencies above a certain value. And that's a very effective way of dealing with the hiss. But it's also a very effective way to remove any signal that might be above that cutoff value as well. If you capture it all, you can fine-tune later to recover that signal. 

What I have showed you in the image above is the sound captured from a 16mm B/W film that I happened to have the elements for, so we could quickly take a look at what's happening. You can clearly see in the two optical tracks that there is signal above 6kHz. It's not much because it's buried in the hiss. But it's there. A low-pass filter will cut that off and it will be gone. But capturing it gives you the chance to recover that later using other tools.

How is that conceptually different a flat scan of the pix with no grading? The whole idea there is to not affect the image when scanning, such that there's as much to work with as possible after you scan. 

This argument about the lighting on the picture side is a red herring and I'm not going to get into that.

Nor have I said this is the case, so I'm not really sure what you're getting at here. 

It's more about what you do with it (via filtering, etc) than the method of converting the image of sound to an actual sound. Applying noise reduction or a low pass filter during the capture is permanent, and you will never be able to get at the signal that may have been captured, but was filtered out. Once you've done that, it's gone forever. It's fine to run those filters, but after you've captured the sound, where you can see the effect it's having and maximize the signal that's there. 

A projector is a different thing, with a completely different purpose and a totally different method of capturing the sound. When you project, you are watching the film and hearing the sound immediately. You make a compromise  and apply a low pass filter or EQ the audio to get good sound because there is no time to process it more than that. A low pass filter can be implemented in hardware with basically no latency. It's also a 100% analog signal path so yes things like hum from the power supply can manifest in the sound. This isn't a problem with a digital capture of the track, though, so that's kind of irrelevant. 

But you don't use a scanner to project film, you use a scanner to capture the picture and sound, with the intention of doing more work on it afterwards, in the digital realm. 

And even so, as I've said above, if what you're looking for is an immediately viewable file from a scanner, you have the option to apply a grade while capturing, and to capture the audio with noise reduction. But we wouldn't do that for an archival scan because it's eliminating data during the capture that can never be recovered. And the scanner you're saying produces terrible audio is an archival scanner, doing what it's supposed to do.

It's not a telecine. if you want a graded scan with filtered audio, use a telecine. 

 

The bottom line is: If you're using an archival film scanner like the Lasergraphics machines, as much as is possible, you don't want the scanner affecting the image or the sound when capturing.

Yes, that is right Perry. When digitizing you try to capture what is there, best you can in the raw scan. You can push buttons to offer a 'improved version' such as their color correction or doctor it in post. The raw scan is the foundation.

But we got so far away from trying to fix the bad audio capture in the FF scanner with this thread. 

You mention telecine Perry. Anyone still using telecine in a serious way? I thought that was pretty much extinct, except for cheap $2500 eBay options.

 

s-l400.jpg

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On 3/14/2022 at 10:51 AM, Dan Baxter said:

Fine.

Me: "What do you do to clean up the hiss of the scanstation audio (aside from use the cintel)?"

Professional: "I use Izotope Rx if I have to clean up, but really we just use the Sondor or the Cintel to get better audio in the first place."

That is quoted straight out of my email inbox word-for-word.

You can message me in private if you really need me to tell you who said that. But what I would point out to you is that you are literally the only person claiming that the ScanStation audio reader is perfect - no one else is claiming that. No one.

I would really like to know what you're comparing against when you claim the Lasergraphics audio reader is "very good"?

If you want to actually identify where the hiss is coming from you need to scan the same reel of film twice on the same settings and then check if the audio is bit-perfect and whether there's deviation between each capture (and then whether the hiss/noise sounds different on each capture or not).

 

You should put up an audio scan with a Cintel vs ScanStation. The we could hear what this discussion is about. Talk is one thing, but seeing and hearing is another. But from what I gather from the discussion is that you think the Cintel offer better sound reproduction than the ScanStation. 

The Cintel would be a great scanner for me if it did warped and non-warped 16mm well. It is almost affordable and can be bought at B&H. And it would be nice if it worked with a PC. (Although I'd buy an Apple if the other issues were not there.) But I've been told the Cintel is no good for archival 16mm work and it only runs with Apple. 

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On 3/14/2022 at 11:12 AM, Dan Baxter said:

And what about the backlight then reducing the visible base-damage in-camera would you prefer it didn't do that?

