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Any new developments with the FilmFabriek HDS+?


Daniel D. Teoli Jr.

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I was searching online for recent FilmFabriek reviews and found this scan test. I thought I had read here that the FilmFabriek was coming out with a new 5K model, but not sure. The video has a comparison with a Lasergraphics. It would be nice to see the still comparing the two.

Any new developments with the FilmFabriek HDS+?

...or interesting developments / breakthroughs with members running a HDS+.

 

Also found this. If it was scanned on an HDS+, the registration as shown in the sprocket, looks terrible. 

I had read something about a Muller HDS model. Anyone know what the Muller model is about?

 

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An 16mm IBT Dye Transfer Technicolor Lab Head

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Edited by Daniel D. Teoli Jr.
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I have one, no there are really no updates. 

They've been promising us automatic stabilization, but it hasn't happened. 

It's not a scan station, so it can't really be compared. The HDS+ is only $40k and it's a "build your own computer" style of system, using standard open source computer components, no maintenance contract needed, etc. We went with it over the lower-end Archivist from Laser Graphics, mainly because of the wet gate feature, which actually does a great job. We can knock off around 20% of the dirt and get scratches down to the level of near invisibility. So for archiving, it's a pretty neat scanner. It's also slow with the wet gate, we run it at 3fps most of the time. 

We are hoping the new software will be out soon, as many of the features are already in the Pictor scanner, their 8mm machine. 

The guys at FF have been very nice to us, extremely supportive in our efforts to make the scanner better. It's unfortunate they also made some horrible engineering decisions, which limits what the machine can do and my "faith" in it. But again, they've helped us solve many of them, so we're on the road to recovery for sure. 

The 5k camera I believe is to overscan so the perf can be seen, but I'm not sure when that software will be out to utilize it. 

Edited by Tyler Purcell
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It's hard to tell as it's hand-held but the camera seems to have quite a bit of weave, because most of the perf movement is lateral. It's quite steady up-down.

I believe that the point of the overscan is so that it can be stabilised later with reference to the perf.

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

I had read something about a Muller HDS model. Anyone know what the Muller model is about?

That's just the previous model, and before that the Muller HD. HDS+ is the most recent.

18 hours ago, Tyler Purcell said:

We went with it over the lower-end Archivist from Laser Graphics, mainly because of the wet gate feature, which actually does a great job. We can knock off around 20% of the dirt and get scratches down to the level of near invisibility.

I'd be happy to get you a sample doing "wetgate" with Film-Guard on a Lasergraphics and you can compare it against yours and upload the comparison. Film-Guard is a lubricant designed to give the effect for projection, and the ScanStation is a capstan-driven scanner so cats and dogs living together basically, but apparently it works as long as you have a grippy capstan and the film isn't completely soaked in Film-Guard. Does the FF go straight to 12-bit raw bayer dng and you work from there?

18 hours ago, Tyler Purcell said:

We are hoping the new software will be out soon, as many of the features are already in the Pictor scanner, their 8mm machine. 

The Pictor's a really nice design.

fYR63pB.jpg

By nice I mean practical. The film path looks so short you should rarely need to add any film leader to run it through, it goes right-to-left which is a better design than left-to-right if you want the option of potentially putting the film through a Film-O-Clean at the same time (the Film-O-Clean is designed like a Kelmar for projectors which effectively means if you were to attach it to the scanner - or just bolt it to the table it would be facing the wrong way for left-to-right scanners), and it has a little bath to catch the excess "wetgate" chemical and no capstan after the wetgate sponges. Really the only negative thing I could say about it is it requires reels so you can't scan off cores, for 8mm that probably doesn't matter too much but it would matter a lot more for 16mm, especially if one was expecting to use it for dailies as 16mm will come prepped from the lab on a core with leader attached ready to go straight on a scanner (or the film printer). How does 8mm normally come fresh processed from the lab Tyler - the same way? So my idea would be you redsign it so that it's at an angle like the ScanStation or the Blackmagic Cintel instead of being directly vertical and include those plates that the naked cored-film can sit on. I don't know how much that would complicate the design though as I'm no engineer.

