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Paul Korver

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Everything posted by Paul Korver

  1. Sounds good Karl. I'm in NYC quite frequently. What lab do you work at? Maybe I'll swing by. -Paul
  2. Well they said it couldn't be done... modifiying the Spirit's S16mm gate to be able to transfer Ultra 16mm. But after 3 months of tinkering with our new Spirit I'm happy to report that we figured it out. Cinelicious is now offering HD/2K Ultra sharp Ultra 16mm scans and telecine. Will post some footage next week. -Paul
  3. Hey Karl, My message was meant to stick up for the spirit of what Moises was trying to do and not meant to come accross as "hostile" towards you. But speaking of hostile your posts do seem unnecessarily grumpy you and use a lot of CAPS when you write. It came accross to me as a bit heavy-handed towards Moises admitedly lofty proposition. I love film and have been both productive and fruitful with it. I touch celluloid everyday either by shooting it on the production side or scanning it on the post side. I love innovation and think it's important to support both the little guy and the big guy. Today is a perfect example. I'm going to work the first half of the morning modifying our Spirit gate to be able to transfer Ultra 16mm (an admittedly cottage format that we poineered the post workflow for on our URSA diamond). Then in the afternoon I'm putting together a bid for a 35mm 3-perf 2K DI for a Paramount feature from dailies through film-out. I don't think you need to be blunt or jaded to get films made or make a living in film. Savvy optimism works well too. While many super 8mm shooters don't have a ton of money... Some do and they really care about quality and are willing to pay for it. That and my passion the format caused me to invested in a Super 8mm gate for our Spirit at the price of a well equiped european sports car (money I made shooting Super 8mm film btw). We have many Super 8mm clients that are spending 5-figures per year transferring their Super 8mm film with Cinelicious. You are right Karl... I gotta get back to it.
  4. Karl - I have a website for you... www.reduser.net. Oh... and look... there's even an HD Video forum on this Cinematography.com. Maybe go there and champion the brave new world of 8-bit 4:1:0 DSLR mastering rather than coming on a film forum and discouraging innovation in film. You are right to say that film is shrinking but that doesn't mean that there aren't passionate filmmakers out there that are fighting for it (and passionate post houses that continue to innovate to support it). Moises... You rock. I'd love to see this camera developed. I'd love to transfer the footage from it to 2K on our Spirit. Viva Celluloid! Viva Moises! -Paul
  5. Hi Eugene. Spirit's with Super 8mm gates are rare. We just got one at Cinelicious in order to support this beloved format at the highest level and are offering Spirit HD Telecine and Spirit 2K Super 8mm scans direct to ProRes 4444 or DPX that are looking quite amazing. You can just send us your film and a hard drive. I've have a lot of experience with shooting and telecine of Super 8mm film and have been pretty blown away. Mostly in how the Spirit optics are very low noise in the highlights which has been a problem for me with other HD telecines that can handle Super 8mm. If you or someone you use in NY already has a Spirit and wants to start transferring Super 8mm then they need the Spirit's 16mm gate block and the Super 8mm add on gate which lists for between $80K-$90K and will make it super 8mm capable. Best of luck! -Paul
  6. Congrats Justin on getting the SI2K to scan film!! That's a huge accomplishment. I'm looking forward to seeing some scans. Chris... If you want to end up on Blu-Ray I would definitely try out the Justin's kit instead of doing a softward based SD uprez from Premiere or whatever editing software you're using on your PC. Software-based uprezzing tends to look pretty bad in my experience. -Paul
  7. While Satsuki does sound frustrated I can't imagine he's talking about Cinelicious as we would never respond that way. We have film cleaning on premises because we're well aware that dust loves film and if anyone asks us to clean film (or if we've done dailies and are about to put the film up again for a final) we would of course clean the film or at least suggest it be cleaned. While Fotokem generally does a good job with both processing and prep/ cleaning film.... we've definitely had the odd batch that came in looking like it hadn't been. I'm having a difficult time understanding where all Satsuki's negativity is coming from especially since as soon as he reached out to say he was unhappy with 30 frames (out of 164,000) we offered to fix them at cost... even though there was a *distinct* possibility that the film may not have been properly cleaned at Fotokem. I say *distinct* because it is our obsessive practice to clean our PTR rollers with warm water and and entire film deck with compressed air prior to every transfer... and if the film is truly clean when it comes in... the transfers are clean (aside from the odd spec of dust that is nearly impossible to prevent). We're a small shop that is very passionate about film. Sucks to take the fall on this one but I guess you can't win them all. -Paul
