Perry Paolantonio

Thanks. I think the command line ffmpeg with the default settings out lined here seems to do the right thing, at least with the prores file I tested with this afternoon - reasonably quick, too- about 11fps reading and writing from the same disk. I tried AnotherGUI, but it seems overly complicated for what we need to do - the command line is so simple, that's just easier. Ultimately, I'll probably do what we do for most of our in-house tools and build a simple GUI for it for our own use, but for now, this seems to do the trick. Thanks! -perry

It doesn't come up often, but occasionally we get a ProRes file that we need to convert to DPX. In the case of the current situation, it's a ProRes 422HQ 1080p file, but we need DPX for our restoration system. Normally I'd do this in AfterEffects, but I'm wondering if there's a better/more efficient way to do it, say with ffmpeg? Since we don't have AE installed on the restoration system, doing it on one machine and then moving the files means a lot of waiting for file copies to complete. So I'd like to be able to do it right on the restoration PC to save some time. Googling mostly brings up conversions in the other direction: DPX->ProRes, but that's not what we want here. My main concern is avoiding any color-related issues when using ffmpeg - gamma shifts, color space changes, etc. Any suggestions or recipes? Thanks! -perry

Interesting. I'm wondering if Diamant has improved in terms of the quality of the fixes it does - we found the interface to be a bit clunky when we tested it several years ago, but more importantly, the quality of the fixes it was doing in dustbusting mode didn't hold a candle to the MTI. PFClean is a great application, and is a veritable Swiss Army knife as far as film mastering tools go, but it suffered from the same issues - fixes that looked like fixes, instead of being completely seamless. We spent more time futzing with the cleanups to make them invisible in both applications than we ever have in the MTI software. Algosoft is a really interesting tool, and I think it's promising, but so far our 10 years of digital restoration experience has shown us that *no* automated film restoration tool us up to our standards -- too many false positives and too much work to QC the "fixes" they make. The problem with automated restoration tools is that if you run an auto-pass and then go back through it, you're much more likely to miss a subtle artifact than if you just do all the work by hand. That way every fix requires a conscious effort and it's much harder to end up with artifacts. For us, the best strategy is to approach film restoration 100% manually. It's more expensive but the results are superior and we can be totally confident that it's artifact-free. We just upgraded our MTI to DRS Nova (the newest version), in fact, in anticipation of our next large project - a major 35mm feature from the 70's that's riddled with negative dust from the 4k scan that was done in Italy last year. By the way - good call on the ScanStation. You'll love it - It's an amazing machine. I absolutely adore ours! -perry

Yeah, I've checked out those Kodak mono CCDs - really nice. I'm thinking something like 8k makes sense. I have 4-perf and 8-perf gates for the scanner, so it would be fun to be able to use that vistavision gate. Not that there's a lot of call for 8-perf scanning these days, but still... As for the sensor, I figure I'll cross that bridge when I get to it though - I'm using a library for the camera control software that's made by the manufacturer of the test camera and its proprietary PCIe card - the nice thing is that it's compatible with their generic Cameralink cards as well, so swapping the camera out should be more or less seamless - just an inexpensive CameraLink card and the camera itself. This has been a fun project, but it'd be nice to have some more free time to work on it!

I'm fairly certain that JAI is what's in our 5k ScanStation. The picture quality is outstanding - I'm very impressed with it. For small gauge film, the downsampled 2k output looks really good: http://www.gammaraydigital.com/blog/case-super2k I know that Lasergraphics has a lot of proprietary stuff going on between sensor and disk though, so I'm not sure if you'd get the exact same result in a DIY setup. They're doing some of their own processing of the image to deal with sensor noise, plus each scanner's settings are individually calibrated since there are differences between the camera units. The 35mm Imagica I'm rebuilding has an inexpensive rolling shutter camera in it now for testing (4.5k, though it looks best if you output 2k from it), but that works because the scanner is pin-registered, so it's an intermittent motion. Most likely I'll end up putting a mono sensor in this though, as I'm thinking of designing and building my own RGB+IR LED array. It won't be fast, but it should look great! -perry

I would imagine the best way to do this would be to hand file the bulk of it, always filing away from the film path (toward the camera), so that any burrs are directed away from the film. Then take a Dremel tool to it, with a good set of abrasive brushes and wheels, and polishing tools. That should be able to make it nice and clean and burr-free, though it will require testing on scrap film. Using one of the inexpensive drill-press style mounts they make for these will probably make the job easier.

