Perry Paolantonio

I finally heard back from Kodak this morning, but because my email mentioned Super 8 (totally unrelated question), they only told me it doesn't work for S8 and didn't give me any pricing. So, re-emailed, and re-waiting for a response. Sometimes I wonder why Kodak makes things so hard for themselves! -perry

on PTRs, kodak isn't the only game in town. I've tried to get pricing from Ted on these but never heard back. http://www.flashscan8.us/fxsys-particle-transfer-rollers-for-scanners-processors-and-bench-based-cleaning/ Kodak's pricing is kind of nutty, hopefully these are less expensive. I'm going to need a pair for the Imagica soon and don't really want to have to buy 6 of them when we don't need that many. -perry

Did you ever get pricing info from them? I've asked and am waiting to hear back... There are actually a fair number of used Lipsner-Smith HFE units out there now on the used market that aren't too expensive. The more interesting part of this press release, to me, is the fact that they're going to start selling HFE in small quantities. That stuff is really expensive...

Ahh, but they are. Start throwing extremely dense neg at it and see what happens. Or underexposed reversal, or a contrasty print. It only took five minutes to train one of our folks on the ScanStation, too: Thread it, click "Load Film" selecting your film type in the process, and if it's negative, click Calibrate Base. But it takes months of use to understand how to make the scanner produce a good image with anything that's not perfect negative. This is not a failing of the ScanStation, it's because of the way image sensors work. You have to make adjustments for certain situations, and you have to go through the film to look for the extremes (like the camera being pointed at the sun, which will rapidly expose fixed pattern noise due to the lack of light hitting the sensor). If you don't compensate for that up front you get a bad scan. Again - not specific to the scanstation, all scanners have to do this and the Cintel is no exception. Sure, if you're only scanning perfectly lit film shot in a controlled environment, you might be able to use it as you've described. But those situations, in the real world, are exceptionally rare.

Without modifications, the old rank/bosch machines are very limited and stuck in the pre-data scan, low resolution world. Most of the things that look like projectors or modified projectors are junk, and certainly aren't suitable for negative film. They might accept it, but I wouldn't expect the film to come out the other end without damage. They're probably fine for reversal in some situations, but again, most of these are limited to HD, and are based around shooting the image into a video camera. It's not until you get into the systems that use machine vision cameras do you start getting quality scans. And even then the results vary wildly depending on the machine.

