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Paul Korver

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Everything posted by Paul Korver

  1. Hey Sanj, Bummer about the URSA. We still have ours at Cinelicious and we always use the Cintel team if we ever need parts or serious board-level repair. Some of the minor stuff we do ourselves. It definitely took a few months or so when we first got it to dial everything in before we were comfortable doing our first transfers. Call Cintel 661-294-2310 and ask for Curtis. -Paul
  2. Hi Brian, Not much more to add to Rob's excellent answer. Maybe just some background... At Cinelicious we pioneered the first Ultra 16mm workflow for post which included testing a bunch of film processing systems to find out which ones didn't scratch... then custom modifying our URSA diamond gate to be able to transfer Ultra. The post announcing this on this forum was titled "Ultra 16mm.... Finally!!" back in Nov 2008. Since then we've also modified our Spirit Datacine to be able to Xfer Ultra 16mm to HD/2K which took some serious doing but is producing stellar results as shown on our site. As we move forward into the 2K and 4K data world one of the requirements for any film scanner we'll buy is the ability to scan Ultra 16mm. We don't sink or swim on wether Ultra 16mm thrives as a format as most of what we do is 35mm... I'm just a film geek and am passionate about small & cottage formats like Ultra 16mm and Super 8mm so we try to support and innovate for them at a very high level. One thing I'd also like to point out is that it seems to me that Ultra 16mm is entirely risk free for the filmmaker that already owns a regular 16mm camera. All you have to do is figure out how to widen your gate by at least 0.7mm to the Left and Right. You can either spend a day with some files & abrasive sticks yourself or go the route I'd recommend and pay a pro like Bernie to do it. What you're left with is just more information and the option to do an Ultra 16mm transfer, but it doesn't ruin your current regular 16mm setup in any way. Since it's fairly risk free and likely to be around for as long as film is around I'd say go for it!! Best, Paul
  3. Sounds great Anthony, glad you liked the look. A comment about the Shadow... Even though the Shadow is sold by the same company it's has entirely different (non Kodak) front end optics and a lower resolution sensor. There's a noticeably difference in image quality between the two systems... which is why even though the Shadow was a lot less expensive only a few ever sold... compared to hundreds of Spirits.
  4. Glad you guys like it. For this clip you're just going to have to appreciate it for what it is... beautifully shot film. Sometimes clients, agencies, or production companies want to keep the details about their productions private.... a right that we as a company totally respect. There's a whole bunch of beautiful stuff we've done that we can't show at all. Just the way it goes. One thing I will say is that I've seen a lot of SD and HD Super 8mm transfers and am a lover of small formats. When we saw what was possible with the Super 8mm gate on the Spirit, the sharp grain detail and "quiet" noise free highlights... even though it was crazy expensive... we had to buy the gate and Super 8mm upgrade option. So some portion of what you're responding to could be the fact that you've likely never seen Super 8mm transferred on a Spirit before. Best, Paul
  5. Glad you all like it. For this clip you're just going to have to appreciate it for what it is... beautifully shot film. Sometimes clients, agencies, or production companies want to keep the details about their productions private.... a right that we as a company totally respect. There's a whole bunch of beautiful stuff we've done that we can't show at all. Just the way it goes. One thing I will say is that I've seen a lot of SD and HD Super 8mm transfers and am a lover of small formats. When we saw what was possible with the Super 8mm gate on the Spirit, the sharp grain detail and "quiet" noise free highlights... even though it was crazy expensive... we had to buy the gate and Super 8mm upgrade option. So some portion of what you're responding to could be the fact that you've likely never seen Super 8mm transferred on a Spirit before. Best, Paul
  6. Hi Duncan, There's no codec currently out there that is as high-quality, efficient (in terms of picture quality to data rate) and universally accepted as ProRes. Now that ARRI has adopted ProRes for the Alexa it even solidifies it more as a rock solid, professional codec that the big players in post need to embrace. Cineform is great as well but less universal and heavy on CPU processing. Pro Res will work on a PC. All you need is to download the free "ProRes Decoder for Windows". Even though tapeless workflows and ProRes are catching on at bigger post facilities... most places like the ones you've mentioned will typically still transfer first to tape, then charge you to digitize that tape to ProRes. At Cinelicious we've been transferring film direct to ProRes since day one and were on the forefront of that movement. We have clients from many continents that send us film and a hard drive, we email them with a private password to view their color session online in realtime (and give notes to the colorist via iChat, Skype etc), and send back their film and HD or 2K transfer to ProRes their drive. Of course we can do DPX as well but like Chris mentioned, ProRes is so efficient it's what most of our clients want. Give us a call/email if you want an alternative quote. Best, Paul
