Perry Paolantonio

The right way to approach this is to work backwards from the deliverables format. If it's DCP, then 24. If it's broadcast, or if you want to make a DVD, then 23.976. 23.976 exists because it's the only way to encapsulate a 24fps progressive image inside a 29.97 interlaced package (NTSC), which is done using 3:2 pulldown. This pulldown can be undone if the cadence isn't broken, and a progressive image displayed even if it exists inside an interlaced stream. This is how it works on DVD, and on 1080i (in most cases). We usually recommend 23.976 because it's easier to get to more formats from there (NTSC, Progressive DVD, Progressive Blu-ray, 25fps). Changing to 24fps isn't particularly hard, but most of the common delivery formats work natively with 23.976, and only a couple (DCP, Blu-ray) support hard 24fps. And Blu-ray also supports 23.976

The Bolex and the K3 will only take 100' loads. You'd have to spool down your 400 footers onto daylight spools (which you'll need to find yourself), and you have to do that in a completely dark room. An actual darkroom. If $1000 is the high end, why not look at an Eclair ACL or similar? They pop up on ebay from time to time, and they're very nice. Lots of good cameras out there can be had for short money that will take 400' loads, are silent, run at sync speed so you can do sound if you want, and some (like the Eclair) will let you do high speed (70ish fps) shooting for slow motion. That seems like it'd be a benefit for a surf movie. I like the eclair because it's comfortable to hold on your shoulder. Aatons are similar, newer, more electronics, and more refined. They're also generally a bit more expensive and the older models tended to be a bit fussier. Arri SRs abound on ebay. They're solid workhorses, but not particularly comfortable to put on your shoulder, so I don't like them as much. You can get any of those for under $2000, some pop up in the $1000 range as well, depending on options. All of those cameras take quick-change magazines, so you can pre-load your film and swap it out in a hurry. Shooting on a beach, this would help minimize the chances of getting sand in the camera, which is much more likely to happen if you have to stop and rethread a new reel every 2-3 minutes. On 35mm, look at 2-perf techniscope. The cameras come up sometimes. Basically you get twice as many frames per foot, in a widescreen aspect ratio. It's a very cool format, and makes a lot of sense given the quality of today's film scanners. Some folks here have run the numbers and it's on par with shooting 16mm. The cameras can be rented, but again, they do sometimes show up on ebay.

ProRes has several flavors, each with different levels of compression. They're all compressed to some degree. but then again, so are most (if not all) of the HD and SD tape formats, even the ones most people consider to be "uncompressed." TIFF is a nightmare to work with and I'm not aware of anyone using it regularly for editing or even grading at the professional level. It's always linear, so to get the full color bandwidth you have to work with 16bit TIFFs. There is no 10bit TIFF standard, only 8bit, which would be inadvisable because the vast majority of the color data would be missing. DPX is at least more widely supported by some editing systems, but even then you still have to have massive disk arrays to hold and move that much data. It's not a common format at all for editing, just for grading and restoration, and for VFX work. Few edit systems really handle it well. On the other hand, containerized formats like Quicktime, make it simple to keep audio and video together and in sync, and to work with files that are much more reasonable in size.