 

Gotta see the test photos for comparison. I use backlight with flatbed scanning once in a while. But on the whole, it does not look good. But you test!

Bottom line is: the test says yes or no...not you me or Perry.

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On 3/25/2022 at 1:56 PM, Tyler Purcell said:

Nothing can be done from my experience. The only way to solve it is to scan with AVI and use their own software which can link the avi file to the aiff file. This is low-quality image 8 bit solution. For some reason when you scan that way and work with that software it all works fine. If you do DPX, if you drop it into Resolve, it does not sync. I haven't researched why, it's easier to just fix the sync. I simply look at the waveform and align it to the 2 pop and adjust the speed of the audio till it matches. It's not difficult, just takes a bit of time per clip. 

We rarely do audio work, maybe once every 2 - 3 months. 

 

Thanks Tyler!

Finally finished the first page of this thread. Things got sidetracked with the Lasergraphics. But, I'm not too anal and a stickler for absolutes. Being underground, I'm flexible. The Lasergraphics conversation is interesting and educational. It is just that I don't have the time I need to digest it all. 

Anyway. Kinda confused with your post. I thought you said the audio capture suffers from wow and flutter? Or is it a synch issue and audio capture is fine?

When you talk about aligning the audio, is it like this?

item image #1

When I convert a DVD to MP4 I sometimes get a gap in the audio as is shown above and I have to drag the audio to synch the audio with the lips. 

As far as the 8 bit?

Do you see a material difference with the DPX / TIFF vs. AVI? Do you have sample images / video to show the difference?

How is the scan audio with FilmFabriek if you just do a AVI scan? Is it OK or distorted?

I did a lot of tests with bit depth with still images. Perry was the sponsor of it. He poo-pooed my 8 bit photography. Really not that much difference in 8 bit vs 16 bit BW and 24 bit vs 48 bit color. Hardly anything to speak of. You see a smidgeon in the shadows...ONLY a smidgeon but you have to study it. 

Internet Archive Search: Bit depth teoli

But video may be different. With generational loss of working with dupes with video, there is a big change in color. Not so much with JPEG still images. 

 

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On 4/5/2022 at 1:09 AM, Perry Paolantonio said:

You are inferring that the tool is designed to eliminate post production, which is not what they're saying.

No, that is EXACTLY what they're claiming on the website. "Built-in color grading tools for easy dye fade correction, applied during scan, eliminates secondary post-processing step." As I said everyone, literally everyone I know including you says that isn't true.

On 4/5/2022 at 1:09 AM, Perry Paolantonio said:

I'd love to know what you think it explains, having never seen this particular reel of film before. 

Just that it explains a lot about how the inbuilt software can destroy the quality of the scan. I am truly grateful you made that comparison.

On 4/5/2022 at 1:09 AM, Perry Paolantonio said:

Dan, honestly, what is your problem, man? Why do you insist on going on and on about stuff you so obviously know nothing about, even when multiple people prove you wrong time and time again? I simply don't understand what your deal is.

Oh like when you reference the LG website and I "prove" (which is a strong statement) time and time again to you that LGs claims are deceptive? I literally know two people that were told completely contradictory facts when buying their ScanStations. When I say contradictory I literally mean one was told "you pay $20K extra for that" and the other was told it's included in the base price. Both of these people purchased ScanStations. We're not talking about randos sending enquiries. And that is not the only example I know about with such duplicity so spare me please.

On 4/5/2022 at 3:14 AM, Perry Paolantonio said:

Additionally, and this was in a private email thread on another forum, Dan accused us of being irresponsible to our customers because we scanned one reel of a film for a collector, instead of the whole film. This was the customer's choice, because of budget. His assertion was that we shouldn't accept work like that if we're not scanning the whole film, which is patently ridiculous. The customer only sent us one reel. Are we supposed to refuse to scan that on principal because it's an incomplete film?

I didn't say "irresponsible" or make accusations. This was a guy that sent you one reel of a 2-reel 16mm print. Yes I think you have a moral obligation as the service provider to properly advise your clients. That's all. A friend of mine has just done a complete scan for him of another film and he was very happy with that experience.