No scanner is "set it and forget it." Even the ScanStation, which is damned close, requires a trained operator -- not to work the machine or the software, which are pretty easy to do, but to know what to look for and to make the necessary adjustments so you get a good image. Different films require different approaches (even with the same film stock), and it's never just a matter of threading up the film and hitting Go. My understanding is that the Cintel scanner is, in some ways, fussier to use than the Lasergraphics scanners. I don't have hands on experience with it, but I have read the manual and it seems like you have to do a lot more just to get to the point where you're scanning than you do on either of our scanners. I can only speak for the two scanners we have. The Northlight uses RedHat Linux, and while it does use their own software, there's a command line interface to it that's fairly well documented, so you could probably make it work with other tools if so inclined. It is a totally proprietary scanner in terms of the scanner itself, yes. The Lasergraphics scanner uses the software that they built for the Director, years ago. Both of their lines of scanners use the same software. It's easy to use, well designed, and stable. The PC it runs on is a pretty vanilla high end PC. It probably costs about 1/3 of the Mac you'd need for the Cintel. The transport is proprietary, but there is no such thing as a generic film transport one can simply buy off the shelf. The camera is a high end (better than BMD) off-the-shelf machine vision camera with a high quality printing lens. The motors can be purchased from Digikey, I think. From what I've seen of the inside of it, the individual controllers are custom, but that's all part of the transport and there's no way to *not* have that be custom. Each scanner out there takes a different approach to how it does its thing, and there's no such thing as "off the shelf" scanning software. There never will be. Again, too much of a niche market for that, and too many variables to make that realistic. Yes, the Cintel uses Resolve to control the scanner, but it's a special application within an application that does it. It could just as easily be standalone. They only do it in Resolve, I suspect, because the files the scanner produces need to be exported. My point is that you've described Lasergraphics' approach when describing the advantages of the Cintel. The Lasergraphics scanners are more expensive because they work reliably and without much fuss. I really think it's going to be some time before the Cintel is on par with what you can already get today. From what I'm hearing, this isn't the case. And anyone with any history of using BMD products would probably take the notion that a new product of theirs "just works" with a grain of salt. A very large grain of salt. In my experience, a small salt mine worth. We've been pretty loyal Blackmagic customers since the intro of their first HD SDI capture board, over 10 years ago. They used to be a lot better, but in the past 5-6 years, as they've grown, they've released most new products into the market prematurely with tons of hype, and with major issues. We've had to return 3 fairly pieces of hardware because they didn't even do what they advertised (a HyperDeck Pro, an Up/Down/Cross, and their first gen Teranex). Eventually, they added the features we were expecting (and they were advertising from the beginning), but in the case of the Teranex, it took years. Our ancient Teranex box (pre-BMD model) has been able to do the same thing for a decade. My point is just that this is effectively a first generation product from a company with a mediocre reputation for quality, and it's just barely been released after almost 2 years of delays. Early reports are that it's got issues. Given all that, I wouldn't expect this to be reliable for some time. On the other hand, look at the ScanStation Personal line. Comparable with the Cintel on features and price, but the thing *actually* just works. Seriously. If you're thinking of buying a scanner, I'd get that. It's going to cost a similar amount (comes with the PC so you can factor that out), and it's a better piece of hardware with years of hardware and software engineering work having gone into it, and lots of customers using it in the wild. Plus way better support than I've ever had with BMD... -perry

As I see it, the Blackmagic scanner is not the solution. Look at it this way: Scanner: $30,000 Beefy Mac to run it: $6000 Storage: $2000 16mm Option: $5000 Audio option: $5000 So for the hardware alone, you're into it for just about $50k. That seems fairly cheap. However... * Scan speed is real time, so 24fps. 60 minutes of footage takes 60-70 minutes to scan, with setup time. * Audio is a separate pass for now, May be real time with above option * Files copied are pretty lightweight, but useless outside Resolve. You still have to convert them to a more common format * It's a blackmagic product, so it's likely not going to work properly for at least 2-3 years. I'm not being facetious here, I'm basing this on past experience. I would expect that it's going to have a lot of issues that will take quite some time to resolve. Early reports I'm hearing confirm this suspicion. Now compare that to a machine like the ScanStation: * Scan speed is 60fps max. 60 minutes of footage takes about half an hour, assuming 10 minutes setup. * It scans directly to whatever format you want, no conversions * it scans audio at the picture scan rate, regardless of format (optical, mag) * it's based on control software and hardware that's been in the wild for well over a decade and is proven and reliable Yeah, it costs more than double what a tricked out Cintel does. But I can guarantee (again from experience), that it's going to be a smoother ride for whoever buys it, with less downtime and more productivity. It's priced correctly for what it is. The market for these scanners is not and never will be that big, to the point where you can really hit economies of scale. It's just too niche a market for that. The problem isn't that the manufacturers are keeping the costs high for artificial reasons, it's that they've poured years of R&D into these things and have to recoup that money. Sure, the material costs have dropped, but all that R&D doesn't, nor does the cost of ongoing support and development. We're human, and we want things to be less expensive. But when you do the math, you realize that the intangible things (Speed, lack of downtime, reliability, ease of use, smoothness of the workflow, etc) are what you're paying for. And it's worth it. We rely on our ScanStation, and the thing just runs and runs and runs the way we'd expect it to. Same with the Northlight. They're solid machines, built for the long haul. I'm certain the Cintel will not be up to this level of quality, because that's not BMD's M.O. We've been bit by that same thinking in the past. We still use Spruce Maestro for DVD authoring even though DVD SP does most of the same stuff. Why? It's rock solid, won't trip you up, and outputs perfectly compliant discs. We spent $25,000 on our blu-ray authoring system back in the day for the same reasons. We've tried saving money on key pieces of hardware in the past, and have found that every time, we would have been better off spending more for a product with better support, better stability and greater reliability. Hardware and software. As they say, you get what you pay for...