I've suggested to my mate that he suggests to the higher-ups at FF that they should look into making a 16mm version. People buy moviestuff scanners because they're cheap and do both formats, so if they could provide a 16mm version it would basically eliminate the need for Moviestuff to even exist now if you get what I mean. People could start out with one at basically the same entry price as a Retroscan Universal MkII but with just one format, and then buy another one for the other format. And you're right they should offer 4K and 5K configurations for them. The issue with 5K no-doubt though will be the transfer speed, you can transfer 4K DNGs at 24fps over USB3 but as transfer rate goes up you need a faster connection or a slower machine.

Edited by Dan Baxter
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There used to be available platters for cores. With a cover disk added, it will work well enough upright. For tidy rewinds without waves and ripples, my personal preference is to shim the core platter a little forward so that the film is always just brushing the platter surface.
 

 

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14 hours ago, Dan Baxter said:

I'd be happy to get you a sample doing "wetgate" with Film-Guard on a Lasergraphics and you can compare it against yours and upload the comparison. Film-Guard is a lubricant designed to give the effect for projection, and the ScanStation is a capstan-driven scanner so cats and dogs living together basically, but apparently it works as long as you have a grippy capstan and the film isn't completely soaked in Film-Guard. Does the FF go straight to 12-bit raw bayer dng and you work from there?

Well I haven't tried film-guard in the wet gate. Someone recommended it. Maybe we should try. The application is the problem tho. If you just use it to clean the film ahead of time, sure it will get rid of dirt, but it won't fill in the scratches. I've been very impressed with how good it fills in the scratches. It means the software fixes can work much better. 

The HDS+ is a captan-driver scanner as well. 

The HDS+ goes directly to DPX. We normally scan at 10 bit because nobody ever needs more than that. We have done 16 bit before, but it's a tiff format, so it's way larger files and the scan rate goes from 12fps to around 3fps at 4k. So that's really not workable and we haven't seen any difference in quality. We then throw it in Resolve and export the various versions the client requires. Most of the time we do a clean up pass unless the client doesn't want it. 

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14 hours ago, Dan Baxter said:

Really the only negative thing I could say about it is it requires reels so you can't scan off cores, for 8mm that probably doesn't matter too much but it would matter a lot more for 16mm, especially if one was expecting to use it for dailies as 16mm will come prepped from the lab on a core with leader attached ready to go straight on a scanner (or the film printer). How does 8mm normally come fresh processed from the lab Tyler - the same way? So my idea would be you redsign it so that it's at an angle like the ScanStation or the Blackmagic Cintel instead of being directly vertical and include those plates that the naked cored-film can sit on. I don't know how much that would complicate the design though as I'm no engineer.

 

We just use split reels on the HDS+, no big deal for 16mm. 

Super 8 comes on reels from the lab, we have them prep them, so it has long leader already and everything spliced together. 

Yes, the scanner should be at a slight angle. We do plan on building it into a desk at that angle in the future, once we're happy with it. We finally have the design which should fix the stability. So once we get that solved, we should be pretty good. 

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11 hours ago, Tyler Purcell said:

Well I haven't tried film-guard in the wet gate. Someone recommended it. Maybe we should try. The application is the problem tho. If you just use it to clean the film ahead of time, sure it will get rid of dirt, but it won't fill in the scratches. I've been very impressed with how good it fills in the scratches. It means the software fixes can work much better. 

The HDS+ is a captan-driver scanner as well. 

The HDS+ goes directly to DPX. We normally scan at 10 bit because nobody ever needs more than that. We have done 16 bit before, but it's a tiff format, so it's way larger files and the scan rate goes from 12fps to around 3fps at 4k. So that's really not workable and we haven't seen any difference in quality. We then throw it in Resolve and export the various versions the client requires. Most of the time we do a clean up pass unless the client doesn't want it. 

