Tyler Purcell

I haven't had any either and I certainly haven't had any issues with AEO outside of seriously warped film. That's why I'm completely confused and perplexed why Perry said he always has issues.

But like a line scanner on a Spirit for instance, warped film leaves a "wavy" appearance as it's being scanned. So if you're line scanning optical sound track, that effect would also be a problem. Sometimes you get this with AEO as well, but it actually turns into a 24 per second pulse noise, because the frames don't quite align with one another. You don't get wow and flutter, but you do get other symptoms of warped film. Nobody has yet to explain HOW a line scanner, which clearly has issues with warped film with image, won't have any issues with warped film on a soundtrack. Also, I have never once heard via projector, the issue that Perry has said happens constantly for him. Heck, AEO doesn't appear to have it either. Have you heard it? You've got optical readers in a rack somewhere, have had a bad soundtrack and tried to play it back on another device to see if it's the scanner?

So every soundtrack should be bad then, because nobody ever actually cared about the full coat splices. Most people would yank them off the flatbed and throw them right onto the dubber for low budget productions. Again, explain to us "layman" (I've used plenty of dubbers) how a locked dubbing system, can change speed (slip) due to splices. These are sprocketed machines, that run in an interlocked mode. If you stopped the roll of film on the supply, it would snap immediately due to the sprocket drive. So you're talking about the little tiny slop allowed by the tensioners before and after the heads? A bad splice can get caught on a head and for a brief moment, cause that system to sway slightly, but it goes away almost immediately. In fact, some dubbers (I don't know the ones you mentioned) don't even have that system at all. They are hard rollers across the entire pickup path. I'd just like to know. I've worked in plenty of dubbing rooms, I've never once had anyone explain or demonstrate what you're discussing.

First off, I'm not saying you're wrong. I'm saying, there is no evidence you're right. The only evidence I've seen is from something we experience; shrunken film. It's something most projectors DO NOT care about. So for me, I can go down stairs with the print post scan and throw it on a projector to figure out if the print is bad or not. I have yet to find a print, in my entire life, that was bad when projected on a good projector. Second, I am listening. I've scanned thousands of educational films, as I use to work for an archive. The only scientific way to test a soundtrack is to play it back on a tuned/tested Magnasync. That's the only method that works. Until you do that, there is no discussion that can be had. Frank's example is not scientific, it's just some antidotal information based on some old unserviced high school and university gear. Doubt any of it was properly taken care of. None of the tachometers on the flatbeds at Emerson worked, so the motors free-for-all'd and the soundtracks blew. That's just one example. The other assumption that older record players and magnetic tape machines were bad, is also pretty ridiculous. I have a 1958 16mm mag recorder, it's all tubes and the damn thing runs at a perfect 24fps. I also have worked on turntables from that era and they also run perfectly, locked to the 60 cycles of the AC power. These issues aren't either of those. You claim that this happens all the time, but why aren't you buying a fully restored projector and testing the prints huh? Why are you defending LG, giving us spec sheets on how it can never be wrong, without even verifying! I'm flabbergasted from someone who preaches perfection on a daily basis and puts up arguments everywhere on the internet daily about how everyone else is shit, you haven't even bothered to do a true scientific test. I have done those tests, which is why I back up my "opinion" on the matter.

16mm is impossible these days. I have 35mm if you want some, but only selling in bulk. 5213 5219 5207

Never once were those words stated. Have you tried listening to the soundtrack with an optical reader? We have. Prints with zero issues on a 60hz Magnasync, are problematic on AEO. Film shrinks unevenly, especially at the head. The reason why digital tools struggle with some soundtracks, is simply due to micro shrinkage. You don't see it as much in the picture, but it's there in the soundtrack. Your defending of Lasergraphics is kinda crazy. You act as if it's impervious to any issues. Everyone and everything is wrong besides the scanner.

That's what wow and flutter sounds like when the machine is only a few tenths of a FPS off. I know, our scanner does that as well. One could capture at a slower speed for sure, it may help, but I haven't tried that methodology yet since AEO-LITE works so perfectly. It does take more time, but we batch it overnight.

What are you talking about? Are you instantly defending LaserGraphics instead of listening to the damn audio and hearing the wow and flutter? That effect is caused by inconsistent speed, period. So yes, it would be the device that scanned the audio, which would cause the inconsistent speed. PERIOD.

It's not distortion, it's the speed of the scanner fluctuating very slightly. Yes, this is what it sounds like and why I use AEO-Lite.

I've seen everything from bad boards to bad connections/switches cause this issue. It'll need to see a tech.

What did they say the problem was? If it only took 30 min, musta been something pretty simple like a loose cable or something.

