Paul Korver

Hey Will, It may take longer than expected. Reading the half-sized D8mm perf spacing is on the manufacturers to do list but pretty low on the list due to low demand for that format. I'll post again if/when we are able to do it. -Paul

Very cool Evangelos! Have you ever seen a film-out on an Aaton-K? Do you know any that are being used on the market? -Paul

Thanks for the feedback all. I guess I'll have to try to pursue getting the Scanity to recognize the 1/2 perf pitch of D8 on 16mm film. Hopefully this won't be too difficult as it should just be inputting new parameters into how the perf camera is interpreting data. In terms of the resulting resolution and how I'm coming up with the term "2K" my calculations are as follows: -In 4K mode the Scanity scans 3420 pixel resolution across the 10.26mm R16mm horizontal negative area. -The resulting pixel resolution 4.5mm horizontal negative area of the R8 images on D8 film would then be calculated by the simple (3420*4.5)/10.26 = 1500 -What would be amazing about having a pin-registered HDR scan of R8mm at 1500x1100 is that technically speaking, at the native 1.36:1 regular 8 aspect ratio, this scan resolution would fit perfectly in a 2048x1080 2K DCP deliverable. Thanks Rafael... we love all film formats big and small. Unfortunately most of the R&D has been done for the larger formats since a lot more volume being shot. You are correct Andries... we're not looking at this as a "cash cow" or even a business model. It's just a passion project enabled by the fact that we have already invested in the technology to do so and if all it takes is a bit of firmware tweaking to be able to make this huge leap in image quality then why not? That's interesting Will... but at HD or 2K across D8/16mm wouldn't result in a picture area useable for anything other than SD. Plus not pin-reg, HDR, yada-yada. In addition to a huge leap in resolution and picture quality doing this on the Scanity is pretty cool due to the speed of ingest. Since we can do 16mm 4K at 15fps... and that would be ingesting 4x frames per 16mm frame which would net us 60fps 2K 8mm scanning speed!!! (of course there would be added time/cost in splitting up the 4K quadrants w/pan&scan, rotation etc but if a client was tech / post savvy enough to do this on their own then it would be added savings for them). In terms of granularity anyone that doesn't like grain should obviously not shoot R8. However I'd be very interested to see Witter Kinotechnik's lower speed reversal stocks... 100D, Velvia 50D, PlusX or FomaPan. And in terms of scanning reversal which is high dynamic range in terms of film-density... the Scanity has no competitor. -Paul

So we all know that some of the charm of Super 8mm is the lack of registration. This problem is not only due to the camera systems (lack of pressure plates and plastic cartridges)... but it's also due to the fact that all current Super 8mm film transfer systems are non-pin registered. Lately I've been thinking it could be cool to be able to create a very clean small-format image with not only superior D8 camera systems but also a super high-rez scan. Our new 4K Scanity film scanner at Cinelicious opens up some new and interesting possibilities for this with double 8 film. Basically when shot with a Double 8 camera the image is already much more stable due to the pressure plates (check out Bolex H8 Rex cameras). And on the Scanning side our Scanity matches an ARRI Scanner in steadiness but with much better dynamic range and it's a lot faster. The work flow would be: - Shoot Double 8 - Process as 16mm (ie. DON'T SPLIT THE FILM!!!) - We scan the unsplit D8 as 16mm at 4K resolution (15fps!!) pin registered on the Scanity. - We split the frames digitally during color correction and render out 2K per 8mm frame, pin-registered images. The only problem is that currently the optical perf camera is only calibrated to standard 16mm and 35mm perf pitches. D8 film stock has a half-perf pitch of 16mm (meaning twice the perfs) I'm going to see if we can address this with the manufacturer to see if we can program the Scanity to recognize the smaller D8 perf pitch... but this would be a non-issue if D8 cameras could run normal 16mm film stocks. Does anyone experienced with D8 camera systems anyone know if you can run modern standard 100' 16mm spools in D8 camera systems such as the Bolex H8 Rex Double 8? I have a feeling that Guy at CamerasPro would probably be the person to ask but I thought I'd put it to the Forum. Best, Paul

Hi Adam, Good points but really those guys are just trying to find a way to keep charging for their SR decks is all. And by the way we do a lot of indie DI's... there's case study on our site about a straight to ProRes 444 DI workflow. We just finished a full length indie feature that was a short at Sundance last year that was S16mm straight to Avid DNxHD for dailies and we're doing a the 2K selects scanning from the EDL on the Scanity next month. And we have another indie DI for some very talented recent USC grads that we start the ProRes dailies on next month as well. Indie films are alive and well at Cinelicious :)... and they're always 100% tapeless... unless for some reason the client wanted/needed tape. -Paul

