Paul Korver

Keep in mind the Cintel machine also has to be outfitted with a modified gate to be able see the perfs. Standard 16mm and Super 16mm gates wouldn't be able to do that.

Hi Andy, Coming in a bit late to this post. Typically 16mm/S16mm gates are constructed to block out any potential light coming in from the perfs. For our Ultra 16mm modified gate the opposite is true... we had it machined so that we could see as much as possible... and as a side benefit it makes a perfect "effects pass" gate for any 16mm where you want to pull out and see perfs. We did this a few months ago on a Keane music video that's on our site. It's a mix of HVX200 P2 footage and Bolex 100' daylight loads that we transfered direct-to-drive at 720p DVCPro HD (to match the P2 footage exactly). For an example of what's possible go to the "gallery" section of our site ( http://www.cinelicious.tv/?page_id=5 ) and scroll down to the Keane "you don't see me" video. The best examples are at :45 seconds in then another great one at 2:10. Good luck! -Paul

Hey Jay, I brought up the V160 in another post about mimicking reversal and do think it would get you to a good starting point for the 70's. You could also look at Ecktachrome 100D if you're shooting outside with decent light. Not sure what your budget is but if you want a cool reversal look you can also shoot neg then make a print of the neg and transfer from that. It's a very cool look. MPC used it for an amazing 1960's commercial... search "Stella Artois "Triple Filtered"" Good luck! Please post the results. -Paul

Hey John, Take a look at Fuji's new Eterna Vivid 160. It's neg but according to Fuji they're calling it a replacement for Velvia. It's gorgeous and I have to say does look a lot like reversal. Rich colors & more contrast than typical neg. It's an incredible stock if you like the reversal look b/c since it is neg it also has more dynamic range than reversal. -Paul

Hi Patrick, I'm aware of the common knowledge of slightly overexposing neg and slightly underexposing reversal. But I have to say that I have a ton of experience shooting Tri-X 7266 16mm (one of my favorite stocks) and I really prefer the contrast I get when I overexpose by 1/2 stop. Yes I might be loosing a bit in the highlights but it just looks "right" to me with that stock... very contrasty. When the exposure is slightly under I find the image very flat. I would never shoot Tri-X if I wanted to preserve all the highlight/shadow detail btw. That's part of the beauty to me of B/W reversal. Good luck! -Paul

Hey Lee, No worries man. It's all good on our end. Just glad we were able to work it out for you guys. -Paul

I'll email you shortly.

Hey Eric, We've never met but I wanted to say great work! Beautiful film. Loved the mix of guages & aspect ratios. I definitely saw the 35mm and b/w 16mm but I also thought there was some S8mm color in the title sequence. Anyway... I already sent my congrats to Hussey for the color/DI work. He did a great job too! Best, Paul

Hi Neil, Sorry for the late reply... We deliver totally uncompressed, color corrected 2K film scans (currently from a Spirit 4K at 2K resolution) on LTO-4 as BRU archives so you could absolutely use BRU to restore them. We can also deliver versions of those DPX sequences as ProRes 4444 and Cineform 444. Glad you see the benefits of this workflow. You can actually own the technology to do your own online/offline... free from any compression for about $5K. SR is pretty good... but limited to 1920x1080 and costs a mint to own and isn't cheap to get data to and from. Best, Paul

Phil... it was 250D ...7205 not the new V3 7207 Great Lee... We look forward to getting to the bottom of this. -Paul

Here's a screen grab from some more 16mm we did telecined to 720p HD using the URSA just today. So either it was operator error or the neg is soft. Lee... I encourage the director to bring the film back in and if it was indeed our fault we'll re-transfer for free. Best, Paul

Cool Lee. I look forward to speaking with Daniel. Very reasonable to expect a similar transfer from a similar (even newer) machine. When he comes by (hopefully he'll bring the film) we can take a look and see if there was any error on our part and gladly rectify them free of charge. But again... if you're expecting 2K quality that would be a different workflow which we can discuss as well. -Paul