What you're describing as noise definitely isn't something that's inherent to the ProRes format, which frankly is one of the best available codecs. That had to have been in the transfer somewhere. I've been using Quicktime almost since it was released, and for years before ProRes came out, we had to use Uncompressed 10bit files, which were massive for HD. For 2k and 4k, they're just totally impractical. ProRes has been around for at least 10 years, I think, and in its HQ form, it's equivalent to 10bit uncompressed files, at roughly 1/10 the size. It became (past tense) the standard because of this and because playing it on both Mac and Windows has been possible for some time. There are indeed issues with some applications and how they handle things, but those are mostly a thing of the past. We have been using ProRes for years as our primary containerized media format, and it has vastly simplified and sped up work around here, without sacrificing quality. We are about 90% Windows here. I can see what you mean in that removing media layers from the equation makes the signal path simpler. But I have to disagree about the workflow argument. We do a ton of work with DPX. Our ScanStation can scan to this format directly, and our Northlight can only make DPX files. We use DPX in Resolve as our main media format, and we use DPX in our restoration system as well. But it's an utter nightmare to work with, especially with long-form projects. Just to give you an idea: We are currently wrapping up a feature film project. We scanned it on the northlight at 4k, we graded it, we are doing the restoration right now. Deliverables to the client are the original log scans (DPX), the graded files (DPX), the graded & restored files (DPX), as well as about a dozen variations in Quicktime (HD, 4k, 23.98, 24, 25fps, a couple different aspect ratio mattes, etc). Each version of the film in DPX is just under 5TB. To copy one reel of the film to a hard drive (7200RPM SATA 6gbps disk in a dock) takes 2-3 hours. We then remove that drive and move it to the next workstation (say, from resolve to the restoration system). That then gets copied to the RAID in the restoration system. 2-3 more hours. Now we've spent an entire work day moving the files from one machine to another, before we get any work done. To do the entire film is a couple days of just copying files, renders aside. When we're done, one reels of film (as DPX) will fit on one LTO5 tape. I'm pretty sure we'll be able to fit all of the ProRes versions (10-12 files) on one, maybe two LTOs, depending on what they decide to order. DPX is a wildly impractical format. The only way it works smoothly is if you have a massive and incredibly fast centralized storage system that uses something like 10-40GB Ethernet, Infiniband or FibreChannel. That's expensive stuff (though we're working on a cheap 20-40Gbps Infiniband SAN that I hope to get wrapped up in June). It's also clunky, because you really can't do this over standard networking protocols like SMB, which would be the easiest way to go. Instead you have to use iSCSI, which isn't complicated, but it means only one workstation can access the files at any given time, unless you've spent tens of thousands of dollars on an enterprise-level SAN with proper management software.

You really can't compare Super 8 to 16mm on a lot of levels. For one, it's usually more expensive per foot to shoot Super 8. Good lenses are available for some super 8 cameras but they're harder to find than good lenses for 16mm cameras. Super8 is inherently less stable than 16mm and that goes a long way towards getting a sharp image. If you want the Super 8 look, then go for it, but it's not going to look the same as the 16mm unless you're shooting with something like the Logmar, which is pin-registered and has a pressure plate. Max8 doesn't really buy you that much, in my opinion. I have a Max8 Beaulieu and it's fun to play with, but the amount of extra film you're exposing is so small that if you just frame it with regular Super 8 and scan on a really good scanner, then crop it in post, I'm not sure it's worth the extra effort for that an extra millimeter on the neg. -perry

Scratch Play can do it and that's free (and 64bit). Apparently, it's just a matter of changing some metadata (the fourcc code) in the file, and then you can do it in Quicktime player as well. But it's a little kludgy and kind of a pain. There doesn't seem to be any technical reason why it won't work, but Apple didn't update Quicktime 7 player to support it without this little hack.

It's the same as in Quicktime 7 on the mac. Quicktime X is 64bit so the playback performance of higher resolution files is better there, but that's not available on Windows. QT7 is 32bit, so it's got some limitations. It's the same engine as in Quicktime 7 on the mac, less the ability to make ProRes files.

Can you define "noise?" -- there's no noise in the analog sense (random high frequency information) in a ProRes file. I seriously doubt that ProRes compression was visible unless you were using a lower quality (more compressed) flavor like LT or Proxy. ProRes HQ or higher is indistinguishable from uncompressed, including DPX.