  8. Hi Satsuki, Sorry to hear you had a bad experience with us. I spoke with Andy (the colorist that did the transfer) about this and he said you reached out to complain that were about 30 frames or so that had dust in them and that he promptly emailed you back offering to fix the dust and hadn't heard anything back. The offer still stands by the way. We stand by our work and if there are any issues we always work hard to resolve them. Hi Steve, Not sure if you did your uprez here or somewhere else... admittedly it's best to use the native resolution of the scanner/telecine. That's why we just bought a HD/2K capable Spirit Datacine with DVNR 2K/daVinci 2k to be able to address the needs of our higher end clientele or for people who are looking for the best image possible. But we also keep the diamond clear HD around for budget conscious folks who really seem to like the picture-to-price ratio. Regards, Paul
  9. Hi Rob, I just shot some 100' daylight spools of Kodachrome in and SR3 and it worked fine. It does make the mag quite a bit louder though. -Paul
  10. Hey Guys... getting the Super 8mm gate for our Spirit installed tomorrow. Will be sure to post some true 1080p scans soon. 2K will come in a few weeks. -Paul
  11. We just bought a brand new, fully loaded DVNR 2K to service our new Spirit HD/2K suite at Cinelicious. The new AGR4 ME algorithms are amazing for real-time grain reduction. What resolution was your transfer done at? And on what machine? We could either retransfer the film on the Spirit or just work with quicktime files... although you'd get best results with a retransfer going back to the neg. -Paul
  12. I'm wondering if anyone's here is an avid S16mm shooter and has compared the new(ish) Vision 3 250D 7207 stock to some of the slower older stocks? I'm absolutely blown away by how fine-grain the 07 stock is. Definitely worth a test. Something Gregory mentioned is grain reduction. Some of the latest Digital Vision grain reduction algorithms (AGR4 ME) are far superior to what they used to be and can definitely decrease/eliminate grain while maintaining sharpness. We just upgraded our post facility and bought a Spirit HD/2K datacine and brand new DVNR 2K that has the latest AGR4 ME grain management tools (as well as dust/scratch)... it's fairly shocking how much better the grain reduction works on this new box in comparison to our old DVNR 1000 we have hanging off our URSA. I just saw some 07 stock up on the Spirit with the tiniest touch of the DVNR AGR4 ME and everyone in the room thought is was 35mm. -Paul (for the record I'm not a huge fan of DVNR as I love me some film grain... but it's good to have options... we've even used in on underexposed blue-channel noise in RED footage with good results)
  13. Good to know Rob. I wonder if the Spirit they have that does Super 8mm is 2K capable? The only thing I've ever seen posted on here about 2K Super 8mm from a Spirit was from a long time ago with Kodak Rochester experimenting with 2K Spirit scans. I'm aware that Technicolor has more than one Spirit and definitely has some that do 2K and 4K but you can't just swap Super 8mm gates on Spirit systems like you can with a Cintel system. The "Super 8mm Option Kit" actually consists of a gate, rollers, deck plates, and software/firmware update that enables Super 8mm scanning on the machine (all very costly) so it's likely that they only run Super 8mm on one Spirit that may or may not be able to 2K Data. I'll call someone up and ask. -Paul
  14. Hey Vince, The new Spirit is up and running as of Friday. We're getting the Super 8mm gate for our Spirit installed next week. I think that will make us the only Super 8mm capable Spirit Datacine in the US (someone please correct me if I'm wrong). Can't wait to start doing some ProRes 4444 direct-to-drive transfers. The Diamond Clear HD system we still have from the URSA looks good but is only 422 through the uprez path. Definitely excited to see real HD and 2K 4444 ProRes from Super 8mm! -Paul
  15. Will... A Spirit cannot natively see in the sproket area. I have some ideas for mods and work-arounds to be able to transfer Ultra 16mm on a Spirit but this will require further R&D. Will keep you posted. Kent... cool setup. I've taken a look at that the Flashscan before and it looks like a solid machine. I'd like to see a 1080 sensor rather than 720p but for family films to Blu-Ray your clients must very happy. How are you handling color correction? The one-light RGB controls seemed somewhat limiting.