Yea resolve has that tool built in, it can be done on a track basis AND on a clip basis, called voice isolation. It works really great and has been a life saver. I had some clips with train engine noise behind the dialog and it removed it entirely. With bit of tweaking, it actually can sound pretty good, then I'll just add the engine sound back in on the mix in stereo, with a mono dialog track. It's all in real time as you're playing the file back in the timeline.

So what I'd do is wireless mic him and have him doing the work first on camera, forget sync. Then sit him down and go through the process in an interview. Like this:

We deal with a lot of warped film. Where I'm a bit embarrassed to show our prototype gates, I will happily make a thread and discuss our final variants when we're done. The good news is that our design works. It doesn't scratch and it's very easy to manufacture. The bad news is that it's very labor intensive to keep running due to running it as a wet gate rather than just old dirty dry film being pulled through a chrome gate, which doesn't sound pleasant. None of the stuff we run through our warped gate, could survive a cleaner, most of it falls apart during the initial inspection, let alone during the scan. We're damn lucky to get anything on most of it. However, we know how to deal with the issues that come up. The biggest issue of course, is what to do with finished results. Every second of most films, varies in issues. So full restoration isn't just about scanning it flat, it's also about stabilizing it since the perfs will be a mess and any automated tools won't work well. So you're doing frame stabilization in Phoenix which is time consuming and takes a lot of effort. The scan is the key tho, the best images get the best results.

It would need to be proven that he maliciously stole from banks and clients. It's clear by reading the documents, he was a scammer. It's clear he took millions of dollars. What did he do with it all?

True, the team at FF have been wonderful. Leon is a great guy who truly wants to make a great product. Sure, we didn't like his gate design, we had to re-engineer it a bit and the scanner does need a bit of post work to achieve the qualify levels of other scanners, but the results speak for themselves. Sure, a scan station would be faster and probably deliver a slightly sharper image, but at a $200k price tag + yearly service support contract, I don't understand how that works unless you have guaranteed work for 5+ years. The vast majority of people in this industry, do not have that work. We were damn lucky to even buy a scanner, we paid for it with two feature length negative projects. I talked to Roger once on the phone and he was a complete dickhead. I'm surprised he didn't hang up.

I'm gonna be shocked if he walks way from this. The documents are so damning it's not even funny. The guy literally got loans and maxed out his credit cards, then decides to go bankrupt? I mean what was he doing with all that money if it wasn't living a lavish lifestyle? I'm not flabbergasted in this day and age, but holy crap, he's in trouble.

I do think it was a scam. Many people have been waiting for machines, which of course he has not delivered. Looks like he wanted to get out and used this opportunity to walk away.

I was always shocked how he was in business to begin with. Can I ask, how anyone can scan anything without a rigid gate for the film to ride on? Any film that was warped, shrunk or even slightly damaged, would never be able to be scanned. I think some of the home made 3D printed machines, have more "tech" in them and I bet that's why he just gave up. It's hard to sell "scanners" that don't have super basic features/functions.

Oh because the entire film industry was shut down in 2023 and right after the negations were finished for the new contacts, they all announced 20 - 30% cutbacks on new projects AND substantial reduction in budgets for future releases. An example of their idiocy is the canceling of Dune 3. Warner finally has a "batman" franchise on its hands and they CANCELED the 3rd installment? Of course, it'll eventually happen, but doubtful in the next 3 - 4 years. The decisions they're making are horrible. I also think a few of the big releases shot on IMAX lost their shirts financially outside of Oppenheimer. "Nope" was a financial disaster supposedly, don't know how with such a reasonable budget, maybe they spent 500M in marketing? With my ear on the concrete here in LA, I can tell ya right now, this is what the last recession felt like. Everyone is selling their gear, people are moving out of town, nearly all of my production friends are doing personal projects not commercial projects. Even my friend who works with Hoyte said, he's been pretty dead as well. I think the studio's are freaking out with Sora's announcement and the impending IATSE and Teamsters strike. Plus the Paramount and Warner merger which is still up in the air. Disney is also several billion in debt and is trying to shed assets, but nobody appears to be buying. Na, none of this is good and I feel by the time the new 15P camera is out, the studio's will find it tricky to green light those shows. Just remember, Tarantino proved 70mm print screenings, sell better than standard digital with Hateful 8, but the film wound up doing poorly in the box office. We didn't see another big push for film prints until Dunkirk, which also did poorly. Tenet was a wash out due to Covid and honestly, Oppenheimer was the first big 15P release since Dunkirk, what... some 6 years later? I don't think the studio's are horribly excited about risking another release shot and finished on 15P. Dune II will do well on 15P per screen, but I believe that's the future for the format; digitally shot, film projected.