Not sure why you choose to bring this up on a public forum because I didn't nor did anyone else. For the record I have never sought to defame GRD (why would I)! Secondly - this matter doesn't even involve me, he's your customer. So to put this on a public forum: some of his assumptions about his scan are wrong and I tried to explain that to him. He thinks his 4K scan is 3K for example which I think we can both agree is mistaken. Ultimately he's your client not mine and I tried not to involve myself with his complaint just bring it to your attention.

On 4/5/2022 at 3:14 AM, Perry Paolantonio said:

He had been conversing with this client privately, and relaying information to me without telling me what the film was or who the client was, telling me the client felt "ripped off." (the customer never contacted us with any complaints). His justification for this? The ProRes files seemed too small, indicating the customer didn't get the resolution they requested

Not at all accurate, as soon as I heard about his complaint I brought it to your attention. I don't even know where file size comes into it, that's not my recollection of the conversation with him.

On 4/5/2022 at 3:14 AM, Perry Paolantonio said:

He also accused us of not scanning the film in focus, telling me and the customer that we scanned it "too fast" causing focus issues (a completely cockamamie idea.

I didn't "accuse" you. I had nothing to compare it against off a similar machine (well actually I did and it's in better focus) but we determined focus wasn't an issue. Something you failed to mention there, and yes I told your customer that the focus from what we can tell seems fine.

On 4/5/2022 at 3:14 AM, Perry Paolantonio said:

Meanwhile, I heard from that client, and we explained why everything was the way it was, and that seemed to end amicably enough that he asked for a quote on a new job.

"Amicably" is not how he feels about it (right or wrong). My mate did a 16mm scan for him off the same scanning system you use and he was very satisfied and he's welcome to go there anytime and do an in-person supervised scan.

Honestly Perry when you're in a hole don't dig. I've done nothing wrong, and I would much rather not half to respond to all these allegations you're putting up. You told me "when a customer isn't satisfied we make it right". You didn't make it right or cause him to close his complaint and blaming me for that is ridiculous.

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22 hours ago, Daniel D. Teoli Jr. said:

Now on another subject Dan, does Lasergraphics have a sales company and repairman in your country? If not, how much do they charge to fly someone there?

No they don't, their service guy is from NZ so yes here you'd be paying for travel expenses etc. Mind you Perry will probably tell me otherwise!

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1 hour ago, Dan Baxter said:

Honestly Perry when you're in a hole don't dig. I've done nothing wrong, and I would much rather not half to respond to all these allegations you're putting up. You told me "when a customer isn't satisfied we make it right". You didn't make it right or cause him to close his complaint and blaming me for that is ridiculous

The hole is yours, my friend. 

I have the thread with you from that conversation which contradicts all that you're saying above. I also have the emails with the client from after I figured out who you were talking about. Amicable is definitely the tone of the communications with the client, which began with a request from him for a new quote, not a complaint. 

You began that PM by telling me "I’ve just had a complaint against your company Perry." (you have no relation to my company so I'm not sure why you're the one they're talking to). He has never once contacted us about a problem. Had he, my first course of action would have been to ask him to send the film back so we could look into it. 

 

1 hour ago, Dan Baxter said:

Yes I think you have a moral obligation as the service provider to properly advise your clients. That's all.

We did advise the client, who brought up the idea of scanning one reel to start, then the other as his budget allowed. That was not the first time we've done work like that. We advised him on ways he could reduce the cost without having a detrimental effect on the image quality. Your words, verbatim, in that thread: "Please if you ever have a collector who can’t afford a full scan with your company don’t do that again. That’s ridiculous. If you don’t want to do a full 4K scan of a 2hr movie for $1500 then send a customer to one of your competitors that will so that situation doesn’t happen again"

(The "don't do that again" line is in reference to scanning one reel of a multi-reel film)

 

1 hour ago, Dan Baxter said:

No they don't, their service guy is from NZ so yes here you'd be paying for travel expenses etc. Mind you Perry will probably tell me otherwise!

The reality is that the only time you really need someone to be physically present is when the system is being installed, and travel is included in that cost. We had two people out here for 2 days when we got ours in 2013, one day to uncrate, assemble and calibrate the machine, one day for training. the cost included flights and hotels, and FWIW, Steve bought me lunch both days. 