I had read the rollers in the HDS+ are a sticky type that catch the dust and dirt and need replacing once in a while. Have you had any issue replacing? 

You mentioned a loss of faith in the machine. What caused that?

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11 hours ago, Tyler Purcell said:

We just use split reels on the HDS+, no big deal for 16mm. 

Super 8 comes on reels from the lab, we have them prep them, so it has long leader already and everything spliced together. 

Yes, the scanner should be at a slight angle. We do plan on building it into a desk at that angle in the future, once we're happy with it. We finally have the design which should fix the stability. So once we get that solved, we should be pretty good. 

What is wrong with the vertical design? Does the film scan better on cores? 

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On 12/4/2022 at 8:16 AM, Dan Baxter said:

That's just the previous model, and before that the Muller HD. HDS+ is the most recent.

I'd be happy to get you a sample doing "wetgate" with Film-Guard on a Lasergraphics and you can compare it against yours and upload the comparison. Film-Guard is a lubricant designed to give the effect for projection, and the ScanStation is a capstan-driven scanner so cats and dogs living together basically, but apparently it works as long as you have a grippy capstan and the film isn't completely soaked in Film-Guard. Does the FF go straight to 12-bit raw bayer dng and you work from there?

The Pictor's a really nice design.

fYR63pB.jpg

By nice I mean practical. The film path looks so short you should rarely need to add any film leader to run it through, it goes right-to-left which is a better design than left-to-right if you want the option of potentially putting the film through a Film-O-Clean at the same time (the Film-O-Clean is designed like a Kelmar for projectors which effectively means if you were to attach it to the scanner - or just bolt it to the table it would be facing the wrong way for left-to-right scanners), and it has a little bath to catch the excess "wetgate" chemical and no capstan after the wetgate sponges. Really the only negative thing I could say about it is it requires reels so you can't scan off cores, for 8mm that probably doesn't matter too much but it would matter a lot more for 16mm, especially if one was expecting to use it for dailies as 16mm will come prepped from the lab on a core with leader attached ready to go straight on a scanner (or the film printer). How does 8mm normally come fresh processed from the lab Tyler - the same way? So my idea would be you redsign it so that it's at an angle like the ScanStation or the Blackmagic Cintel instead of being directly vertical and include those plates that the naked cored-film can sit on. I don't know how much that would complicate the design though as I'm no engineer.

I've suggested to my mate that he suggests to the higher-ups at FF that they should look into making a 16mm version. People buy moviestuff scanners because they're cheap and do both formats, so if they could provide a 16mm version it would basically eliminate the need for Moviestuff to even exist now if you get what I mean. People could start out with one at basically the same entry price as a Retroscan Universal MkII but with just one format, and then buy another one for the other format. And you're right they should offer 4K and 5K configurations for them. The issue with 5K no-doubt though will be the transfer speed, you can transfer 4K DNGs at 24fps over USB3 but as transfer rate goes up you need a faster connection or a slower machine.

 

Not sure how the Film-Guard works. Is the film running through a solution before scanning on the Lasergraphics?

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

I had read the rollers in the HDS+ are a sticky type that catch the dust and dirt and need replacing once in a while. Have you had any issue replacing? 

You mentioned a loss of faith in the machine. What caused that?

PTR Rollers are standard industry components. Nearly every scanner uses them. They catch loose hairs and dirt, which shouldn't be present on any original camera negative. You can get PTR's in various shapes and sizes from a multitude of vendors. We do buy ours from FF directly, but it's not necessary.