Tis a pretty cool video AND time period we live in. Alas, I don't think the studios will be green lighting any big 15P movies anytime soon. This may all be for nothing.

It doesn't say flicker free, so it's probably the low end chipset.

The problem with super 8, as we've talked about on the other forums, is that it has a 5x crop factor over FF. So an 8mm lens for 35mm equivalent, would need to be a 4mm minimal to get that look. Well, nobody makes a 4mm lens. So that's the problem. The super 8 frame is so small, there wasn't any other imager tech like it outside of specialized stuff in the video world. So there just wasn't a market to make lenses. This is why the widest lenses you'll ever see are in the 5 - 6mm range. That's about what the decent zooms have for super 8 as well. The 6-70 being the "promo" zoom for the format, but not having that look at all. Also remember, what makes that look so cool, is that with S35mm you still can have some depth of field. Never going to have that with a wide shot on S16 or Super 8. It'll look super flat with wide lenses. To get any decent depth of field, you need longer lenses, which of course is the anthesis to what you're after look wise. There are some macro lenses however, where the subject can get super close to the lens. The lens I recommended the 6-70 does have a macro mode. However, in macro mode, you can't gauge focus. They kinda do some weird stuff and from my experiences using professional super 8 cameras, the results are generally poor. If you have someone moving around a lot and don't mind soft focus, then it's not too bad, but you will never NAIL the focus on macro mode. They also don't work well all the way open, so you need to stop them down, which can help a bit, but can be more tricky to tell detail in the viewfinder. As a side note, I did use a 6mm super wide lens with front ultra wide magnifying lens, which made it more like 5mm. It worked pretty good, very distorted, but it was a $6k lens and only PL of course. I wish I remember if it was the Century optics one or not, but C mount lenses are NOTORIOUS for having horrible back focus issues because there is no hard mount. Every lens fits slightly differently into the camera and you need to collimate each one to the body and set the gap properly. It's not supposed to be that way, but it is sadly. A wide angle like a 6mm, will not be capable of being collimated. You need longer focal lengths to use a collimator. So a ZOOM can be collimated, but a single prime like a 6mm can't. So you simply don't know until you get your footage back. It's one of the odd issues with calibrating equipment sadly.

Very. 60 theatrically bound feature films were released in 2023 that were shot on film. Thats the most we've had in a single year in over a decade. Forget about the released on film movies to boot, which we had a few of in 2023 as well. Heck Dune II is being released in over a dozen theaters on 70mm. That's pretty impressive for a time period where every major theater is digital only. Anyway, the charts are discussing still photography. To which in Los Angeles alone, there are a dozen still labs. So still photography is, nowhere near dead. Big brand stores like Walmart and Target, still sell film. Heck, drug store chains like CVS and Walgreens do as well. You can even drop off film at those stores for processing in some locations. That's pretty incredible and frankly, I don't find working with still film today, to be any more tricky than the 90's. The only "got ya" is getting prints same day. That doesn't happen anymore. Back when I was a kid, you could drive up to a same day lab and get them back in a few hours. Eh, long gone. But ya know, it's pretty fast. Most stills labs are few days max.

I mean, right now Kodak is making film 24/7 using a staff of several hundred full time employees. They are so busy, they had to wake up and start using perforating machines they hadn't been using for years. So sure, we're not talking volumes of the pre-digital age, but remember Kodak use to make their still film over seas. So now that ALL film is coming from the single plant in Rochester, it's a lot more work. Why did Fuji die? I'm shocked you asked that question because it seems that everyone knows. Kodak has non-competition agreements with all the studios. They physically were not allowed to shoot Fuji film, period. Fuji was literally denied access to the largest productions, not because of the filmmakers or the quality of product, but because the studios agreed to keep Kodak a float. This is also not a new thing, this isn't post bankruptcy, oh no. This has been going on for decades. Similar to how studio's had non-competition agreements with technicolor prior. Fuji was used by many high profile films. However, if you actually research the funding, you'd see many were independently funded, even though studio distributed. Obviously anything non-studio could have been shot on Fuji. Today if they were around, I bet they'd do very well honestly. Especially with their Reversal stocks which have a very beautiful and unique look. Everyone is after that look today and when they closed down their factory at the end of 2011, people were outraged. New Fuji stock is just re-badged Kodak FYI. Fuji does not make any film products. They had kept their black and white coating line running for a few years after they killed the color line, but they eventually closed that as well once separation's weren't done as frequently. I absolutely blame the rise in lab costs to the lack of another brand. One COULD spend a billion dollars and make a new photochemical company. It would be easy to poach engineers and pay for the Fuji patents to bring the stock back. However, who would want to do such a thing?