Robert Houllahan

Companies that make specialized machines like LaserGraphics, Phase One DCS Arri etc. are pretty good at being able to tell real customers from people who will never buy anything.

They call me back, because I have spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on equipment.

If you don't have a phone how are you going to run a business or buy a machine?

3 hours ago, Dan Baxter said:

Lasergraphics finally let you have HDR on the SS Personal?

They can have bugs, however even with bugs they are dead-reliable. You rarely need to put film through them more than once, and that would be important to many customers that don't want their film "over handled". They'll cope with warped film that other scanners won't do as well.

Well they did not "let" me have HDR for the SSP I paid allot for it, but it fixes my primary issue with the machine which is the FPN on the 5K Cmosis camera and that makes it a more useful machine for 35mm and 16mm scanning.

The Scan Station has some sharp turns so it is not perfect for the most warped film but it works mostly, I have put film through the Xena that just would not go through the Scan Station.

I would just run it as normal E6 as 9 years is not too long really and it is a slow speed stock.

1 hour ago, Daniel D. Teoli Jr. said:

That's an impressive machine. They offer training videos and they give you all the prices upfront!

Does it come with a dedicated computer like the Lasergraphics or do you supply your own?

How is the image qualty for 16mm compared to the Lasergraphics? You mention 8mm. Is that your main use for it?

How is it with warped film? Maybe they will make a tabletop archivist model. 

 

 

I Have two Xena running a Spirit 2K a Spirit 4K an Arriscan and a Scan Station SSP with HDR now.

I am likely winding down the use of the Spirit(s) as they are great but complex and power hungry.

The Xena system is sort of what you build it to be, or what you have them build for you. I am re-arraigning one Xena shortly adding a 9.4K x 7K sensor that will scan 8mm 16mm 35mm and 65mm/70mm. The current Xena 6.5K config has been used to scan work for NFL Films Nike Studio TV and major Music Video work in 16mm and 35mm. It makes DPX frames and is not slow but not fast either. Xena has features like GPU Perf stabilization. I have a second Xena with a 4K Sony pregius (4112x3008) sensor that I run all of my 8mm on at Cinelab, I can scan 16mm and 35mm on that machine I just run 8mm on it though mostly.

Scan Station is unparalleled in it's dead reliability near bug free and fast operation, the scanner just works and runs like a top. Argue the fine points but everyone has a Scan Station and they work.

Xena is fussier and you can get access to all the "under the hood" stuff you can build you own transport configs quickly so if you have 7 perf 35mm scientific film from a camera built by a maniac by hand you can just config the transport and GPU perf stabilization to run it.

You can DIY a IMAX gate and transport setup and config a Xena to work. You can select the camera you want and integrate it. So build a Xena with a 6.5K Sony and a top quality lens and you can get results on par with Scan Station or Kinetta it will not be as fast nor as dead reliable as a LaserGraphics scanner but it works and works well.

Totally different approaches to building a scanner.

What manufacturer is the processor? Allen?

B&W Negative is pretty easy to setup and maintain honestly it is the simplest chemistry basically wash developer wash fix wash final drybox.

B&W Reversal is allot more complex and the chemistry exhausts allot faster than negative.

The machine itself is fairly easy to setup and get running as long as things like the tires and spring bearings etc. are good and or available. Most of the rest of the machine is drive components like motors and chains and sprockets or tanks and pumps which are all off the shelf kind of parts.

DM me for more advice..

18 hours ago, Larry Baum said:

But whatever loads them needs to know what the R, G, B values stand for. Where on the CIE plot is the red primary that the data is in reference to, to make it easy assume an 8bit per channel (and yes I know it's more), so what would 255,0,0 represent?

I think this assumption is incorrect the color space for a film deliverable grade is chosen and the film scan is a RGB value (linear or log) with 0-1024 values for each color in 10bit. As long as the scan is not clipped either in the shadows or the hilites the color balance can be set to the desired look of the colorist. Same with Arriraw or other formats they are color space agnostic.

On 9/17/2022 at 3:36 AM, Larry Baum said:

Another problem is if say the files really did have wide gamut primary referened data in them, then if the DPX16 files has zero metadata about the color gamut at all then how in the world would any program know what to do with it?

I question your workflow from this.

Motion Picture scans generally do not have any color gamut assigned, you take a DPX or TIFF scan and put it into Resolve or Baselight etc. and then work in the color space you want to work in, the scanner does not assign a color space. So you can take the 16bit TIFF sequence and run in ACES or BT2020 etc. and off to the races you go....

DNG is not really a format that any motion picture post uses to work in, so I have a few questions.