Calling the manufacturer of a scanner to find out why a given lab charges what they do doesn't make much sense. The scanner manufacturer has nothing to do with the pricing structure of the labs that buy their gear. Some labs charge by foot. Some charge by hour of labor. Some charge by hour of footage multiplied by some factor that accounts for their costs + profit. Comparing one lab's pricing to another can be tricky, because there are a lot of variables, including how they have their systems set up. That said, most labs are reasonable and will either stick within your budget (if it's reasonable, and possibly with the caveat that higher paying work will get priority, so they use your jobs to fill in schedule gaps) or they'll tell you they can't do it. It sounds like the scenario you've described uses the old telecine model, which is based on a "room" rate - much like you'd deal with in the audio mixing/mastering world. That is, they figure out what they need to be making per day or hour on the room, which includes all the gear, and base the rate on that. Because your job ties up that room while it's being worked on, all that gear is tied up as well, and they can't be using it on other jobs. That's because in that model, the equipment is all interconnected. Modern scanning is different from telecine in that color correction and scanning are separate processes, so it's entirely possible (depending on the lab's setup) to do the two things at the same time. In fact, it's common. So the old telecine model doesn't really make a lot of sense these days, unless the lab's setup requires it. We use a hybrid model for pricing - scanning is always by foot, but grading is by hour (with a multiplier). We split them up because 90% of our customers do their own grading these days and just want our scans. Restoration is based on an evaluation of the footage, and then we figure out an estimate for the project. DVD and Blu-ray authoring are similar, but the estimate is based on how much footage there is, the formats we're starting with, and how complex the menu design work is. It depends on the scanner, but in most cases your assumption is incorrect. Our Lasergraphics scanner can go directly to ProRes files. Our Northlight cannot. Most high end scanners can't go direct to Quicktime, actually, there are just a handful that do. Most go to DPX or TIFF sequences. If you want Quicktime files from our Northlight, we have to scan to DPX, then move those massive files over to our Resolve to render out. If you're talking about 4k scans, getting 20 minutes of files from the Northlight to the Resolve is either a 6 hour copy over the network, or 2-3 hours to copy to a transfer drive, and then 2-3 hours to copy off the transfer drive. In other words, it takes a whole day to make that file set, tying up the scanner PC and then the resolve during load out and load in. It doesn't work like that. We have at least a dozen workstations running at any given time: Scanner controllers, Resolve workstation, PFClean restoration system, one for only Blu-ray authoring, one for only DVD authoring, 3 PCs that do nothing but encode video to MPEG2 or AVC, Computers that do nothing but act as render farm nodes for software that supports it, two FCP workstations configured for different realtime work, etc. None of them are slouches either - most of these machines are high end workstations with 32GB or more RAM, massive GPUs, most have at least 12TB of local RAID storage that can move files at 1GB/second, plus a 20TB centralized network storage system that any computer in the office can access. And yet, it takes a long time to do certain things. You can't simply say that more computers mean it's faster, you have to take into account the differences in the capabilities of those systems, the way the machines are interconnected, the available storage space (20 minutes of 4k DPX is over 1TB of data - there's no quick way to move that around). In some cases, the fastest way to convert that is to leave it on the machine it's on and run the conversion. But that ties up that machine from doing other work, like scanning. They probably haven't. And even if they have, that's beside the point. Is the lab there to do charity work or is it a business? It's a business. Once the machine has been paid off, they should be able to earn some money on it for a bit before having to upgrade to something new, no? I will tell you that we've had our Lasergraphics scanner for 2.5 years. It's not paid off, and we paid a fraction of the Million you mention. We're scanning on it daily, but it will still take another 1.5 years for it to be fully paid off. Why? Because the scanner payments are only one part of the equation. We have to pay for Rent, Electricity, Insurance, Payroll, software and hardware updates, support contracts, new computers, repairs, advertising, shipping, supplies like leader and splicing tape and LTO tapes and hard drives, office supplies, office furniture, etc, etc. The list goes on. And when the scanner fails and requires out of warranty repairs, who pays for that? Then with all due respect, you're living in a fantasy world. Time and technology don't stand still. Companies are constantly re-investing in new gear and new resources because things break, new formats come out, new methods requiring new hardware, etc. It never ends. -perry