I mean the machine damages film with the stock gate. It was built for more robust polyester prints, but camera negative is very sensitive and the stock gate will scratch the shit out of it. So we machined the stock gate, giving it rounder edges and then polished the living crap out of it, which seemed to stop the scratching. However, the stability of the machine was also a serious issue. There is an inherent issue with using a PTR style roller as the capstan. It needs to be perfectly round, which is not easy to do. So what happens is, since the roller isn't PERFECTLY round, as the film is pulled along, it slightly shifts angle as it goes by the laser perf detector. This causes the image to shift slightly in the scan.  This "wobble" effect, we have discovered is a real problem and is hard to solve using perf detect software because one frame it's in one place and the next frame it's in an entirely different place. So we're building an entirely different method of holding the film as it goes through the laser detect system. This SHOULD eliminate the problems. We also are using an older style gate, which is WAY better on horizontal stability. Our only real issue is vertical at this point and we know what's causing it. 

So scratches fixed, we haven't damaged a single roll of film since our first week with the machine and horizontal stability is MUCH better than out of the box with the older gate system that we've modified. Now it's just down to vertical and we're close! 

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

What is wrong with the vertical design? Does the film scan better on cores? 

Most film scanners have an integrated reel that the film holds onto. The only thing preventing the film from unwinding is the angle of the scanner. Split reels are a horrible way of running a film scanner because they in of themselves, aren't very well made. So there are huge variances in the reels, which can actually show up on the finished scan due to the HDS not having a spring loaded tension arm, to help eliminate those issues. So if the scanner were at a slight angle, we could manufacture a similar integrated reel system and the stability would probably be better. But sitting vertically, it's just not a great solution for anything else but complete enclosed reels like split reels. 

Does it work with split reels? Yes! Of course it does. But it could be a lot better. 

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36 minutes ago, Tyler Purcell said:

There is an inherent issue with using a PTR style roller as the capstan.

*in a scanner that doesn't use optical frame registration.

There's nothing wrong with using a PTR as your capstan if you're registering the frame correctly. But short of a system that uses a mechanical registration pin or the digital equivalent of one,  you're never going to get stable images regardless of the roller used. The laser perf detector will do one thing: tell you when it's hit a perf so that it knows to take an image of the frame currently in the gate. It says nothing about how to position that image for proper registration.

The capstan in the ScanStation, for example, is essentially a PTR roller - slightly harder and not as easily removable, but still the same basic thing. 

 

36 minutes ago, Tyler Purcell said:

. Split reels are a horrible way of running a film scanner because they in of themselves, aren't very well made.

Huh? We use split reels all the time on our ScanStation. It's 100% unavoidable in many cases. Particularly with old or damaged film, which will not wind correctly on the platter no matter what the angle of the platters is set to. When the film is warped or twisted, a split reel is mandatory to make sure it doesn't telescope off a core. Hell, even my old Steenbeck had a hard time with warped film telescoping, and that's got the platters sitting parallel to the ground, so gravity is doing everything it can. We used to use a split reel half with the hub drilled out to sit on top of the film, as a way to keep it from telescoping. 

One shouldn't rely on the scanner for a tight wind of the film when done. That's best done on the rewind bench after the scan anyway.

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1 hour ago, Perry Paolantonio said:

There's nothing wrong with using a PTR as your capstan if you're registering the frame correctly. But short of a system that uses a mechanical registration pin or the digital equivalent of one,  you're never going to get stable images regardless of the roller used. The laser perf detector will do one thing: tell you when it's hit a perf so that it knows to take an image of the frame currently in the gate. It says nothing about how to position that image for proper registration.

Well yea, if the machine is designed properly, the capstan won't effect the laser detector. Sadly the scanner is not designed properly and there is a long gap between the gate, laser detect and capstan. If the laser detect was built into the gate, there would be no problems. It's kind of our final design, if the roller fix we are making, doesn't work.

We control lateral (horizontal) registration very easily. 

1 hour ago, Perry Paolantonio said:

The capstan in the ScanStation, for example, is essentially a PTR roller - slightly harder and not as easily removable, but still the same basic thing. 

