Robert Houllahan

I think that many of the scientific variants of the eyemo, including instrumentation cameras based on the eyemo movement, had variable shutters. I have a "Flight Inst. Co." camera which I am planning to turn into a crash cam which has a eyemo movement and front coupled to a AC or DC internal motor. The camera is very square with multiple mounting points and in the manual there is extensive notes on the variable shutter option. Unfortunately mine is sans variable shutter. -Rob-

I shot my first paying 35mm job on 5277, I think I still have a few 400' rolls in the fridge. I chose the stock for it's lo-con soft and specific color pallate. You could work the image over in Telecine to give it a more contrasty look (Sink the blacks play with gamma, etc.) but you are not starting out with the "best" raw material for that look. Did you consider having the lab do a Bleach-Bypass when you process? -Rob-

With Superspeeds and 500ei stock shooting by candlelight works today, the stocks available when barry Lindon was shot were considerably slower. Imagine new stocks with the 0.7t stop lenses today, I believe the Mitchells and Zeiss 0.7 lens(s) kubrick used are available to rent in London. And I think it would be easier and look far better on emulsion than digitronic. -Rob-

But you are still going to install the atomic power source, the 400fps motor and the throwing stars, right? Oh OH and laser beams! I need laser beams! -Rob-

I think the best route might be to find a facility in NY which has a Teranex standards converter and have a Digibeta PAL to Digibeta NTSC conversion done on the teranex this is a all SDI route and real time. I would think most post shops in NYC that have telecine will have a teranex. I am also assuming your original is DigiBeta PAL. -Rob-

Absolutely the internal sata array will be higher performance than FW800 so all you need is a card to work with Digibeta. -Rob-

A SDi only Blackmagic card is only $300.00 too.. -Rob-

I have a 2 disk 1Tb Firewire800 disk on a G5 which we use scopebox (www.scopebox.com) to capture 10bit uncompressed SDI with a Decklink SDI card never had a hiccup with this setup. -Rob-

Maybe something for Clive Tobin? a Board update? Just thinking out loud. -Rob-

I have found this to be Very True! I cringe whenever somebody asks me to do a Keycode transfer to MiniDV and then try to talk them into DVcam or BetaSP both have locked timecode and are real robust pro formats. The other issue with MiniDv which crops up from time to time is "deck" incompatibility (or camera) as many people use cheap consumer DV cameras to capture to their editor and not all of those $300 camcorders are aligned right. -Rob- -Rob-

I think you find DvcPro 50 more in the "video" world than the film/post world because while it is a good format it is still only 8bit and fairly compressed. Also if you buy every deck out there you will go bankrupt trying to stay current with all the formats. -Rob-

You do not need a expensive specialty raid, a pair of drives striped together on the Firewire800 bus will be able to handle uncompressed 10bit SD video. Dv50 will work with a single drive but maybe not if you fill it completely. -Rob-

How would you rank the following in quality of video for a transfer? MiniDV DVcam DVCPRO These three formats all have Identical video quality (4:1:1 8bit 25mb/s) the only difference is in the mechanical robustness of the format and better timecode handling. NO Picture quality difference! DVCPRO 50 This format is 4:2:2 8bit and will have noticeably better quality than the standard DV compressor, I believe it can be transported over Firewire into FCP,etc. at it's native 50mb/s quality. DigiBeta Digibeta is 10bit 4:2:2 and less compressed than DVCPRO50 and is generally the gold standard in SD videotape, this is a SDI based format and is generally ingested over SDI to an uncompressed disk. Would any of this matter if it is going in through Firewire? Would there be a noticeable difference after loading it into my computer or would that negate the value of such formats? Would I have to get a better capture card for it to be worth doing anything other than MiniDV? Except for DigiBeta which should be ingested over SDI the other DVC based formats should not lose quality over firewire. If you ingest DigiBeta through a converter which goes from SDI to Firewire (DV25) you will lose a significant amount of quality! -Rob-

I think this is why the Eyemo falls into the category of "specialty" camera and not something to use where you need exact framing. I converted mine to a Nikon mount and basically have three lenses for it, a Peleng 8mm a Nikon 18mm and a Nikon 28mm. Great for a wide shot in a spot you cannot get to or a wide angle timelapse shot with a animation motor. -Rob-

I think there are 2 approaches used these days SD and HD. For SD only transfer either you take a 4:3 extraction from the 1.66 frame or you do a 16:9 transfer and sets will automatically (if setup right) display either 4:3 or 16:9 depending on the screen viewed on. For HD post Super will generally be transfered to 1080p in 16:9 and then a 4:3 center extraction can be taken out for SD broadcast. I think this is mostly how sporting events are done. For narrative work you could do a 16:9 HD and 16:9 SD which on 4:3 sets will leterbox. There are a million variables in this and it depends on what the creative/producing team want the film to look like on different sets especially considering how many 16:9 sets have been sold in the last 10 years. -Rob-

Correct, the Arri LCC system will control speed, shutter angle, iris, focus, zoom and allow programming of ramps and such I used it on a 535 a long while ago but I do no think it can control a older camera (like my LTR) but maybe speed on a Xtr. -Rob-

I saw a Nikon to Eyemo mount adapter recently and I have pictures which I will post next week, I did not think it was possible but there it was.... -rob-