Putting on my pedantic hat here: DPX isn't a "codec" in the sense ProRes is. [Edit: Gah! Rob beat me to it!] That said, If the film is color negative, there is basically no difference between 10bit DPX Log files and 16bit linear. That's just the nature of log-encoded data. You don't really gain anything from the extra bits unless you're working with linear-encoded files. ProRes is generally linear (it can be log though), so if you're comparing 10bit linear DPX to 12 bit linear ProRes, then yes, you're getting a bit more with a 12 bit file, but not that much. To the OP: we scan 16mm directly to ProRes or DPX, no charge for conversion because it's output by the scanner directly to either (or both) formats. There's definitely a lot more convenience with ProRes, but if I was planning on a filmout, I'd stick with DPX to avoid the compression applied by the ProRes codec. It's minimal (really minimal), but it's there. Hard drives are cheap, so there's really no reason not to scan to an uncompressed format like DPX if you want that. It's easy enough to make a set of proxy files in ProRes at a lower res, to go along with a DPX sequence for editing, and then simply relink with the DPX sequence later in the editing or grading tool of your choice. Best of both worlds..

I played with the Ripple a bit at NAB this week. For $350 it's well worth it for most people who are just getting into grading, or need something compact, either for on-set use or because a full panel takes up too much real estate. Obviously it's missing a lot of functionality you'd have on a full Tangent Element setup, but it's 1/10 the price ($350 vx $3300). So there will be tradeoffs. The device appears to software as if it was an Element tk, so anything that supports that panel should work with the Ripple. The trackballs feel basically the same as the Element Tk, but the rings are different. Still, it's a nice unit for the price. Doesn't feel as cheap as you might expect. I've never used the Wave, but I've read reports from people who have that the Ripple feels less "plasticy" than the Wave. Even though it's plastic.

David is correct, though it does depend a lot on how you expose the film. Traditionally, one would underexpose reversal just a hair to get nice rich blacks. We've found that with reversal that's overexposed by half a stop to a stop, the results in the scan are much nicer than reversal that's underexposed. If this is something you're willing to do, it's worth a try. Generally speaking, there's just a lot more latitude available to negative, and more flexibility in grading because of that. It's a completely different look though, compared to reversal film.

Any scanner and most telecines can do this. Matting is typically done "soft" not in the gate. I've sat in on plenty of client sessions on a Shadow where we did 1.85 and 1.66 transfers with black letterbox or pillarbox bars, respectively. There's nothing special about this because the actual matte is done by the in-line color correction system, or in hardware on the telecine (but not usually by the gate, except maybe on older systems). If the goal is to output a 1.66:1 FILE, then you probably want it done on a modern film scanner, not a telecine. Telecines are designed to output a Video signal, and that means that ultimately, the signal coming out the back of the machine has to conform to standard video resolutions and frame rates (and will depend on the options installed on that machine). A file-based film scanner could care less what the resolution is. We can scan you a file that 16 pixels high by 4096 wide if you want. Not that you'd do that, but my point is that it's not a big deal to make a custom file. The bigger issue might be bringing it into software that's expecting standard resolutions. But it's certainly doable and we do it all the time. -perry

The only difference between ProRes 4444XQ and ProRes 4444HQ is bit rate. Both are RGB, but XQ uses less compression than HQ, and in theory that will help with HDR images where there might be more high frequency information that the HQ compression would lop off. The downside is that you can't easily play XQ files on Windows (you have to modify some bits in the Quicktime Header first to trick Quicktime into handling it), and the files are much bigger. On the mac, it only works in Mavericks or newer. I'm not convinced the gain is worth it for day to day use, to be honest. ProRes 4444HQ is a great format, and works in any application that supports ProRes.

That's the gist of it, but of course the reality is that if you want to really fine tune it you need someone who knows what they're doing, and you need to do it on a system with proper monitors, calibrated, in a room that's got the right lighting and surround color, etc. etc. But to get a flat scan into the ballpark of what it looked like in the camera viewfinder, you can pretty much do it just by looking at the scopes.

We don't charge minimums for scanning. Well, we do, but it's only 50' for 8mm and 100' for 16mm, so it's not really a minimum most of the time. Many of our clients process at a lab they're comfortable with, and have the film prepped and sent to us for scanning. For 8mm, that means Cinelab, Spectra, Pro8mm, and Dwayne's Photo. They all do nice work. Cinelab is physically close to us (and you in NY), so shipping to/from each location is reasonable. UPS Ground is within the overnight zone for NY to Cinelab, and from Cinelab to us. So it's pretty quick as well.