There's no simple answer to that, since it really depends on what you want to do. We have a Lasergraphics ScanStation, which we love. It's a workhorse - super high quality optics, flexible design (does 8mm, S8, 16mm and S16 in our setup, but could also do 35mm and other less common formats with upgrade options, and it handles a bunch of audio formats as well). It's a CMOS-based system, so it has some limitations, but for 95% of the film we put through it it's fantastic with just the default settings, and gives you nice flat scans for grading. It's well designed hardware and software and just works. It's also well over $100k, depending on what options you get. We also have a Northlight scanner for 35mm. Picture quality there is great - it's an RGB sensor, pin-registered, etc. It's just very, very slow so it's not suitable for things like digital dailies or quick turnaround jobs. Because we're in Boston, where there's almost no 35mm film production, quick turnaround time on that usually isn't an issue. If it was, we'd probably get the Lasergraphics Director, which is a full-frame CCD, multi-flash HDR, etc, etc. It does 16mm and 35mm, but it's well north of the ScanStation in price - nearly triple the cost. I personally don't like the Scanity. I think it's an overpriced scanner using an outmoded design. It's got issues with splice bumps, HDR is only there for B/W film, not for color, and it's a monster in terms of energy consumption, physical size and cost. I'm not really impressed by it. The Arriscan I don't have any real personal experience with, other than working with scans made on it that were done elsewhere (we're currently doing restoration work on a major film that was scanned on one of these, and while the picture looks good for the most part, it doesn't deal well with things like fingerprints. The Lasergraphics scanners have a lamphouse that's designed to mimic most of the benefits of wet-gate scanning, and that includes hiding fingerprints. That actually works. I've tested it on film here and fingerprints basically vanish. We've spent weeks digitally cleaning fingerprints off this film, when that could have likely been avoided by scanning on different hardware. Not our call though, the film was scanned in Italy because it couldn't leave the lab). I've never used the MWA or DCS scanners. Conceptually they're similar to the two scanners Lasergraphics makes, depending on the version you get. Also, I forgot to mention the GoldenEye. I'm not a fan. it's a continuous motion line-sensor scanner like the Scanity, so it's subject to a lot of the same issues with splice bumps and warping. neat idea, but unfortunately, the wrong approach for the kind of material you'd be using it for (archival film), in my opinion. And there's the Blackmagic scanner. Still haven't seen any examples from this, but it's limited in so many ways, I'm not sure it's really all that useful. -perry

http://www.lasergraphics.com/ http://www.filmlight.ltd.uk/products/northlight/overview_nl.php http://www.dft-film.com http://digitalcinemasystems.net/ https://mwa-nova.com/ http://www.kinetta.com/ Not sure if Arri is still making the Arriscan or just selling off remaining stock of the machines (that's what I heard a couple years ago - they still list it as an active product) https://www.arri.com/archive_technologies/arriscan/ By the way, there are a bunch of makers of cheesy small gauge scanners as well, which vary widely in quality. The scanners above would compete with one another in head to head comparisons and would all be considered "professional" or "high end." They all have strengths and weaknesses, and some have more features than others. But I'm fairly certain that's a complete list of manufacturers of at least 16mm/35mm scanners. All of the scanners above can also do small gauge (8/S8) as well as 16/35. Some can do less common formats like 17.5, 9.5, etc

The point of a scan is to get as faithful a reproduction of the film in digital form as is possible. So when you do a flat scan, most scanners will allow you to tweak lift, gamma and gain, but we only use those to ensure that nothing is crushed or clipped. That allows the colorist maximum flexibility later on, in tools that are meant to do that kind of work, on monitors that are properly calibrated. While we could boost an underexposed neg during the scan, I generally wouldn't.' And yeah - dense neg is where scanners start to have trouble, because you're essentially looking at a low-light situation for the sensor in the scanner, and that means more noise in the picture -- you're pushing the dynamic range of the sensor to its limits in those extremes.