Hi Phil, It sounds like you've had some bad experiences with post houses. Most of our clients are indie-types and while I realize we can't make everyone 100% happy all the time we try to be fair at minimum and exceed expectations whenever possible. We're still a small shop and take every complaint seriously. There has yet to be a time (knock wood) when we haven't been able to determine "what went wrong" and correct an issue. Phil and Stephen, I'm not sure what experiences you've had with other post houses that would lead you suspect believe we're deliberately trying to put out crappy images. On the contrary we are mildly obsessed with creating pretty pictures. At a fairly high cost to us we do maintain our URSA, PECs and Tube and always run it at full beam current (300). That said, I agree the images Lee posted do look a bit soft but not uniformly so (some look sharper than others to my eye). I, too have seen quite a bit sharper images from our Diamond Clear transfers, however, without critically examining the neg (something we'd be happy to do if Lee or the director would ask us to) there is no way to know for certain what's causing the issue. I'm not blind to the fact that sometimes operator & mechanical errors do occur... In which case we would be retransfer the film for free using the method they paid for... Diamond Clear HD and offer some future discounts as a result of the hassle. My offer to Lee for 2K scans was not an attempt to "upsell"... rather it was in response to Lee's first post in this thread which indicated that 2K was what he was expecting from the outset:

Hi Lee, It's Paul at Cinelicious. I don't believe we've ever spoken before. Pick up the phone and give us a call... we're easy to talk to and strive to have happy clients. I'm not sure if your director explained this to you but we currently offer two ways to digitize film. The first is direct-to-drive telecine to a format we call "Diamond Clear HD", which is an uprez from and oversampled SD image (URSA Diamond) with pull-down removed to give a decent looking 720p or 1080p HD. At the student rate of $250/hr I believe it's the cheapest path to HD in the country and it definitely has it's place in the market. Your director opted for this method of transfer. For clients looking for really high resolution (at a higher price) we offer color corrected 2K DPX scans from a Spirit 4K with 444 2K/HD Quicktime and ProRes deliverables (in addition to the original DPX files). Based on your original post it seems like you were expecting 2K scans and were disappointed with the Diamond Clear HD. That is unfortunate. Maybe there was a mix up in communication between you and your director regarding which process was going to be used? In any case I'd be happy to apply the $500 your director paid for the 2 hours of telecine toward the cost of rescanning your project at 2K resolution from a Spirit 4K. The results will indeed be sharper than what you have now. Give us a call tomorrow if you want to discuss further. Best, Paul

Hi Joseph, There are definitely post houses that offer these services. We do all that at Cinelicious... 2-Perf 35mm, Blu-Ray Dailies (sync-sound or MOS), HD ProRes versions for Editorial, h.264 Quicktime FTP, even free realtime monitoring of the transfer via the web with Color Cast Live if you want with to give color notes on the grade. Best, Paul

The solution... if you ever intend on transferring it would be to telecine or scan it PRIOR to running it through a projector. Our Ultra 16mm modified telecine won't scratch between the perfs... but no guarantees on your projector.

Hi John, I'm assuming the goal would not be telecine at all but just home projection (since you mentioned your shooting reversal) ? I don't know if there are any home 16mm projectors that have been modded to Ultra 16mm but my concern would be that multiple runs through a sprocket driven projector might scratch the area between the perfs which is exposed in the Ultra 16mm frame. -Paul

Hi Charles, I'd definitely go HD or 2K. Interlaced formats like SD barely look good today and are hardly future proof. You're correct that S16mm can be a bit grainy which some people like... others don't... typically a Spirit HD telecine has quite a bit of noise reduction processing in the video boards to reduce grain. But and 2k or 4K DPX scan from a Spirit bypasses the video boards so you see a lot more grain. We have a great software based grain reduction solution that does an amazing job with grain reduction which I'll post below. We have two options you might want to consider. Our budget conscious clients really love Diamond Clear HD telecine direct to 1080p ProRes HQ which for your project would be about $2,400 including processing & prep. Here's a frame from a recent Diamond Clear HD transfer of Super 16mm (matted to 1.85): Diamond Clear HD Native http://www.cinelicious.tv/downloads/DCHD_Native.jpg As I mentioned above we've got great results using our software based noise reduction if you want a cleaner (almost 35mm) look: Diamond Clear HD Noise Reduced http://www.cinelicious.tv/downloads/DCHD_NR.jpg We also offer a higher end 2K DPX scan from a Spirit 4k with color correction. Deliverables can be anything from ProRes HQ to 444 RGB Quicktime to the actual DPX frames on drive or LTO-4 data tape so you wouldn't have to re-scan for a DI. Here's some samples of a from a recent Super 16mm job we did to 2K. This would cost between $4,500-6,000 depending on required deliverables. S16mm DPX Scan from a Spirit 4K Native (pulled from HD RGB Quicktime): http://www.cinelicious.tv/downloads/Spirit_2K_Native.jpg And here's the same Spirit Data Scan after Noise Reduction: http://www.cinelicious.tv/downloads/Spirit_2K_NR.jpg Low budget, medium budget, full grain, less grain... you've got options. Hope that helps. Best, Paul