I used to have one of these (20 years ago). It was an absolute tank. The lens mounts were bayonet, but I don't think they were compatible with most western lenses (though I'm sure adapters could be made if they don't exist already). Mine had a set of 9 primes, and they were tack-sharp. I had several 100' mags and one 400' mag. The 100 footers could be a bit noisy but that was mostly from the daylight spool scraping against the inside of the mag. The 400 footer was pretty much totally silent if you had the film on a core. I would say it was just slightly noisier than my Eclair ACL, which is pretty damned quiet. It was built like a tank, by the way. Super-simple, no electronic interfaces, just couple knobs and switches. My only complaint was that it was really heavy, and slightly awkward to hand-hold, which is why I ended up getting an ACL.

In Blu-ray *not* having copy protection is the outlier case. In Scenarist, for example, it wasn't until version 4.5 or something of the BD authoring system that you could make a non-copy-protected disc image for burning without having to Compile, then edit an XML file by hand, then make an image you could burn. It's like non-protected discs are an afterthought. The consumer tools out there can do it, but they use a DVD-like model for the menus, to avoid the insane complexities of the standard Blu-ray menu style, where you have the menus in a layer floating on top of video. What most tools (like Encore) do, is create a flattened movie, and that's inherently limiting. So the problem is that the structure of a Blu-ray disc is an order of magnitude more complex than that of a DVD, and that means it's a ton of work to make a functional authoring system. So most do the bare minimum that's required to get video on a disc that will play in a BD player. I have no experience with it personally, but some people use MultiAVCHD for basic authoring. There's a decent list of tools here: http://www.videohelp.com/software/sections/authoring-bd-hd-dvd You'll find there's really nothing on Mac, though.

When they announced that at NAB a few years ago I talked to them at the show and it was just B/W HDR. The current datasheet on their site doesn't indicate anything has changed. Could be wrong, but if that's the case I'd think they'd be playing that up a bit.

Ok, maybe I'm being a bit harsh. It *is* a nice scanner. I just think you'd be nuts to spend the money they're asking for it - for one thing, it has the same problems with splice bumps that plague the Spirit, Shadow, GoldenEye and other continuous motion line scanners. I can't tell you how many films we have to fix this sort of thing on, in restoration. It's a huge pain in the neck and is inherent to the type of transport/sensor they're using, when you have spliced film. They're great scanners for Dailies and uncut film, no doubt, but they're much less desirable than the Lasergraphics, Xena and other area sensors, or even pin-registered line sensor scanners like the Northlight and Imagica. One thing that really bugs me is that they advertise HDR capability, but that's only for B/W footage. They basically use each of the lines in the sensor for different exposures and then they merge them into an HDR output file. That's something the Director does, but the way the Scanity is designed, that can only work on B/W because you have to use the sensors that would normally be used for separate color channels for different exposure levels. It's clever, but limited. The Director is less expensive, and does true RGB +IR scanning, and is multi-flash HDR (9 flashes total, three for each color channel), so it will pull more out of contrasty prints and reversal than just about anything else out there, color or b/w. I just don't get the Scanity, I guess. -perry

Decoding works fine, all you need is Quicktime, which is free. Encoding is trickier, but as Phil points out there are ways to do it. There are some tools out there that can do it natively (grading and compositing systems), as well as things like MTI Cortex, and a few other applications as well.