  16. Yeah... Bob Festa at NewHat was asking for anyone that could do Super 8mm 2K on the TIG a few weeks back... I don't remember there being a solution. What facility/company do you work for in Sweden? I was there in the Fall on my 3-month quest to find the best film scanner in the world. Stopped in to meet up with the GoldenEye at Image Systems in Linkoping. Beautiful country. -Paul
  17. Hi Kent... no not yet. As I mentioned we're in facility integration stage right now. Our prices might drop a bit once we get into the workflow and see if there's a way to get our 2K full-ap workflow going really fast. I just didn't want to promise too much before knowing exactly how much time this will take. I can guarantee that S8mm HD telecine will cost a lot less than that. In terms of resolution I don't expect that there will be many requests for Super 8mm at 2K... except for people who are doing 2K DIs and want to incorporate some Super 8mm and want 2K because it works best for their workflow etc. I'm curious to see if there's a noticeable quality gain by full ap 2K Super 8mm at 2048x1556 vs HD Super 8mm (which transferred full frame pillar-box would actually be 1440 lines of vertical resolution). -Paul
  18. Hi Kent, We're still working out our prices and 2K workflow. The 2K capable Spirit, DaVinci 2K and DVNR 2K were just delivered and we're getting everything wired into our new facility next week. Price would depend on the flavor of 2K (2048x1556 full ap or 2048x1080 DCI), the deliverables (2K DPX or 2K ProRes 4444), and the amount of color correction work (flat pass or color corrected). Based on all that price could range from $2500 to $4000. -Paul
  19. Hi Tomasz, We're going through some major upgrades at Cinelicious and just bought a Spirit Datacine that can output 2K native scans. Because we always try to support the small format community I also went to great expense to get the Super 8mm gate for the Spirit which is very very difficult to find. So... we offer 444 HD and 444 2K scans from Super 8mm. We can scan your Super 8mm at 2K as either 10-Bit LOG (better for negative) or 16-bit Linear (better for positive/reversal) DPX files... we can deliver 2K ProRes 4444. We are located in Los Angeles. More info on the upgrades here: http://www.cinelicious.tv/fresh/ -Paul I understand that your DP wants to get on an ARRI, Northlight etc, but there are no pin reg scanners can do Super 8mm at any resolution.
  20. Hey All, Glad to see there are more and more options for Ultra 16mm. Our URSA is putting out pretty good Ultra 16mm images and we'll continue supporting it on the telecine and film scanning side as we grow. Speaking of that... we just bought a Spirit Datacine, DaVinci 2K+ and DVNR 2K. Theoretically you can't transfer Ultra 16mm on a Spirit due to the way the gate is manufactured. But that's what they said about the URSA and it didn't stop us from figuring it out. No promises yet. We'll see when we get it all integrated in January. Rob... Congrats on the scanner. What final resolution (pixel dimensions) are you getting the from the "2K" scans when scanning Ultra 16mm on your P+S Technic Steadyframe scanner? The P+S Technic website says it scans 2048 x 1240 for Super 16mm and 1728 x 1240 for Reg 16mm... so I'm assuming Ultra 16mm scans fall somewhere inbetween? -Paul
  21. Hey All, No one has brought this up so far but you might find interesting a little chart we did that shows actual frame dimensions, native resolution (in sq. mm) and effective resolutions (in sq mm.) of small format and odd format stocks (including Max 8mm) after 16x9 extraction for HD telecine. http://www.cinelicious.tv/?page_id=39 It's about half-way down the page. In compiling the chart I found it interesting that Max 8mm, which is often touted as a "widescreen" format, is actually 1.5:1 ...which is closer to 4:3 (1.33:1) than it is to 16x9 (1.78:1). Food for thought. We've transferred some anamorphic Super 8mm that looked great though. I forget the exact camera setup. It was done by Super 8mm filmmaker Moises Perez. Goooooooo Super 8mm! -Paul
  22. Hi Cary, Bernie did all our mods. He does great work! -Paul
  23. No problem Elliot. Glad you liked it.
  24. Thought you all would be interested in this. When transferring to HD Ultra 16mm (native 1.85) should theoretically have more resolution that Regular 16mm as I've outlined in the chart here: http://www.cinelicious.tv/?page_id=39 In the past few months I've had some questions about what the difference actually looks like from camera owners considering the modification so we we ran a little test. http://www.vimeo.com/groups/ultra16/videos/7091040 To me the difference is subtle in terms of gained resolution but very noticeable in terms of horizontal real-estate. Still not as good as Super 16mm but for a $600 mod it certainly adds new life to old 16mm cameras. By the way we have 4 Ultra 16mm Scoopics we're renting if anyone wants to try out Ultra on a project. Enjoy! -Paul
  25. Hi Jason, Another possibly dumb question... but how are you viewing the footage? If digitally how was it transferred? There are some ghetto transfers out there that can create bright-spots on film in the center when they actually aren't there (usually from a projector with a non-diffuse light source). If you're viewing it on a projector then I'd check to make sure you have some diffusion in front of the lamp. -Paul
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