That nolab thing won't die will it? It's not real - Just a design concept from several years ago that was never meant for production. It suddenly started making the rounds on my facebook feed last week again! That being said, someone could totally do this pretty easily these days. lots of Arduino and Raspberry Pi setups with camera sensors out there that could be retrofitted into a 3D-printed Super 8 cart. It'd be a fun project to try to pull off...

The ACL has a C-mount, actually, and then uses adapter rings for other mounts, on a larger screw-ring outside the C-mount. With a small prime lens and battery on a belt pack, it's actually quite comfortable to hold for long periods, even with a 400' mag. Much more comfortable, I think, than a Bolex, which you're holding in front of your face, not on your shoulder. -perry

Is that graded or just flat scanning? Because I haven't seen flat scanning rates that high in a long time. Graded, it might make more sense. -perry

Where are you getting this $2.50/ft number? That sounds like what you'd pay back in 2003: $.80/frame at 2-perf. That's nowhere near a realistic number. While I'd love to charge that much for a scan, something along the lines of $25,000-$35,000 seems more realistic for 45,000 feet of 2-perf 4k scanning in 2015 (And that's on a Northlight, a true RGB log scan, not on a high speed bayer sensor scanner, which would probably be cheaper). ...or are you including more than scanning in that (scene by scene grading, conforming, restoration, etc)? -perry

It's an interesting idea, and that would definitely solve the problem. However, it would still require buy-in from scanner manufacturers, because the basic transport in most scanners and telecines rely on the perforations to know where they are. It'd be easier to do with scanners like the ScanStation, Xena, kinetta and Flashtransfer, since they do what they do in software. But it'd still require a fair bit of engineering, and I think it'd be a tough sell to the manufacturers. BTW - I love the idea of a cheap 2-perf 35mm camera too. We can scan 2-perf on our Northlight and it looks amazing. I'd love to shoot some myself at some point! -perry

That's essentially impossible - you need some way to know where you are, and perfs are the obvious choice. I'm not sure what Carl is working on exactly, but the frame edges are not a good way to either count frames or register the film, since it's entirely possible for the edges to disappear in to the area outside the frame boundary. That is, on a positive image, a dark frame will have no apparent frame edge because it blends in with the unexposed film around the frame. Perfs are the only logical choice for knowing where you are in the film.

It's not that simple. You're talking about scanning a frame that spans 2 frames. Firmware/software in the scanner would need to be modified so that the count of frames uses ever other perf instead of every perf, and gates would need to be widened to accommodate a wider frame. Some scanners may not be capable of this at all, depending on their design and the coverage area of the sensor/lens. Theoretically, the ScanStation should be able to do it, and I'm sure the Xena and FlashTransfer machines could probably also be modified, but it's not trivial, and frankly, I think it'd be a tough sell to the makers of these scanners. There's serious engineering time that has to go into that kind of a design change, and you're talking about a one-camera format that may or may not have legs. It's a neat idea, though I'm not sure it even make sense unless it also involves a 200' mag, since you're halving the duration of the film by doubling the number of perfs per frame. -perry

According to the manual for the Cintel scanner, the resolutions for 16mm are ...odd. 1903x1143 for Super16 1581x1154 for Standard 16 These resolutions betray an old school way of looking at scanning, and it make sense since the basic design is based on an older Cintel model. This is something that's baked into the hardware - I think they'd need to do some major work to be able to do 4k scanning of 16mm on this machine, or even 2k. Not saying they can't, but it'd require significant mechanical changes to the scanner, and that's a bigger deal than tweaking some software. To my mind, the Cintel is a non-starter for 16mm. Lately we've been doing a ton of 4k 16mm scanning of freshly shot film on the ScanStation and it looks amazing.