In most cases, the ProRes 4444 will be sufficient - it's really a pretty great codec. We've found it to be as good as uncompressed, but with smaller file sizes. It's easy to work with and doesn't require super high-end computers to wrangle. If you want a no-compromises format, I'd go with DPX, but be prepared for massive files and a clunkier workflow (you'll need to make proxies you can edit with, then conform the DPX files to those when you're done). This is common enough, but is probably too unwieldy to try to do on your own unless you have a big, fast RAID to deal with the files - especially at 4k. A couple weeks ago I did a blog post on our web site about file sizes for resolutions above 2k (not all, but the ones we deal with most often). It includes ProRes 422, 4444 and DPX: http://www.gammaraydigital.com/blog/just-how-big-are-those-files-anyway So it becomes a trade-off: For most use cases, DPX is probably more than is necessary. If you're doing a bunch of CGI compositing, or if you need to really eke out every last bit of color in your grade, then it probably makes sense. But ProRes 4444 will get you 95% of the way there, in a file that's just a hell of a lot easier to work with. All depends on your workflow and requirements, really.

That's a pretty sleazy way to do business! We usually try to get a feel for what the client is looking to do, and then make some recommendations based on that. For example, if someone has a bunch of Regular 8 home movies that they want to edit together in Final Cut and give to their family, we usually recommend sticking with ProRes 422 for ease of use (but probably at 2k, for flexibility and because the aspect ratio matches their originals, vs HD, which means pillarboxing). Also, you're not gaining much by using ProRes 4444 with reversal film, and the files are bigger, more processor-intensive to decode, and generally harder for a consumer to deal with. If it's an archive or a library, and they want digital preservation copies and something to edit, we usually recommend 10 or (sometimes) 16bit DPX for the preservation copies and some flavor of ProRes that works for them for editing. Most students want ProRes because it's easy to work with. DPX can be a real bear if you're not set up for it, and if you're on a budget and working on a laptop or a low end desktop machine, you're not really set up for it! -perry

Not *about* filmmaking, per se, but: Woody Allen's Crimes & Misdemeanors has him acting as a struggling documentary filmmaker - shooting in 16mm, and some scenes of him using a flatbed. It's a minor sub-plot but memorable nonetheless. There's also the bit in Gimme Shelter, where Jagger is watching the footage of the murder of a fan in the crowd, on a steenbeck, while the film was being edited.

Actually, resolve lite handles up to UHD now.

As others have pointed out, it's more about the way the film is transferred than about the target file format. You can very easily make a DPX file off of a telecine, if it's connected to a digital disk recorder that works in DPX. But because Telecine systems are traditionally video-centric with realtime color correction hardware always present in the pipeline from film to file, any color correction that happens at that stage would be baked into a Quicktime file, DPX, or videotape. If the HD is done on a telecine, and you're not seeing details in the highlights, it's probably because the colorist chose to blow those out to get the desired look. Data scanning is a different workflow, where the color correction stage is separate from the scanning stage. The idea is that the data scan should capture the full dynamic range of the film as faithfully as possible, so that the maximum amount of information is available on the digital files to grade it to the desired look later. Thus, black levels tend to be elevated so as not to crush out any shadow detail, and whites are lowered so that you get all the highlight detail that's on the film and can blow it out in the grade later. -perry

My guess is that if the scan is done treating the film as if it's 16mm at, say, 2k, and the desire is to have a 2k scan of the 8mm frmaes, then each of those frames will need to be enlarged digital, post-scan, thus enlarging the apparent size of the grain.

Be glad you only fried the light meter! when I was in school we were never told not to use 1.5v alkaline batteries in the 6080s the film department loaned out to students ,and I personally fried a whole camera because of it. They're nice, but seriously fussy cameras. One thing they do have going for them in terms of shooting sync sound, is that they're pretty quiet. If you're serious about shooting sync sound, you probably want a camera with crystal sync, since that will guarantee the speed of the camera is consistent. As long as you do, and you use a digital recorder, all you'll need to do is line up your slate/clap and everything will remain in sync. If you don't have a camera with crystal sync, the two will drift apart and you'll have to do some audio editing to keep things in sync, especially over long shots. -perry

Depending on the scanner being used and your ability to create one, a simple EDL might make more sense than splicing your original film, if all you're looking to do is scan selects. We do this fairly often on our ScanStation with 8mm and 16mm film. Each scanner's software is a little different, but we can set it up with either an imported file (a simple text file), or manually by entering the start and end frames of each clip then doing a batch scan. Running spliced film through the machine isn't a problem, but the more the film is handled on a splicing bench, the more likely it is to pick up unwanted dirt or adhesive gunk, get scratched, etc.