I really like how the Spirit's did it, that design in my view works the best. The FF has a very easily removed capstan, but sadly it's custom made so can't increase the size or change the materials without some work. I'd love to run a larger diameter capstan, I think it would also solve our problems, but I think they built it purposely with the size they did to help with motor torque. 

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22 hours ago, Tyler Purcell said:

We just use split reels on the HDS+, no big deal for 16mm. 

Oh right split-reels of course, I had a complete brain-fart there!

6 hours ago, Tyler Purcell said:

Most film scanners have an integrated reel that the film holds onto. The only thing preventing the film from unwinding is the angle of the scanner. Split reels are a horrible way of running a film scanner because they in of themselves, aren't very well made.

Yep that's exactly what I'm thinking. Most of the big-boy scanners are at an angle, even telecines were at an angle:

So it's a design that has stood the test of time (look at the rollers on the Rank-Cintel Mk-III above - they don't look very "archival").

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

Not sure how the Film-Guard works. Is the film running through a solution before scanning on the Lasergraphics?

If you're using it for cleaning you want to a use a Kelmar or for small format a Film-O-Clean and it coats it evenly so it doesn't make a mess when you run it through a projector (you can attach them directly to projectors that's how they're designed). I've heard about people attaching them to scanners as well, but that's not as useful as you may need to put a reel through it multiple times to clean it, and if you need to rewind a scanner you'd need to then remove the film from the Kelmar, rewind back to where you need to be, and thread it back through.

Film-Guard can make a mess if someone has hand-cleaned the film and used too much, but the Kelmar or Film-O-Clean will give the film the correct dosage so-to-speak. You could also use Isopropyl but it can dry out film, so you'd normally want to re-lubricate it afterwards with Film-Guard. Isopar-G is another good cleaning chemical.

5 hours ago, Tyler Purcell said:

Well yea, if the machine is designed properly, the capstan won't effect the laser detector. Sadly the scanner is not designed properly and there is a long gap between the gate, laser detect and capstan. If the laser detect was built into the gate, there would be no problems. It's kind of our final design, if the roller fix we are making, doesn't work.

Yeah the laser method has issues and its location doesn't seem ideal. I was told about that flaw a couple of years ago (doesn't work well with warped film and can drop frames I was told), and the Pictor has a "sprocket idler wheel". Ideally the HDS+ would have both - the sprocket idler wheel and the laser and the choice to bypass the sprocket wheel for damaged or warped film, OR it would have accurate software optical registration instead. But you can't have everything for a €30K scanner, and as you say you can't really compare it to a Lasergraphics Archivist as the Archivist is produced using the software and hardware developed for the Director and the ScanStation.

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28 minutes ago, Dan Baxter said:

Yep that's exactly what I'm thinking. Most of the big-boy scanners are at an angle, even telecines were at an angle:

Yea, I mean this is better for sure. It's easy to put the scanner in that position if needed. 

28 minutes ago, Dan Baxter said:

So it's a design that has stood the test of time (look at the rollers on the Rank-Cintel Mk-III above - they don't look very "archival").

Yea, I've scanned with one, they are very cool machines. They aren't really "archival" tho, maybe back when this video was made. 

28 minutes ago, Dan Baxter said:

Yeah the laser method has issues and its location doesn't seem ideal. I was told about that flaw a couple of years ago (doesn't work well with warped film and can drop frames I was told), and the Pictor has a "sprocket idler wheel". Ideally the HDS+ would have both - the sprocket idler wheel and the laser and the choice to bypass the sprocket wheel for damaged or warped film, OR it would have accurate software optical registration instead. But you can't have everything for a €30K scanner, and as you say you can't really compare it to a Lasergraphics Archivist as the Archivist is produced using the software and hardware developed for the Director and the ScanStation.

I think the laser trigger can work, it's just the film needs to sit perfect for it to work. So the trigger should be up near the imager. 