Hi David, Short answer is - there are none. There was never proper support for Blu-ray on the mac, Adobe Encore was as close as it got, and that's a very limited authoring system that does a lot of stuff wrong. Professionally, there's Scenarist, and Sony Blu-print (both Windows applications). Both will set you back a lot. I'm not sure what the HD version of Scenarist is going for these days, but it was around $10k last I checked a few years ago. I heard they're asking well north of $50k for the new 4k version, which is totally laughable. Sony was around $20k last I checked, but that was many years ago, so it may be cheaper now. Also, using Scenarist is about as much fun as having your fingernails pulled out. It's one of the worst professional applications ever made, riddled with bugs, clunky UI conventions and gotchas that aren't well documented. I've been screwing around with a particularly hairy Blu-ray for the past 5 days, trying to work around workflow stupidities in Scenarist in order to meet the client's requirements. I don't recommend it! Blu-print is supposed to be easier to use, but I've never touched it due to the high price. This has not been the case for *many* years. It was true in the beginning and it took a few years for them to drop the expensive copy protection fees (coinciding with a significant rise in Blu-ray authoring, surprise surprise), but replicating BD is not much more expensive than replicating DVD was, say, 10 years ago. All licensing fees are rolled into the replication costs and they're significantly lower than they were in the beginning of the format.

I can't speak to the Xena scanners, because I haven't used them myself - Rob is the expert there! We have a 35mm Northlight scanner. If you're interested in a quote, message me or send me an email through the contact form on our web site. Quality wise, I'd put the Northlight ahead of the Spirit and on par with the Lasergraphics Director (though that assumes we're talking about scanning neg - the Director will do a better job on print), especially if you're dealing with spliced film. It's pin-registered and uses a line sensor, but doesn't have the splice bump problems you'll get with the Scanity and Spirit. Why the Scanity is held in such high regard is kind of beyond me. It's essentially a very overpriced Spirit. There are much better new scanners on the market, both in terms of quality and price.

I have a few random mags for cameras I don't own. They're untested but look to be pretty clean inside. Mechanically everything looks to be in good shape but they haven't been tested. Arri 35 BL-3 400' Mag Arri 35-BL-3 1000' Mag Mitchell 35mm 400' Mag Mitchell 35mm 1000' Mag Photos here: https://www.flickr.com/photos/friolator/albums/72157664038315513 I'm willing to sell them as a lot or separately. Make offers! Shipping would be extra (or if you want to give me your UPS or FedEX account for shipping, we can do that). They're located in Boston so if you're local you can pick up in person or come check them out.

Of course that much information is there in the real world. One could argue about whether or not it looks good, but an 8k, HDR digital capture of the real world is going to have a lot more information in it than a similar 4k capture. That assumes you're shooting digitally. And one could probably make a good argument that it looks totally weird and unnatural. Kind of an uncanny valley effect. In the film/digital workflow, more pixels is what you want, and more dynamic range, and more color depth, if what you want to do is manipulate the image without introducing artifacts from the digital realm. If you were to scan a film at 4k DPX and edit at 4k, even today, you'd need some serious horsepower, and ridiculous amounts of drive space. But a carefully considered post production workflow can be constructed that works with something like 2k ProRes files (or similarly compressed formats), giving you much more reasonable working files that you can use on modest hardware. The final master is pretty much a media relink and render away, in most editing and grading tools. ...As long as you're careful about how you go about it in post, this is totally doable, even if you do your editing on a laptop. -perry

Let's step back a bit. I'm not talking about the *picture* on the film, whether that's actors, landscapes or line charts. What I'm talking about is the film: the physical material that contains the image information. The more pixels used to digitally represent this image, the more accurate a representation of that film you will get. It's one (important) metric of of quality in the final digital image, but not the only one. Using a line chart to determine the "max resolution" of a digital representation of a frame of film in lines/mm makes little sense to me, because the creation of that line chart is subject to the vagaries of the camera lens, film stock, how well the image was focused, etc. That is, the film/camera's ability to resolve those lines have little to do with the scanner's ability to scan the film at higher and higher resolutions. At a certain point, you hit the limits of even the best lenses and film stocks in making an image. My whole point is that if one is mixing analog and digital in a DI, for example, the best practice would be to do all your scans at resolutions higher than those you will be outputting, so as not to cripple the image in any way. In the same way one uses extremely slow, fine-grained film stocks for intermediates and prints, one should scan at higher resolutions than what conventional wisdom says are the "limits" of the film, in order to ensure that no damage is done to the image in the digital realm (that also buys some flexibility compositionally, having a larger scan to crop or scale down).