Good points Michael. SR does have a lot advantages, the main ones being the uniformity and availability of the format. But I don't know many filmmakers who would buy a deck for $75,000. However a lot of them are already buying LTO4 Drives for $3,000. So while the decks might be easy to find it's always going to cost quite a bit to get media on and off an SR tape. And what if you've shot your project (or scanned your film) at 4K resolution? How would you propose archiving/storing that data? Downconvert to HD and lay off to SR? That's not very future proof in my estimation and it also locks you into whatever debayer algorithm you applied to the camera raw data when you convert to a linear/video format for output to SR. As to your point about speed & playback... I'm not sure if you're used to LTO-3 but we're getting at least 110 MB/sec transfer speeds with LTO4 which is faster than FW800 and SCSI, and since LTO is resolution/format independent we can always archive "playback" versions (444 RGB Quicktime, ProRes HQ, DNxHD) in addition to the full 2k/4k or RAW master all on the same tape. This would obviously not be possible on SR tape. hahaha that is funny David. Not sure if I ever referred to LTO4 workflows as tapeless... but I did that is pretty ironic. In my mind a better description for the LTO workflow would be "file-based", "non-linear" or "data-centric" rather than videotape based since the assets you can write to it are totally format & resolution independent. -Paul

Hi David, I view the ability to put project files in the same LTO archive as the original media as more of a side benefit than a a major selling point. Mainly because over the long term it's less hassle to keep track of drives... and keep changing those drives every few years for archival safety. I mean once it's been a year or two since you've accessed a project do you really want those files on tape-labeled hard drives stacking up on shelves? I guess it depends how many projects you do but if it's a lot that can become a pretty unruly way of long term storage. What about in 5 years? Plug in the drive and hope is spins up? Remind yourself to get new drives at 4 years and transfer data? Again... you may view this as trivial if you don't have a lot of media going though your system but a lot of production companies I've been speaking with lately are loving the piece of mind option of having everything in one place, and knowing it's fine for 30 years. The main benefit for filmmakers is cost savings and access to the original uncompressed source media (SR as you know is compressed) like DPX or R3D or whatever was shot/scanned. If you ever need to re-online/digitize that single project you've got to get on an SR deck. If you own one then great. But most filmmakers don't so they either have to rent one for around $1000/day or pay a post house to get on the deck for a few hours and transfer the files to the post house's SAN (Fee #1) then those files need to be transferred from the SAN to your hard drive (Fee# 2). With the cost of purchasing your own LTO4 drive & software being around $4000 and falling, which would give a filmmaker the ability to offline and reonline at better than SR resolution (4K is no problem) at will and for FREE, and also be much more future proof than an video format like SR since you're writing to opensource bits and bytes not a Sony codec, I think that LTO is an extremely compelling technology. Especially now that you can get about 1TB per tape. Best, Paul

Hi David, I view the ability to put project files in the same LTO archive as the original media as more of a side benefit than a a major selling point. Mainly because over the long term it's less hassle to keep track of drives... and keep changing those drives every few years for archival safety. I mean once it's been a year or two since you've accessed a project do you really want those files on tape-labeled hard drives stacking up on shelves? I guess it depends how many projects you do but if it's a lot that can become a pretty unruly way of long term storage. What about in 5 years? Plug in the drive and hope is spins up? Remind yourself to get new drives at 4 years and transfer data? Again... you may view this as trivial if you don't have a lot of media going though your system but a lot of production companies I've been speaking with lately are loving the piece of mind option of having everything in one place, and knowing it's fine for 30 years. For filmmakers main benefit is cost savings and access to the original uncompressed source media (SR as you know is compressed) like DPX or R3D or whatever was shot/scanned. If you ever need to re-online/digitize that single project you've got to get on an SR deck. If you own one then great. But most filmmakers don't so they either have to rent one for around $1000/day or pay a post house to get on the deck for a few hours and transfer the files to the post house's SAN (Fee #1) then those files need to be transferred from the SAN to your hard drive (Fee# 2). With the cost of purchasing your own LTO4 drive & software being around $4000 and falling, which would give a filmmaker the ability to offline and reonline at better than SR resolution (4K is no problem) at will and for FREE, and also be much more future proof than an video format like SR since you're writing to opensource bits and bytes not a Sony codec, I think that LTO is an extremely compelling technology. Especially now that you can get about 1TB per tape. Best, Paul