Hi Adam, You know I love you and it's very cool that you took all the time to write all that out... but those workflows are a bit dated. Not one of them mentions the word "tapeless". Or "ProRes" or Avid "DNxHD" for dailies deliverables (which is almost becoming the norm). Nor does it mention the fact that it's basically very hard and very expensive to get HDCAM-SR stock since the only factories were demolished in the recent disaster in Japan. Por Fhj (Or Ais?) Don't want him or her to get stuck in the early 2000s. :) Paul

Francesco... I was surprised too. But we must remember that information on negative film is normally like a bell shaped curve so scanners scanning at 2.3 will be capturing a majority of the relevant information... especially on low-to-medium dynamic range scenes. Obviously DIs up to this point have looked pretty good :). However, on high dynamic range scenes these scanners are not capturing all the information that the DP intended to capture and is on the film. I will say that it is comforting that in our DIs from here on out if one of our DP clients asks if there is more info in those highlights we can without reservation and definitively say answer "no"... because we now have the ability to capture it all (3.3) in the DPX file. That's very exciting to me and that's why, even with film being shot less we decided to really stretch and buy the Scanity. It's exciting that someone (DFT) is actually innovating in the area of film. I hear you Phil. While I'm a huge fan of film as an acquisition format I would not be too sad if film projection went away... other than for the fact that some very cool fellow film-geeks (projectionists) would be out of a job. Yes it's nostalgic but sometimes it can be distracting and take away from the story. My personal favorite workflow would be 35mm acquistion, 4K pin-reg HDR Scanity Scan, 4K DLP projection for the DI, and 4K DCP deliverable. And that's what we're building toward. We break ground on our 4K DI theater in June (25' horizontal screen) and we're in line to pick up one of the first available DLP 4K projectors... just waiting to see which of Christie, Barco or NEC hits the market first. Did you see the 4K Christie at NAB? Pretty stunning. Unfortunately it was only showing 4K RED material. Viva Celluloid! Paul

Hi Keith, Thanks for reposting this. The resolution test targets I had made did indeed go to 250 lp/mm and were done on 35mm HOLOGRAPHIC film stock but you are correct... it would have been impossible to accomplish with motion picture negative which tops out around 120 theoretical (lasered) and 85 lp/mm real world images shot through glass. But the point the target was to test the resolution of the various scanners (ARRI, Northlight, Spirit 4K, Scanity, GoldenEye, PS Technic SteadyFrame) so I wanted to far supersede their spec. All but the Steady Frame (which was the only bayer-pattern sensor in the bunch) performed quite well with less than 5 lp/mm difference in resolutions with 2K resolving 42-47 lp/mm and 4K scans resolving 103-108 lp/mm. Similarly the Dynamic Range charts go from 0-4 film density which is quite a more dynamic range than is on film stock and way beyond the capabilities of any film scanner. Most interestingly, the Scanity did blow away the ARRI, Northlight and Spirit 4K in the the dynamic range test... coming in about 3.3 film density and the others at around 2.3. Good times! -Paul

A couple of comments from the peanut gallery. Todd... That's crazy you got a $1,200/hr quote from Cinelicious for a DaVinci 2K / Spirit HD transfer and you were definitely misquoted. Do you remember who you spoke or emailed with? $1,200/hr is our commercial ratecard for HD telecine and we do get that much for high-end commercial finishing sessions which are a dog-and-pony show attended by 6-12 clients and agency creatives as it takes a small army to operate our facility at the level of service they're accustomed to. We have a much more competitive rate for indy filmmakers that don't require all the client service bells and whistles. While I wouldn't consider us the "Abbey Road of film transfer" I do thank Herbie for the compliment as we are a true boutique shop offering an inspired environment, cutting edge equipment, and talented artists. We do not compete on price and definitely aren't the shop to go to if you're main goal is the lowest price possible or if you have less than 10 minutes of film as we do have an hour-minimum. However if you have a project that would benefit from great service, talent, and incredible equipment at a reasonable rate then it would be worth looking in to our services. Best, Paul http://cinelicious.tv/

Steve - they do have different "settings"... they're called "gates" which is a physical gate that positions the film so that the sensor scans from perf-to-perf for a given stock (in most cases either 35mm or 16mm). They typically don't make a specific gate for Academy 35mm which is why there is a decrease in resolution for that format only. This is all very confusing if without a very clear picture in your mind of the exact dimensions the negative area used for each format... don't mean to be patronizing if you already know this stuff but here's a helpful chart for 35mm: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Super_35.