In the years we've had the scanner we've never had a need for an on-site visit for support and we've had a number of issues that had to be dealt with. The scanner is designed such that most parts are user-replaceable and are modular in nature. For example, if you had to replace the camera for some reason, they will send you detailed step by step instructions on how to do so. It's a couple cables and a couple screws to remove the camera module from the machine. You send it to Lasergraphics and they repair or replace it. In some cases they will ship you the new part first (like a new camera upgrade), and you send the old one back to them in the box the new one came in. 

The scanner came with a set of tools required for assembly, and for future removal/reassembly of parts. The design principle of their machines is that you don't need a field tech because the parts are plug-and-play modules. 

All other support is done via email, phone and remote login on the machine. If there's a problem they may ask you to do a remote login session. You need to be at the machine to load film and do some things in meatspace that can't be done over the phone, but again, we've never had a need to have someone come out to fix something. This is different than how some companies do it - Arri, for instance, will send a tech (at your expense) to deal with things. I'm sure Lasergraphics could do that if necessary, but I don't know anyone who has had to do that. 

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On 4/5/2022 at 8:24 AM, Daniel D. Teoli Jr. said:

Anyway. Kinda confused with your post. I thought you said the audio capture suffers from wow and flutter? Or is it a synch issue and audio capture is fine?

It doesn't stay in sync and it suffers from wow and flutter. Not as noticeable on 16mm due to the film speed, but for sure a problem with super 8 and 8mm formats. 

On 4/5/2022 at 8:24 AM, Daniel D. Teoli Jr. said:

When you talk about aligning the audio, is it like this?

Aligning the audio would be synching it to picture. 

On 4/5/2022 at 8:24 AM, Daniel D. Teoli Jr. said:

 

When I convert a DVD to MP4 I sometimes get a gap in the audio as is shown above and I have to drag the audio to synch the audio with the lips. 

That's not suppose to happen, it has nothing to do with a device "falling out" of sync due to inconsistent speed. 

On 4/5/2022 at 8:24 AM, Daniel D. Teoli Jr. said:

As far as the 8 bit?

Do you see a material difference with the DPX / TIFF vs. AVI? Do you have sample images / video to show the difference?

10 bit allows for greater dynamic range and most importantly there is more data in the image, so it helps in post when you need to grade the image, there is more to work with. 8 bit is not satisfactory in 2022. Until ya shoot with an 8 bit camera and physically see the problems, it's hard to describe. Youtube is 8 bit, so if you watch videos on there and you see circles around objects with slight contrast changes, that's a symptom of 8 bit. You can't fix it either, once you're 8 bit, there is no going to 10 bit to fix those issues. 

The vast majority of scanners (not telecine, but scanners) can do a minimum of 12 bit, many can do 16 bit like ours. With a 16 bit image, you are actually capturing enough dynamic range to hopefully fix any issues you may have down the road in coloring. We've found 10 bit is just not enough, it's a great beginning but in the dark areas which generally need to be brought up, you'll have no information with 10 bit, but with 16 bit, you'll suddenly be able to fix problem areas. 

On 4/5/2022 at 8:24 AM, Daniel D. Teoli Jr. said:

How is the scan audio with FilmFabriek if you just do a AVI scan? Is it OK or distorted?

The audio always records the same, no matter what mode you're on. 

On 4/5/2022 at 8:24 AM, Daniel D. Teoli Jr. said:

I did a lot of tests with bit depth with still images. Perry was the sponsor of it. He poo-pooed my 8 bit photography. Really not that much difference in 8 bit vs 16 bit BW and 24 bit vs 48 bit color. Hardly anything to speak of. You see a smidgeon in the shadows...ONLY a smidgeon but you have to study it. 

The human eye does not attract to it with stills as much, it has to be moving to really see the problem in my opinion. Again, all YouTube videos are 8 bit, so getting a reference for this issue, is as easy as clicking on a video and watching. Also, Windows by default is 8 bit, so you won't even be able to see 10 bit on your display unless you turn 10 bit mode on. Google it and you'll see. Also, not all displays are 10 bit, the majority are not actually. So finding a true 10 bit panel, with 10 bit electronics in a display, will also give you a massive headache. It cost me $1800 bux to get a full 10 bit panel for grading! 

Edited by Tyler Purcell
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