1. Are the cDNG files directly from the Scan Station?

2. Are the cDNG files from a Negative scan or Print positive?

As far as I understand the Scan Station can make cDNG files but they are just the unprocessed data from the Sony Pregius IMX342 sensor so a negative scan will not be encoded into LOG nor will the cDNG file appear loaded into a piece of software as a positive so you will have to do that transform.

The LED Lamphouse is set to the just below clipping balance of the film stock per color channel which is your primary light source for scanning.

The Sony Pregius IMX342 sensor has a CFA (Color Filter Array) built by Sony and the color dyes are not something a scanner manufacturer can choose, these are off the shelf machine vision cameras used by LaserGraphics / Xena / Kinetta / VarioScan etc. So the scanner manufacturer has to do some math in the Debayer and encoding and if you scan from a color sensor system to cDNG you are likely missing any color science the scanner manufacturer does to write to DPX or TIFF or ProRes and also the cDNG precludes using a 2-Flash HDR process etc.

So if I were trying to figure this out I would drop all the still processing apps and work in Resolve or some other system for motion picture work and go from DPX or some other motion picture file format.

If you want to DIY I would strongly encourage a look at the DCS Xena system.

You can buy a full running pinless GPU registered scanner or a full running Oxberry pin reg scanner but you can also buy modular parts from them to build your own machine. The software is extremely sophisticated and has all the features like GPU perf stabilization and proper sound reading. There are basic modules and when is supplied is the software, a motion control and LED lamp control module and a LED lr LED+ IR lamp.

I put more than 200,000 rolls of 8mm through our 4K Xena in the last four or five years with excellent results for example and scans from the 5K and 6.5K Xena machines have run for NFL Films Nike Major music videos and features etc.

http://digitalcinemasystems.net/?page_id=17

1 hour ago, Tyler Purcell said:

That's what I'm also very confused. 

I guess his idea is that because digital cinema imagers can deliver a wider gamut, why can't film scanners.

Yeah i am a bit confused too.

As far as I understand it film scanners generally do deliver wide gamut and I don''t see how in the imager/lamp or lin-log or demosaic math the gamut would be intentionally limited.

This is particularly true with a "True RGB" scanner that uses a monochrome sensor and multi flash R,G,B IR or a 3-line array.

I know the LEDs used in the lamp on all of the newer scanners have specific qualities and center point wavelengh for each color which are then modulated for intensity for each R,G,B channel. The basic idea is to set each channel's intensity to just below clipping on a clear part of the base as that gets the basic color balance and most DR set to the particular film stock.

Both cmos and ccd sensors are linear devices which usually have 12-bit A to D (some are 14bit or even 16bit) so when scanning negative the linear response of the sensor has to be encoded into Log as part of the process, positive films are scanned linear. Multi flash gets you 2-bits more precision and can help overcome the noise floor a sensor might have.

It would seem to me that any gamut limitation would be in the area of the spectral response of the LEDs used in the lamp and the color dyes used in the CFA Bayer mask on the sensor. I doubt any scanner manufacturer is choosing LEDs with limited spectral response. The color cross-talk between channels on a Bayer sensor can be considerable and a matrix or profiled 3D Lut is probably in the pipeline to deal with the characteristics of the color sensor used and there may be some limitations there in comparison to a True RGB scanner.

Were the scans DNG from negative or print?

I think the DNG files bypass all the color pipeline in the scanner, but I am not sure.

The Scan Station does a base cal which pulses the R,G,B leds individually and then together to find clipping for each channel to set color balance and lamp intensity to the film stock in the scanner.

So I am not sure what kind of color science pipeline stuff happens for DNG after that.

The Sony Pregius IMX 342 is the sensor used, here is one Machine vision manufacturer's sheet which has spectral response stuff on it:

https://www.imperx.com/cmos-cameras/C6440/

19 hours ago, Larry Baum said:

Also I should clarify, I don't think it is that all the output samples are in REC709 color SPACE, they just all seem to be in REC709 color GAMUT (solely with regard to the xy locations of the color primaries on an CIE xyY gamut plot).

Again did you have a LAD (Lab Aim Density) or TAF (Telecine Alignment Film) or some other SMPTE control film scanned to reach this conclusion?

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

 

I've told you and Perry time and again. All scanning options should be tested with comparison samples posted online. 

I have no recollection of being told this.

Nice in theory but really a moot venture as high end clients already know what they want and can afford to do finishing on our Arriscan for example.

Too many variables in any scanner "shootout" and allot of the business of owning these scanners is knowing what is the right machine for the job and client budget.

Also what files are you looking at? Were they. LAD or TAF alignment film you had scanned?