Hi Chris, To be clear your question is only referring to Acadamy / 4-Perf Anamorphic right? (since all the other formats do expose perf to perf and would yield a 2048 scan). In that case of Academy picture area there are no scanners I'm aware of that "zoom" to focus the 2K sensor area on the smaller Academy region. That's why technically speaking a 2K Academy/Anamorphic scan has always been 1800 & change pixels. If you are getting scans done at a post facility and you want 2048 across an Academy region I would first be sure ask if they can scan at higher than 3K resolution. If they say yes than they should be capable of outputting 2048 across the academy region by way of oversampling. If its purely a 2K scanner and they say they can deliver 2048 academy then there's likely some uprezzing going on. Paul

Hi Steve, We scan a lot of film at Cinelicious... here's a couple of comments. ProRes 4444 is a great codec. We think of it as file-based HDCAM-SR because it's signal to noise ration (PSNR) is equal to HDCAM-SR 444... but the great thing is that it's resolution independent unlike SR which has resolution limitations. DPX is best of course if you don't mind the 8x data size and data rate. However, I can say with certainty that when comparing DPX to ProRes 4444, you should not be able to tell which image was DPX and which was ProRes 4444 without some serious sub-pixel sampling tools. You'd never be able to see it with the naked eye. If your ProRes was lacking highlight info that is present in the DPX then a choice was made when the "look" was baked into the ProRes... likely a LOG-to-LIN LUT that was not carefully supervised... that or it was an artistic choice of the colorist. But it's not because of the ProRes codec. If you're lacking info in the highlights from an ARRI scanner then it could be a bad scan or if it was a very high-dynamic range scene it's possible that the ARRI lacked the dynamic range to be able to scan all the data. An ARRI scans at about 2.3 film density when there a possible 3.2-ish film density available on kodak vision 3 negative. What stock was it? Sort of true... however there are a lot of big budget commercials that are using the Alexa and opting for ProRes 444 LOG C over RAW/Uncompressed. We've graded a lot of this footage and you can tweak the crap out of it. A properly scanned ProRes 444 master from film has a similar characteristic. Again if you have the time, money, disc-space and data throughput to deal with uncompressed the by all means do it. But in certain instances ProRes rocks. For instance... 4K ProRes 4444 has a similar data rate and file size as 2K DPX. This is sort of confusing and lame but technically speaking a "2K" scan of 35mm film is 2048 across the entire neg (perf-to-perf). Meaning the only way to do a 2K scan from 35mm and get 2048 across is to shoot 2-perf, 3-perf or 4-perf Super 35mm (all formats that expose perf-to-perf). This is due to the way the scanner sensors are built (they don't "zoom"). So the actual pixel resolution of your scan 2K scan depends on what portion of that negative area it's taking up. If you shot 4-perf anamorphic then you're really dealing with an Academy aperture which leaves space on the left of picture for sound track. The resulting resolution of a 2K Academy scan is 1828 not 2048. Sucks I know... especially since you're going have to stretch/uprez those pixels out 2048 for a 2K DCP or 1920 for and HD Blu-Ray release. For that reason we always recommend we scan all our clients 4-perf anamorphic material at 4K which would yield a stunning 3656 pixels of resolution. Or... if you want a 2048 2K scan of your Academy area then you need to ask for a 4K scan and any good scanner can output an on-the-fly over sampled 2048 pixel resolution across the Academy picture area. Hope that makes sense. -Paul