We have two, I generally thought that Keylink was the Aaton brand name for their Keycode reading system. As opposed to say an Everetz keycode reader. -Rob-

I am completely wrong, I still have Josephs footage on the G5 at the lab and it's soft in the middle and I did not transfer it right. I have turnaround time problems with super8 which I am trying to solve, We get pushed up against allot of deadlines and I think we need to extend our turnaround times so we can allow for people to plan accordingly. I really do not want to let anything leave that's not right. I thought this job was a different job, where the focus was way out on allot of the shots, I'll certainly refund the transfer and offer to do it right for free... I certainly would like to have a Nice Super8 department and I am putting a second suite together right now which will be dedicated to Super8 and reversal. I need to get someone to play colorist. I have put my ugly mug on this fourm and I'll be happy to take whatever abuse is properly accorded me. -Rob-

I transfered some "Max8" widescreen super8 color negative for Justin some time back,I do not know if he has figured out a color negative scan yet or not. I thought his transfers that he had on his website were very good looking. There is some difficulty with properly compensating for the orange mask in negative and the softer nature of the emulsion when using a film chain style system. A scanner will use a specialty camera which is feeding a some kind of computer system with High speed data, when you use a video camera (either over DV, Component or SDI) the signal processing makes it nearly impossible to compensate for the nature of negative stocks and this is why you would use a "real" film scanner or telecine, in additional to the gentile film handling and crystal locked speeds of a digital servo. -Rob-

Cintel machines are still made today, The DSX and Millenium machine lines are their current CRT Based Products. I have seven DAV shading boards for our Cintel TurboII/DAV these have both black and white shading unlike the original rank boards which only have white shading. Also the original MarkIII line did not shade Super8 and had to be modified to use a shading board for Super8. Older Cintel MarkIII telecine's were almost entirely analog devices, from the servo to the scan generator I have replaced every system in our Turbo with 1998 to 2001 era components this includes the servo whichis a Metaspeed, the entire Video section which is all HD bandwidth DAV stuff, the scan generator which is DAV Digital and the framestore which is 444 10 bit, many of these systems are either adjustment free or have greatly simplified and more reliable adjustments. The last of the Turbo MKIII telecine systems were sold along side the URSA series and had similar reliability and very high picture quality, esp with a new tube and PMT's We thought about a URSA but the cost was higher and they are less serviceable than the turbo's and except for the later Diamonds, etc. picture quality is similar. I am a Rank technician by default, not choice, and if the newer machines were constant "tweekers" like the old analog ones were I would have thrown them in the Charles by now. We go through tens of thousands of feet a month on these machines with no breakdowns and just simple routine maintenence. I am re-working our #2 suite now and plan to add a DaVinci 888 to it. Last words on the Rank for me is that they can make a very good SD picture if they are late era machines (around the end of the 90's beginning of the 2000's) and are reliable and cost effective. Time to move on to some kind of scanning in the future. By the way DAV became Nova Telecine (www.telecine.com) they make what is supposed to be a excellent CRT HD/2K telecine/scanner now. -Rob-

Joseph you are going to have a tough time with that film because your CAMERA was out of focus. BTW we run 10bit SDI direct out of the Rank/Color Corrector into a G5 with a blackmagic card, NO Firewire,No Analog Component conversion, No Compression. We process and transfer tens of thousands of feet of 8mm film every month, and that is just 8mm, 99% of our customers are very happy with our service and quality. Again Joseph your camera was out of focus you can tell this because the grain in the image is sharp. If you called us we would be happy to make an accommodation for you on your next order once you straighten out your technical problems. -Rob-

No problem, we are always trying to improve this department and I think we have come a long way since we first setup transfer about 5 years ago. Telecine is a very tough department we work very hard to make everything that leaves the lab look as good as possible of course not everyone can come in to sit in on their transfer so not all expectations are always met. I am looking at some newer gear and anticipate that we will be adding newer services sometime this year. We added super8 transfer on the rank early last year and that's been very popular. As I said too I am shooting a feature picture in NY/NJ and we could transfer on the rank at Cinelab but we are going into MI post in Manhattan to work on a Spirit/Pogle setup (probably about $2M in TK gear) so I am well aware of the difference :D -Rob- "wears both Filmmaker and Lab hats"

I do not think anyone does, The problem is twofold, HDV is really two incompatible formats (JVC and Sony) and none of the decks for HDV have any "real" I/O on them. The only interface for HDV is firewire which is fine if all you want to do is remain in a closed HDV loop but it does not allow for HD-SDI ingest from a telecine or a "real" hd deck like Hdcam or D5. I thought about trying to get film to HDV but in order to do this I would have to transfer to Disk, uncompressed, and then up-rez and then down convert to through the HDV compression scheme. I think you might want to think of converting your HDV footage into a more workable format on your machine (Uncompressed HD or DVCproHD) and then get your film transfered to disk uncompressed and add all of the footage together on your timeline. This will also allow you to do much more post manipulation on your footage where if your working in HDV compression the picture will crumble quickly under any real color manipulation or keys. -Rob-

The only info I really have to give right now is that I got the camera and I have a Aaton to Arri-B mount adapter. I started the process of tearing down the Filmo and preparing to change the mount, machine the gate and sprockets, etc. I went through this before with the Eyemo I reworked, I will post photos as I go. -Rob-