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Just to confirm, we took delivery of our FF HDS+ in October 22 - it scans Full Resolution 5.2k so i guess that's the new camera / software? There's no stabilisation like I've seen on the Pictor but I've actually only seen sprocket movement with joins and only when the light source housing is even slightly misaligned with the gate - if it's perfectly flat the sprockets are rock solid.

With the provided adapters, I can get a 4:3 scan of 95% of the image area at full resolution - but practically I only use 4.7k for performance reasons.

FPS results for each resolution and file type:

  • 4.7k TIFF - 6fps
  • 4.7k DPX - 8fps
  • 4.7k AVI - 12fps
  • DCI 4k TIFF - 11fps
  • DCI 4k DPX - 13fps
  • DCI 4k AVI - 20fps
  • 3k TIFF - 12fps,
  • 3k DPX - 20fps
  • 3k AVI - 30fps
  • 2k TIFF - 13fps
  • 2k DPX - 24fps
  • 2k AVI - 30fps

I run it with an i-5 6600k on a Z170-AR motherboard with an RTX3060, OS and Software is on the onboard m.2 slot and the scan save location on an pcie to nvme adapter in x8 mode (max write speed on nvme of 3GB/s).

I tried with an nvme of 2GB/s and it wasn't fast enough. The time to save the image to the drive is the limiting factor in terms of pure performance in my setup - I think if you had a PCIE Gen 4 motherboard and the new PCIE 4.0 NVME's performance would be much better.

Overall, I'm fairly happy with the scanner and the unexpected 5.2k (practically I use 4.7k) gives great downsampling capability in post.

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Also, actually the laser sprocket trigger is great when it works.... but I've found on a number of occassions that the film does move throughout the scan so despite them saying to line it up with a sprocket edge, I place it bang in the middle of the sprocket hole and that allows for some play as the film goes through the mechanism.

I'm by no means an expert this early on but I've put a 100 films through it so far and it's overall better than I had expected in quality, if a little slower (FF are great, but they weren't TOTALLY clear about performance expectations).

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That's my video, the 2nd video linked. 

I did scan it on my HDS after i shot that film. The registration isn't terrible, and you don't judge a scans stability by the sproket hole. The sproket hole naturally wiggles from left to right because at kodak when they punch the holes out, they aren't a uniform distance from the edge. 

The scanner gate keeps the film running flush with one side of the film, so the film itself is tracking perfectly - when i overscan even futher to see the edge of the film you can see it's rock solid. 

The vertical registration on the HDS isn't perfect, but it's damn close, maybe 95% there. But keep in mind the sproket hole is not what you should be stabilising film to. the camera you shot it on will have movement as the film was flopping around in the cartridge. Take a look at this great scan on a scanstation, still the same left/right wiggle with the sproket hole, but it's more stable vertically than the HDS. The exposed frame is still moving around. 

Phoenix film resotration suite has a really nice feature called frame lock, that looks at overscaned film and works out what's the actual exposed frame of the image based on the black border, and locks onto that. so the sproket hole will be going wild all over the place while the frame is solid. https://filmworkz.com/dvo/dvo-frame-lock/

I've tried it, and it works very well! just need a decent overscan, something where the 5K camera will really help with for a 4k export. 

 

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2 hours ago, Andrew Wise said:

I did scan it on my HDS after i shot that film. The registration isn't terrible, and you don't judge a scans stability by the sproket hole. The sproket hole naturally wiggles from left to right because at kodak when they punch the holes out, they aren't a uniform distance from the edge. 

Incorrect, the 16mm sprocket holes are perfect. You are thinking about super 8, which is NOT punched properly. 

The side of the film is not cut as perfect as the sprockets. So measuring from the side of the film is not going to give you any accuracy. 

2 hours ago, Andrew Wise said:

The scanner gate keeps the film running flush with one side of the film, so the film itself is tracking perfectly - when i overscan even futher to see the edge of the film you can see it's rock solid. 