Will try to get something up later. Super swamped at the moment. -Paul

Thanks Will. The Spirit looks great... but it can't touch the Scanity in terms of resolution, dynamic range or image stability. As such the Scanity will service 4 types of clients: 1) Feature Films that want the best possile quality and need a 4K DI for to be able to have content for the coming 4K D-Cinema screens that we'll be seeing more of now that the new 4K DLP chip (Christie, Barco & NEC) projectors is hitting the market: http://www.christiedigital.com/en-us/cinema/cinema-technology/new-cinema-projectors/Pages/cineplex-entertainment-debuts-4k-screening-with-christie-solaria-4k-dlp-cinema-projector.aspx http://www.barco.com/pressrelease/2692 We will be installing one of these projectors in our 4K DI theater and offering 4K DCPs so offering a full 4K pipeline has already garnered some interest. I also think people will be blown away when they actually see 35mm at 4K resolution. All these years we've only been seeing a portion of the resolution of what is there on the negative. 2) Restoration Projects that want to restore film at it's true resolution. We have a few high end 4K restorations under way that we can't discuss yet but the owners of the film elements have been hugely pleased with the results: http://magazine.creativecow.net/article/itaxi-driveri-in-4k 3)TV commercials that have VFX shots and require fast turn around for high-quality, pin-registered scans. 4) Anyone who wants or requires higher dynamic range scans (ie.. especially those that have print stock they need scanned). -Paul

Hi Guys & Gals, So many of you and been with us through the growing pains of from where we started 3 years ago opening our doors with an URSA Diamond, to last year picking up a Spirit Datacine and moving into a larger facility. Today we're very happy to report that after a worldwide search for the best film scanning technology available... Cinelicious finally sealed the deal and bought a very exciting new 2K / 4K film scanner called the "Scanity" from Digital Film Technology. Based on our proprietary tests results vs. all other film scanners we considered "relevant" to the test (ie. ones we would consider buying...ARRI, Northlight, Spirit 4K, Golden Eye, P+S Technic Steady Frame) we can confidently say that it stood far enough above the pack for us to make the decision to go "all in" and make a relatively huge investment for such a young company. All in the pursuit of our passion which is creating the best images possible from motion picture film. Full press release and details can be found here: http://cinelicious.tv/category/news To me the most exciting thing about it is the huge leap in dynamic range provided by the cutting edge TDI sensor and LED light source. All other scanners are able to capture a dynamic range of around 2.3 film density (when there is 3.1- 3.3 density on motion picture negative). The Scanity blew us away with it's ability to capture 3.3 density which means that for the first time ever DPs can be confident that their DI scans are getting all the information on their negative. Our Scanity is capable of scanning 16mm, S16mm, Ultra 16mm and 35mm (all perfs + Vista Vision) at 2K or 4K. For those DIY types one cool workflow we're offering is 2K and 4K ProRes 4444 delivery (rather than DPX), which lightens the file size by about 1/6th from DPX. Of course we do SMPTE Standard LOG or Colored DPX as well. Viva Celluloid! -Paul

Hey Matt, Just wanted to throw out there that we do "supervised" sessions with people all the time that are in other states and around the globe. We call it "ColorCast LIVE" and it's a FREE service... See we do give some things away for free :) More info here: http://cinelicious.tv/digital/colorcast-live. That "The Journey" clip you liked so much was actually supervised the entire time by the filmmaker in Australia. It's not going to look as good as sitting in front of our Sony BVM-L231 23" w/65" Plasma but in 3 years of doing ColorCast LIVE sessions we've never heard a complaint that what the client got back on their hard drive didn't match what they were looking at online... and hey... it's free. -Paul

Hi John, This won't work unfortunately. Due to the fact that the widened area is between the perfs there's no way to go taller than 1.85. Make sense? If you need a visual watch our Ultra 16mm Demo which is the 2nd Vimeo clip down on this page http://cinelicious.tv/we-love-film/small-formats. -Paul

Hi Matt, Glad you liked our stuff. "The Journey" clip was transferred on our Spirit. If you're looking for the best price then as Rob said an uprez is the way to go. We have both an uprez system from an URSA as well as a true HD scan from the Spirit for pristine quality which costs more. The Spirit was recently used for Jackass 3D theatrical release and the latest Weezer video. I think Katie responded to your inquiry today. -Paul

Hi John, I read our post coordinator Katie's kind and informative response to your pricing inquiry. If your response was to laugh then rant on a discussion board then I'm not sure you have a realistic understanding of the costs of film scanning. First of all you failed to clarify that the quote was for scanning your film from the most cutting edge film scanner currently available. It wasn't simply "film to DPX" but 4K oversampled to 2K, VFX-qualified (pin-registered) full dynamic range, high-end DI quality scans that you can see on screens in major motion pictures. Many post companies charge by the frame for this quality of scanning. If we were to break it down that way 2 hours of 16mm is 172,800 frames @ $5,000 = less than $.03/frame. Sure you can probably find a non pin-registered modified Oxberry scanner sitting in a garage somewhere that would do it for lower than that (or a Spirit 2K that's sitting around) but our new scanner is the furthest thing from that. In the future before venting your frustrations in a public forum it would be great if you simply replied to the email and expressed your concerns. We certainly would have recommended a more cost effective path (ie. HD transfer with from our Spirit to 1920x1080 DPX, Uncompressed HD, or HD ProRes 4444). If you would like to explore less expensive options to still achieve a great look for your project please give us a call or an email. Best, Paul