  7. Hey Bo, A few thoughts. First of all some telecine's are "noisier" than others... especially in highlight areas... Plus X shouldn't be too grainy and so I would ask if the pattern looks like film grain or digital noise. We did a test at Fotokem for a S16mm documentary we did last year. We wanted a very "filmic" look so I thought that their Millennium HD telecine might be the way to go as it's tube-based as opposed to their Spirits. In the tests I saw the Millenium had quite a bit of buzzy digital noise in the highlights. Also... With a good noise/grain reducer hanging off the telecine your operator should be able to match grain structure of different stock provided the film is fairly well exposed which yours appears to be. Of course you'd want to tell him/her that your goal was even grain structure before hand or during the session. Good luck! -Paul
  8. This film was shot in Australia... and we did the telecine in LA with Kiku supervising online and giving realtime notes with colorist Steve Rodriguez live via our free "ColorCast Live" service. We went to ProRes 4444 not DPX but I could put an uncompressed still from ProRes up. You can also download the source film on the Vimeo page (lower right corner) which is a very high quality H.246 that looks nearly identical to the ProRes master. Phil... in my opinion (and I see a lot of SD vs. HD & 2K Super 8mm comparisions as we have all three capabilities) Super 8mm definitely has 1920x1080 of info on it. Especially the finer grain stocks. Have you seen the new 100D btw? Pretty incredible. -Paul
  9. So Cinelicious has been doing quite a bit of Super 8mm to true HD on the Spirit and have been very pleased with the results. Until now we haven't been able to show any of it due to the types & timing of the projects. Anyway this is a pretty incredible clip used for an ad campaign that is just coming out. It was shot by the very talented Kiku Ohe and featuring Supermodel Elyse Taylor. Definitely an eyeful. Feedback on the quality of the scans is welcome and appreciated. http://www.vimeo.com/14317782
  10. Hey Guys, Here's some of the first Super 8mm we transferred to HD with the new Super 8mm gate for our Spirit Datacine. http://vimeo.com/14317782 Masterfully shot and directed by Filmmaker Kiku Ohe. Colored at Cinelicious by Steve Rodriguez. Enjoy! -Paul
  11. Yeah... Andy did a great job. Scoopics can be a bit of a crap shoot when shooting slow motion. Some are rock solid, others aren't. I haven't seen pulsing but more registration issues with some Sccopics at 48 or 64 fps. Congrats on the new mod!
  12. Didn't you see this? http://vimeo.com/12429314 -Paul
  13. Hi James, There's also a decent still in Cinelicious' feature film section of an anamorphic S16mm image on a recent Indie (prores 4444) DI we did for the movie "From the Head". Haven't finished the DI yet as it's still in editorial. Not sure if they're doing a 35mm print yet. I think HDCAM-SR is the intended screener right now. Lenses were Panavision S16mm anamorphic. They looked at Hawks but got a great deal on the panys. -Paul
  14. Glad you liked the launch video John. What camera are you getting? Love the feeling of a camera in the mail! My most recent delivery was a Contax 645 kit I got off Ebay (stills but tough to beat a medium format negative). We'd love the opportunity to show you what we can do. -Paul
  15. Thanks for the plug Vincent. Bo... A few things... 1) Seems weird that a miniDV verson of a D-Beta Master would go that noticeably soft. May have been a bad dub. Do you have a way of viewing the D-Beta original? 2) As to your DVD authoring question... in order for your SD DVDs to look their best on modern (progressive) television (and online) you should be encoding from progressive, 23.98 material by either (a) start with an HD 23.98 telecine... or (B) have your film transferred straight to drive at 24p SD. We do both at Cinelicious.tv in Hollywood. We sort of specialize in doing direct to drive transfers and skipping all hassles and cost of tape dubbing. Stop by sometime and we can show you SD vs. HD samples galore :) and might be able to help you out with your post workflow. -Paul
  16. Hey Anthony, We have both a Rank and a Spirit. They can both do 18fps transfers and output 24p HD and 29.97 or 24p SD... but the pulldown pattern is locked in. When dealing with non-standard frame rates we generally recommend transferring at 24p to 24p. Then you'll end up with all progressive frame video. You can play it back however you wish depending on your editing platform with no loss in quality. As Robert said... be sure to turn frame blending off. We don't work with Premiere a lot but the workflow for 18fps material in Final Cut would be 24p transfer to ProRes 4444 or 422 HQ. Then speed change to 75% and turn off frame blending. You'll be left with an all progressive 24p timeline of your 18fps material playing back at the correct frame rate. Good luck! -Paul