 

Nope, the HDS+ does not run the film touching the edge of the gate. You can see this by touching the film on each side, you'll see it can move freely. 

We modified our machine so it WOULD ride on the edge of the gate by adding spacers and it does work a lot better. However, the OE gate with the ball bearing rollers, has a huge gap on both sides for different film sizes (print vs negative). 

If all you scan is prints, it works fine, they're all over the place anyway. 

8 hours ago, Nicholas Lymberis said:

I think if you had a PCIE Gen 4 motherboard and the new PCIE 4.0 NVME's performance would be much better.

We do. We're running a X570 creator with a 3950X 16 core CPU and 3080Ti GPU all PCI4. 
Our raid is 4x4TB SSD's, which get 2500Mbps throughput. 

Na, windows has a bug, it can't open and close files fast enough. So it will scan fast for a few seconds and then you'll see in task manager, it will literally buffer overrun in windows. 

We have tried NVME's, makes no different. The SSD"s are cheaper and there is NO performance increase. 2500Mbps is enough to do 8k DPX honestly, so with our older 4k imager, we're only able to get around 12 and we usually run at 9 because a 1200ft roll of film, has had dropped frames many times at 12 because it will overrun the buffer depending on how complex the shot is. We don't understand why, since all the DPX files are the same. It maybe an issue with computer, don't know. But yes, it can do 12 fps in 4k no problem if you pay attention to the screen and watch for dropped frames. 

2 hours ago, Andrew Wise said:

Phoenix film resotration suite has a really nice feature called frame lock, that looks at overscaned film and works out what's the actual exposed frame of the image based on the black border, and locks onto that. so the sproket hole will be going wild all over the place while the frame is solid. https://filmworkz.com/dvo/dvo-frame-lock/

We have no problem stabilizing in resolve, it crops a tiny bit, but it works great. 

We don't do work for ourselves, we do work for other clients. 

If our scans aren't capable of matching that of our competition, then we are not in business scanning. 

Phoenix is very slow, we have used it, very impressed, but when we do scan, it's thousands of feet at once, with tight, usually 48hr turn around from film drop off, to finished files. If we used Phoenix, it would take weeks to process it all properly. A scanner with good restoration would solve all those problems. 

The FF HDS+ just is not "production" ready in any way. It's fine for home work, but for commercial work, without the heavy modifications we are doing and the workflow we have, it's impossible. We still haven't solved all the issues, but we are on it. 

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3 hours ago, Tyler Purcell said:

Incorrect, the 16mm sprocket holes are perfect. You are thinking about super 8, which is NOT punched properly. 

huh? I was talking about super 8, the video linked is super 8, and the link I shared uploaded by Nicki Coyle is super 8. I made no mention of 16mm? 

To be honest, I have no idea how the machines at Kodak perforate the film, I've never been there or spoken to one of their workers. I'd only read that info about the super 8 perforations online somewhere, presumably a comment by a psudoexpert on a forum 

3 hours ago, Tyler Purcell said:

Nope, the HDS+ does not run the film touching the edge of the gate. You can see this by touching the film on each side, you'll see it can move freely. 

I guessed the design of the gate was chosen to cause the film to track in one direction. the rollers above and below the gate are on a slight angle to (what I assume) cause the film to want to track in one direction. Here's a video of some 16mm original camera positive running, pushed against the two bearings causing them to spin. But you're right, I have had film just do it's own thing regardless of the rollers. 

I now own two gates of each format, so I can send one away to be re chrome plated as I need to while I continue using the other. no issue with scratching with the chrome plating. 

On my little filmfabriek Pictor I also own, the gate has two little springy arms sticking out pushing the film hard against one edge of the gate. it works really well, just not that great for very badly warped 8mm as it wants to jump out. They have a new gate with no springs probably to fix that

 

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9 hours ago, Andrew Wise said:

I did scan it on my HDS after i shot that film. The registration isn't terrible, and you don't judge a scans stability by the sproket hole. The sproket hole naturally wiggles from left to right because at kodak when they punch the holes out, they aren't a uniform distance from the edge. 