Hi Will, There's really no way to compensate for in-camera flicker in a transfer. I own a bunch of Scoopics too and have seen them flicker at times... and some registration issues at times with over cranking. I personally embrace the flicker and use the Scoopic as a tool that produces a 60's-70's filmic feel. I would never attempt to shoot a feature film that I wanted to be perfect and clean on a Scoopic. My dream package for that would be an ARRI 416 and an A-Minima. Not that I'm going to be shooting a feature any time soon :) -Paul

Hi Christopher, We pioneered the U16mm workflow for post so I can speak to the matter. First of all if all things were equal I would always encourage someone to go Super 16mm since it's a bigger neg that can be processed and transferred anywhere. With Ultra 16mm you don't loose the R16mm area... you just widen it. So if you had a super low budget job or something you always do a R16mm transfer from and Ultra 16mm camera. For photochemical processing you just need a lab that has a Demand Drive processor. Typically these are lower volume machines that won't be found at big labs. For transfer (telecine or scanning) we offer 3 options for Ultra 16mm from low-ish-end SD / HD uprez from our URSA Diamond, to medium-end true HD transfer from the Spirit... and a new high-end 4K oversampled to 2K from our yet to be announced new film scanner. None of these options are "next to nothing" nor should they be considering the costs associated with purchase and upkeep of film scanning & telecine equipment. There are also other good options out there like Cinelab and I believe Bono was threatening to do Ultra 16mm but not sure they ever got it working. Good luck! -Paul

I believe Panavision has a 1.33 or 1.4 anamorphic lens for S16mm that uses the entire S16mm neg. We did a DI recently that was shot in this format. I remember the producer saying it was a lot less than going with the Hawks. And as for Ultra 16mm we work with it all the time. I have yet to see claw scratches... only scratches from if you use the wrong processors. But as David points out edgecode is issue... as well as having some negative area available to support the film as it passes through the gate. We now have the ability to scan U16mm at up to 4K resolution which is admittedly overkill for all but the finest grain S16mm but still pretty cool. -Paul

Hi Adam... I may be able to send you some business too through my post company Cinelicious where we're getting pretty busy with DIs. What program are you running... Sonic? And as an aside I think if you compared Compressor's "2-pass VBR" to a CBR of the same bit-rate you'd find CBR would win out every time... only problem is CBR is to "fat" for longer DVDs so for anything over 60 mins VBR is a must. But in Elliott's case with just 10 mins of material that is not an issue and I would strongly suggest CBR (read my post #5 above for a full explanation). -Paul

Hi Elliot, I don't have time to teach you how to use DVD Studio Pro. There's manuals for that :) Just make sure that you're not telling DVD Studio Pro to do an transcoding of the MP2 assets you created from Compressor and you should be fine. And don't use iMovie which I believe transcodes all media by default. -Paul

Hi Elliot, You should be able to get stellar results with Compressor (if assets are encoded correctly) for such short content. Where Compressor falls apart is when you're trying to fit 90 mins+ on a DVD-5. That's when you need Sonic Scenarist and or a compressionist. Since you have only 10 minutes you can do a fairly "fat" data rate and will get a good picture. There's a secret about Compressor that is deceiving that took me a while to figure out. Here it is... When looking at the various DVD encoding choices under presets you'd assume that "2-pass VBR" would be best. Not true. VBR stands for "Variable Bit Rate" which means you're telling Compressor to analyze the motion in various scenes and make decisions based on algorithms about when it's okay to lower the bit rate (less movement = lower bit rate). This can cause artifacts. The key to clean encodes is to select "CBR" which stands for "Constant Bit Rate". While you can fit less runtime on a DVD with this setting... what it does is tells the computer not to "think" or analyze motion... just encode based on whatever bit rate you specify. Since you're only doing 10 minutes set it high... anything above 7.5 Mbps should be fine but I'd go 8 for content with a lot of motion. You should be very pleased with the results. Happy Encoding! Paul