Depends on what you're doing. Certainly for constant motion, and for fast shuttling, servos are better. Steppers are really slow in most cases. But a good microstepping motor/driver can get you some pretty insane precision. The ones in our Imagica, connected to a microstepping driver and geared appropriately, are able to get the film where I want it almost every time. It's not quick, but for the project being described, steppers seem like they'd be easier to work with.

You need a method for counting frames based on perforations. You can't rely on steps of your stepper motor because there's no feedback from the motor that a step was successful. That is, your controller could say "go forward one step" and the motor might not, for a variety of reasons. So relying on a count of steps isn't going to work. Instead, you need a through-beam style photosensor to count perfs. Basically the film is threaded through this device, which acts as an optical switch. When there's nothing blocking the beam it's on (or off, depending on the switch), and when there's film blocking the light, it's the opposite state. Your microcontroller tests this to see where it is and your code keeps a running count of perfs. The trick is, you probably need to use more than one, because the switch may change state before the frame is exactly where you want it. With two of these, you can dial in the exact location of the frame (well, not exact, but pretty damned close). They look something like this (not necessarily recommending this one, but it's similar to what's in our rebuilt Imagica scanner) http://www.mouser.com/ProductDetail/Omron-Automation-and-Safety/EE-SX672A/?qs=sGAEpiMZZMugITGdVIKd7hsRAa3gItZsZV%2fnoou8%2fFI%3d An alternative is to put a rotary encoder on your stepper motor, and count how many rotations the motor actually makes. It's kind of the same idea as above, only you're testing the drive shaft of the motor, not the film itself. In the Imagica we use both, to cross check that the film is in the right spot, before engaging the registration pins (so the film isn't damaged). The resolution of the rotary encoder is important here, if you're using a big motor that isn't going to make a complete rotation when moving the film. You can rig something like this up yourself using a disc with notches on it and some light sensing diodes. You'd probably want the number of notches on the disc to match the number of steps the motor can do, and that might no be possible to 3D print. I'd opt for buying the parts - it'll be more precise, reliable and will eliminate a lot of variables when debugging. Unfortunately, they'll probably blow your $100 budget...

Honestly, it'd be fun to build, and if you have time, I would encourage you to do it. But it's not as simple as you think. Trust me, I've been working on a rebuilt 35mm scanner for well over 2 years now. It's on hold at the moment because we're too busy, but things that seem like they should be simple often wind up dragging out for a long time while you figure out what's not working correctly and get it fixed. It's definitely a fun rabbit hole to go down, but don't expect it to be as quick or cheap as you think it will be. I'm fairly certain that anyone else who has done this would agree with me. That's expensive. What gauge are you talking about, and what resolution? PM me and I can give you a quote for scanning 8-35mm at up to 6k. -perry

It can be done, but as others have said, it's a ton of effort (much more than you may think) and time, and the results probably won't be as good as what you get with a purpose-built scanner. Even on a budget, 2k and higher resolution scanning has become very affordable, so it's worth asking around for pricing. If you're a student, most facilities will also offer student discounts. We do tons of work on student films for people all over the country, many on very tight budgets... -perry

That points to something either wrong in the scanner or in the camera, though - if the camera is using pin registration, every frame should be in exactly the same place when scanned with a pin-registered scanner (regardless of whether that scanner is using a mechanical pin or a machine vision optical registration system like the one in the ScanStation and others). In what way was the registration off? can you describe it or show a sample somewhere? The problem with using the image's frame line as a reference is that very often it's too close to the density of the space between frames, and effectively disappears. For a frame or two this may not be a big deal, but for a long sequence you'd lose your reference points entirely.

This is kind of impractical. Cameras register using the pins, so should the scanner. Relying on frame lines gets dicey when the frameline disappears against the edge of the frame (due to the exposure). That is, a dark frame and dark frameline make it impossible to find. The perfs, however, are in known positions and can be easily tracked optically. -perry