 

This is only the case with Super-8 - those are punched using a linear punch that makes 5-6 holes at a time. Even being microscopically out of parallel with the film edge will result in the sawtooth pattern that causes the frame to weave if you use the Super 8 perf for registration. That's why S8 has to be registered (horizontally) using the opposite edge of the film itself, just like the edge guides in a camera.  

For any other gauge you absolutely do use the perfs for registration and they should be perfectly stable. Depending on the camera used, the picture may or may not be stable though. A pin registered camera, or a well designed non-pin camera like an Eclair ACL, should be rock solid. A bolex or a K3 or inexpensive consumer cameras may very well move around a bit because even when the perfs are perfectly registered. 

 

6 hours ago, Tyler Purcell said:

The side of the film is not cut as perfect as the sprockets. So measuring from the side of the film is not going to give you any accuracy. 

This is incorrect. The edge opposite the perf is fine. the issue is the placement of the perf punch relative to the perf-side edge of the film. It is not parallel, and this causes a sawtooth pattern that repeats ever few perfs. 

Detecting the position of the opposite-side film edge and aligning the film to a consistent location is the correct way to handle Super 8, if doing digital stabilization (in scanner or otherwise).

Edited by Perry Paolantonio
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6 hours ago, Tyler Purcell said:

Na, windows has a bug, it can't open and close files fast enough. So it will scan fast for a few seconds and then you'll see in task manager, it will literally buffer overrun in windows. 

 

You keep saying this, but it's simply not the case. Please provide documented proof (and not anecdata from some random forum) that this is truly an issue. This was a problem with Windows XP, for sure. 15 years ago.

Most VFX houses are using image sequences of some kind (DPX, EXR, etc), and not having these issues. 

We work with DPX sequences all the time, reading and writing them, on Windows machines. Our ScanStation is a Core i9 with a built-in 24TB RAID 5 that can easily do north of 1GB/second. We capture 4k DPX to this system at 15fps all the time. That's the max scan speed of the ScanStation in that resolution. We can do faster than that with lower resolutions. 

On our Phoenix system we have an internal RAID-0 which we use as a scratch disk for caching. Caches are 10bit DPX at the native res of the job being done - typically about 4.5k. Again, we're easily able to play back and write cache files to this drive at faster speeds than our ScanStation.

Our SAN arrays can do more than 2GB/s and when we copy massive DPX sequences off the ScanStations internal RAID to the SAN, there are no issues as you describe. The SAN is windows based. 

Edited by Perry Paolantonio
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On 12/5/2022 at 4:17 PM, Tyler Purcell said:

Well yea, if the machine is designed properly, the capstan won't effect the laser detector. Sadly the scanner is not designed properly and there is a long gap between the gate, laser detect and capstan. If the laser detect was built into the gate, there would be no problems. It's kind of our final design, if the roller fix we are making, doesn't work.

You're missing the point. Laser detection has exactly zero to do with the stability of the image. You are saying the laser's position is related to the stability. it is not. The point of the laser is to trigger the camera when it detects a perf, or to count frames. It is not there to stabilize the image. 

A laser perf detector is a simple on/of switch and nothing more. 

If the gate is not holding the film steady, then the only option for stabilizing is to do it post-scan (Whether you're doing that in the scanner behind the scenes or in software afterwards). but this is utterly unrelated to the laser, which is just a trigger. The Scanstation's gate has nothing to hold the film stable and is designed to allow it to weave quite a bit, so all of the stabilzation is done in the computer after the image is taken but before it's written to disk. This is the only way to do it if you're not using a system with a proper edge guiding and mechanical pin registration.

Edited by Perry Paolantonio
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