I love this post & all the solutions offered here. Screw $100,000 SR decks. At Cinelicious we've invested in LTO-4 and all our workflows are tapeless until the very end. Our LTO investment was about $20K for small library and with our "2K Data Spots" workflow we've been delivering 10-bit LOG DPX sequences to clients on LTO4 (in addition to 422 2K ProRes and 444 2K Cineform versions on hard drive). On the receiving end our clients can access those native data files with a $5K investment in a single LTO4 drive which is an open format and therefore can be used to back up/access not only film master DPX files, but R3D RED camera data or any other data with no compression loss at all. Another benefit is that LTO-4 has a 30 year shelf life and instead of a hard drive which is less than 5. And you can archive all digital assets that relate to a particular project (Final Cut / Avid Project file, VFX project files, DVD builds, etc etc) all in the same place... as opposed to having an SR master and then project files on drive or DVD elsewhere. Wether we're scanning at 2K in realtime from a Spirit 4K or our far less expensive Diamond Clear HD direct-to-drive I'm loving that people are catching on to the benefits of avoiding video tape. However, you won't see that workflow pushed by any any post house invested in video because they want to keep charging for the expensive decks they're paying off. My 2 cents. -Paul

Hi David, Honestly it's going to be tough getting that look with and HVX. I too, love that look and would recommend reversal film. Shoot Super 16mm 7285 Ektachrome and you'll be in the ballpark. Or can shoot neg and have your lab make a print of it prior to telecine which gives it a more reversal-ly feel. That's the process that was done on on of my favorite modern commercial spots made to look 60's by a very talented colorist named Jean-Clement Soret out of London: http://www.moving-picture.com/index.php/co...21814&num=1 Shot 35mm neg, with incredible period styling, process and print the neg... then do telecine from the positive print. An incredible recreation of the 1960's French Riviera glamor period (brigitte bardot, grace kelley, etc etc.). Good luck! Post the results when you're done. Best, Paul