I would just say that high end “finishing” scans from a Scannity / Arriscan / Director / Xena are actual RGB scans either with a Tri- Linear RGB sensor or a Monochrome Area sensor and pulsed RGB LED lamp. 

Scanners with Bayer mask sensors are fast and can make very good scans but as far as I know they are “dailes” or “archival” use machines for more critical film and tv work.

There is some tradeoff with a color sensor, the dyes used in the silicon mask are not perfect and there is crosstalk between color channels. Any scanner maker has to do some math to figure out how to deal with this.

Color sensors are capable of wide gamut and it may just be a choice engineers made building the Scan Station and a possible feature request to LG as how this in interpolated is just how the software works.

Have you asked LaserGraphics? 

I am not able to scan to DNG direct with our Scan Station but maybe that is in a later software release.

I generally think the 2-flash is 14bit precision as the Sony Pregius 6.5K sensor is 12bit.

I do not know exactly what Lasergraphics is doing under the hood on the Scan Station but on the Xena scanner there is a Bayer mask transformation matrix to overcome some of the (quite large amount) of color channel cross talk. It is possible that the Scan Station uses a similar matrix or a 3D Lut to manage this aspect of using a Bayer mask sensor and the color dyes Sony used on the silicon.

I could do a comparative test on our Arriscan in 2-Flash which is 16 bit and true RGB.

What Scan Station? Was it in 2-flash? 5K machine or 6.5K machine?

I do find the scans from our Scan Station to be allot crunchier than the Xena scans or the Arriscan.

The Scan Station is very fast.

10 hours ago, Andrew Wise said:

Why would you want a longer optical path?

And longer focal length? 

I’m really not sure it would improve the design.

If you look into the lens specs and talk to the lens manufacturers you will find that there are optimal magnification ranges for all of these lenses. Imaging what is basically a transparency with the lens the led lamp and the size of the sensor is a bit of a trick with multiple film gauges. If you have a lens which images the film to the sensor and is optimally focused you can still not get the best detail and sharpest scan image if the lens is not best for that magnification range.

On 7/11/2022 at 11:15 PM, Tyler Purcell said:

100% agreed. I think I echoed that as well few days ago. The lens "works", it's just inexpensive. Sadly, the optical path is not long enough to use a decent focal length lens. 

What focal length is that lens? 50mm ? 80mm ? F4 Makro-Iris

Depending on what it is the lens may just be out of it's optimal magnification range.

20 hours ago, Dom Jaeger said:

Hi Rob,

Most of the time an overscan would pick up camera unstability, but there is some room for error because 16mm cameras register the film laterally by the edge of the film rather than the perf. Only vertical registration is controlled by the perfs. In theory the edge of the film and the perf edges should be locked together but of course this depends on the perforation and film width QC and not all cameras use the film edge directly next to the exposed frame perf (so if there is any weave in the film itself it may show up as camera unsteadiness).

So I tend to recommend a double exposure steady test because it's the ultimate way to rule out any other factors, and you can test different speeds and each mag as well (important for 16mm cams that have the pressure plate in the mag). 

But I'm approaching this as a camera tech not a scanning expert, so perhaps I'm being overly cautious? I'm curious to hear your thoughts on using the edge of the perf for lateral registration when scanning 16mm. And how important is camera steadiness nowadays anyway? Are there downsides to post stabilisation? 

All true, when we have had Pro jobs in that have been doing double exposure registration tests we do an overscan as well as that combination gives the most detail and feedback about the camera registration.

Just did one for an Arricam LT today which was double exposure and a 3K overscan 4-perf camera.

I would get a overscan done so you can see the camera gate relative to the perforations.

If the perfs are not moving but the gate has this movement then it is in the camera or loading.

We do a 2.5K overscan on our Scan Station for camera tests it really helps to see the perfs.

We do it but it becomes pretty blocky and contrasty.

I would suggest a Push +2 on 7222/5222 XX Negative instead.

With the right developer that can look very nice.

Crazy stuff

We have not seen any higher percentage of jammed S8 cartridges for 100D than any other S8 cartridges.

We did a large order (80-90?) S8 Ekta cartridges for a NetFlix show earlier this year and they all went through the camera(s) ok.

It is likely that the Spirit operator set the lamp output higher for those scenes with bright hilites (i.e. very dense) and as jack said you get some bleed into the scan from the sprocket area with that higher lamp setting.

Not bad for 20 Euro but no Arriscan either.

12 hours ago, Tyler Purcell said:

Yea, I've got a quote to get the reverse engineering and prototyping done for $50k, but who is going to pay $4k a board when the camera isn't even worth that much working?

There are allot of off the shelf motion control systems now and a XTR is worth $25-30K and 416's are worth 3-5x that.