  17. Well that sucks. I'm sorry Vincent. Can I pull the "new daddy" card? My son Lincoln was born days before and I'm still not getting much sleep. Hopefully it'll work out next time. -Paul
  18. Wait... trying to discern the italics.... you tried but couldn't make it... or you tried and I wasn't there? No big deal if the former... just drop by some other time. My apologies if the later. -Paul
  19. Hey All, Just wanted to give you a heads up that at a time when many companies are backing away from celluloid or closing up shop... we are stepping up our commitment and investment in motion picture film. Nothing against digital... we do that too... but film is just more fun! Hopefully our passion for celluloid comes across in the Cinelicious 2.0 website which launched today: http://cinelicious.tv/ Have a look around the site... Hunter Richards made a super cool launch video for us which is a lot of fun... and stop by for a tour next time your in the 'hood. Best, Paul
  20. Hey Guys... just caught up with this. Not sure if you've seen this yet Roger.... It's the latest ad campaign from Ralph Lauren: http://vimeo.com/12429314 It was all shot Ultra 16mm with one of our Scoopics and was one of the first Ultra 16mm runs through the new gate mod for the Spirit. -Paul
  21. Hi Vincent, Interesting post. I look at both film and RED originated content that comes through Cinelicious all day long. I have to agree I can usually spot RED footage right way. David... I just saw Winters Bone and loved the story & acting but found it over graded and the horrible clipping very distracting. I'm not sure if you can chalk clipping up to bad production value. We've also recently been able to work on some MX footage on a few commercials. Maybe a bit more latitude but still feels sort of plastic-y. I'll look forward to checking out what you do with the MX sensor. I'd also like to say that RED isn't much cheaper than film. Vince... have you're producer call us if it's a price issue why they can't shoot S16mm. We just did the DI on an indy feature where the DP and director wanted to shoot S16mm and the producers wanted RED. We were able to come up with a scan-once workflow (finish looking "dailies" from Spirit to ProRes 4444 - edit dailies, conform-free, file-based finish touch-up w/output to SR for festivals). This workflow brought the cost down from a traditional film DI and they were able to convince the producers to shoot film... Anamorphic S16mm which is rare and looks really cool (SR3, Panavision lenses). Best, Paul
  22. Hi Ian... you are correct... it's also magnified by the fact that dust and scratches on neg look white, and on reversal they look black. This film got pretty beat up as it's what we we've used as "test film" for our Spirit Super 8mm setup and it's been up on the machine literally 50 times since January. We were experimenting with running it on the 16mm gate block to see what would happen... and it scratched a bit. Lesson learned :)
  23. There's no way Vimeo HD does this justice but it does look pretty damn sharp: http://vimeo.com/11957378 This is 2 rolls of Super 8mm home movie footage Cinelicious I shot in NY last Fall. We used it to test our our new realtime 2K scanning capabilities from our (also new) Super 8mm gate. It was scanned on our HD & 2K capable Spirit Datacine to 2048x1556 DPX files. Files were then encoded to 2K ProRes 4444 for a light edit. Footage was then downrezzed to fit full-frame/pillar-box into an HD widow. All footage is running at 24fps and all speed changes were in-camera. There's really no way to show you how sharp this scanner is with online compression but hopefully you get the idea. 1 roll was Ektachrome 64T 1 roll was Vision2 200T 7217 -Paul
  24. Hi Moises, That picture is a good idea... however it would be difficult to cut that close to the R side of frame in telecine. We recently modified our Super 8mm gate on the Spirit to be able to transfer Max8 and went a bit wider than even that so it may be possible. When are you going to come in and check out the new Spirit - Super 8mm scans? -Paul
  25. Hey Vincent - Stop by any time. We'd love to give you a tour of the new facility. It's looking good but we're just getting started. Just got plans approved for the 2K/4K & 3D DI theater w/20' screen. Phil (and Vincent) - Saul was correct. That demo clip was transferred on our URSA Diamond via the "Diamond Clear HD" uprez. It looks pretty good & better than SD but in the end it is an uprez so not as sharp as what the Spirit can put out. The challenge when we got the Spirit in January was to figure out a way to modify the gate without breaking it (it's pretty darn expensive to replace). Risky stuff but it paid off. The new clip I was going to post will be from the Spirit. I'll try to get footage taken from a different camera but I only own Ultra 16mm Scoopics. Phi - there is a list at the bottom of our Ultra 16mm page that shows the various cameras that are good canditates for Ultra 16mm mods. I'm not sure what type of glass each one of those cameras take but surely some of them would be sharper than a Scoopic (keeping in mind that some lack of sharpness could be due to the transfer). Best, Paul
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