Hi All, Interesting thread. I feel compelled to mention a few things. First, It seems like we're all on the same page that S16mm is a preferable format to Ultra 16mm if one has the funds to buy the camera & lenses necessary to go that route. It's always best to have as many options as possible for processing and post which is a strong argument for S16mm and the S16mm neg is about 20% larger in terms of sq mm yielding higher resolution. Hopefully the fact that we support & develop Ultra 16mm workflows is not taken by anyone that we see it as a better format. What we seek to do is support and develop filmmakers... not a particular format. To that end there are shooters out there (myself included) that want to make the most out of older, more accessibly priced and sometimes more ergonomic Regular 16mm cameras and Ultra 16mm makes sense in that case. Secondly, I wanted to address Elliot's image quality point... most notably referring to our Diamond Clear HD. First of all no offense taken at all. Same philosophy applies to Diamond Clear HD as to Ultra 16mm. Would I transfer my stuff with Diamond Clear HD if I had a healthy budget? No. Considering all the $ that goes into some of the higher end stuff that gets shot would I want that extra 5% sharpness and be willing to pay double or triple to get it? Absolutely. However, it's a great product for people that don't have the budget for a true HD scan, are doing a spec spot, and indy film that wants to conserve funds prior to getting distribution (and preserve the ability to do a DI later with a C-mode, file-based EDL). FYI I just did a S16mm to doc/psa that had the color neg footage transferred from a HD Millenium to 444 SR by Fotokem (transfer was donated by Wolf Films) and the S16mm reversal we transferred here at Cinelicious using Diamond Clear HD. The final was a mix of both scans layed off to 10-bit 422 HDCAM-SR and screened on a 30 foot screen from an SR deck over single link HDSDI to a Christie 12K projector in front of an audience of 750 people. I have to say that I was amazed at how well the Diamond Clear HD held up. There was no perceptible difference between the footage from an audience perspective. Maybe a DP or engineer who was told beforehand to analyze the footage for sharpness would have been able to pick it out... maybe. But I was pleasantly surprised and definitely think it has a place in the market. Third and most importantly for those considering Ultra 16mm... and those like Elliot who want the highest possible quality... We've just worked out higher-end Ultra 16mm workflow to do a true 2K Ultra 16mm (and S16mm and 35mm) scans to 444 10-Bit LOG DPX data sequences. What I'm so excited about is these particular 2K scans are rock steady... meaning no weave AT ALL in the perf which is paramount when extracting a 1:85 Ultra 16mm frame and needing every spare micro millimeter of clearance. Any telecine machine that has a gate modified to Ultra 16mm has a tiny bit of weave no matter how steady a post house claims it is. To compensate for that weave the colorist must push it a tiny bit more from the top/bottom perf edges that circumscribe and define the top & bottom edges of the frame, slightly reducing the resolution you're attempting to maximize with the format. It will basically be a DI workflow and of course... more accessibly priced than what one would typically associate with the word "DI". But it will be more expensive than our Diamond Clear HD. Workflow details & scan samples showing rock-steady registration will be on our site later so check back. Any of you out there that may be considering Ultra 16mm... be certain that we've got your back moving forward... wether your project demands highest quality 2K scans or best price Diamond Clear HD... the choice will be up to you. Kind regards, Paul

Hi Maurizio, I guess one main question I would have for you is wether or not, after editorial but before grading you need/want to conform back from ProRes to the native R3D sequence of your RED footage and 444 uncompressed video from your SR Tapes? If you do it's going to be difficult to keep this project "low budget" as you desire. HDCAM-SR workflows aren't usually considered a low budget option for shortform work because the decks are so expensive. Since this project is a music video and will be for broadcast and web (not large screen) I would recommend not conforming back to RAW & 444 Uncompressed and just staying in ProRes HQ to save yourself a lot of money. Our side-by-side tests show that even film students (who have the most critical eye :) ) can't tell the difference between 1080p ProRes 422 HQ and Uncompressed on a 50" plasma so I think you'll be fine for broadcast delivery. In fact, I just shot a mixed media documentary where I mixed Sony EX3 footage with Super 16mm footage transferred to 444 HDCAM SR. We ingested the 444 footage to ProRes 422 HQ and for budgetary reasons never conformed back to SR for the final file-to-file grade we did here at Cinelicious with Steve Rodriguez from C03 who killed it. The film just screened in NY last week for 750 people on a 30 foot screen from a Christie 12k projector and it looked gorgeous with no artifacting whatsoever. Caution... shameless plug ahead... I normally don't use this board to promote our services (other than our ad on the right) but in when it comes to tapeless workflows (especially ones requiring film scanning to direct to ProRes) I can speak with some authority as this is sort of our specialty at Cinelicious. We telecine film direct to drive in whatever native codec the digital camera is producing (ie. P2, XDCAM-EX, or in the case of RED... we'd go to ProRes 422 HQ) so it drag and drops into your editorial timeline. It also saves you lots of digitizing time and money by avoiding having to ingest from SR for editorial. We also have online suites, online edit bays attached to the same central SAN for a conform-free workflow. Here's is how we'd handle your project here: 1) Ingest R3D Red RAW to our central SAN 2) Telecine Super 16mm to HD ProRes 422 HQ at 1080 23.98psf... also on our central SAN for $275/hr 3) Walk upstairs to one of our HD Edit bays and, since they're also connected to the same SAN over dual 4GB fiber begin editorial immediately. 4) Edit your project with our in-house editor Jeff Conrad (ex-drummer from Phantom Planet) for a great rate... or bring in one of the top music video editors in the country through our guest artist program 5) After it's cut do a file-to-file final color in our grading suite with our in-house colorist Andy for $300/hr or one of the top music video colorists in the country (Bob Curreri) for $400/hr. 6) Render and output master quicktimes, and if you want a tape master we can go to SR at the end. Hope that helps. Best, Paul