As someone who buys and sells a lot of stuff on ebay (and I sell with a no-returns policy because a lot of people like to buy stuff and then return it if they have second thoughts, not because the item is damaged), I can say that a quick note to the seller indicating that the unit is DOA and that you'd like it addressed or you're going to be forced to leave them a bad rating, will typically get results. Even with the no-return policy. That said, it's probably a good move to have the camera overhauled anyway, and the 4008 is a really nice one when it's working, so it makes perfect sense in this case to let it slide. Still, I'd let the seller know they dodged a bullet. Those negative ratings really ding regular sellers on fees and search rankings.

We have several regular clients who shoot on Scoopics, and the image quality is always very nice - sharp as a tack and quite steady. I personally love my ACLII, but it's probably out of the OP's price range, once you factor in lenses and additional mags. If you're shooting anything long form, or where reloading the film is an issue, it's hard to beat a camera that takes preloaded mags. It takes about 10 seconds to swap out mags on the ACL. The trade off is that it's a bit on the heavy side, but it is built like a tank! -perry

The scanner cost is list $29k, and I think I heard them say the 16mm upgrade would be in the sub-$5000 range, but I might be wrong on that. Regardless, they were talking a very small amount on the upgrades. By 'business case' do you mean someone like Rob or myself, or are you referring to Blackmagic? Speaking for myself, based on what I've seen, the machine will be of limited utility. That doesn't mean it's not good, nor does it mean it's not useful. But I wouldn't consider this to be anywhere in the class of our ScanStation. It's geared towards a market I'm not sure I understand - making a sprocket-driven scanner in this day and age seems odd, because the vast majority of film to be scanned is from archives and back catalogs - all material that's much less likely to be suitable on a sprocketed machine. Of course, it depends on the machine, but based on what they've told me, it's not for archival use. That's contrary to their marketing, which says it's for exactly that purpose. So I don't really get where they're going, or frankly, why. I think for Cinelab, which is also processing new film, it might be really nice for doing things like dailies. The sprockets worry me, because most of our work is with archival film. For new film, this won't be a problem at all. I think all that any of us can say at this point is that it'll be attractive looking. I don't think any of us can say it will be more reliable or less costly on maintenance. I guess compared to a Spirit, probably yes. But to other more modern scanners? Maybe, maybe not. That remains to be seen. I'll be honest, I vacillate between being excited about this, and worrying about whether the scanner will actually do what they say it will do. Frankly, that hasn't been BMD's strong suit for the past several years. Also, in terms of reliability, this is a machine with moving parts. We're not talking about solid state electronics - motors can burn out, belts can need replacing, things happen that can't be fixed with firmware alone. How responsive will they be when there's a problem, software or otherwise? Anyone's guess at this point. In contrast, I had an issue with the control software for the ScanStation a week or so ago. I identified the problem, sent them a report, they reproduced it and sent me a build of the software that fixed the issue, in less than 24 hours. This allowed us to continue on with a job that would have otherwise required a major workaround with several hours of lost time, with no apparent delay to our client. I will go on record as saying that that level of responsiveness will *not* happen with Blackmagic.

Rob, You're correct that it's CinemaDNG - that's what they were saying at NAB. Also, the demo at the time was just the film playing to a display window on the laptop - nothing was being captured, as far as I could tell, it was just pass-through to the screen. The software was as barebones as it gets, though I'm sure it's improved since then. They told me that the workflow is to make DPX files from the raw capture files if that's what you need, otherwise bring the Cinema DNG into Resolve directly. So, yeah.

It's also apparently limited to max 2% shrinkage, which isn't very much. I find this curious, since they seem to be marketing the scanner to archives and film catalog holders that want UHD files for television release. We've seen 16mm film from the 80's with greater shrinkage than 2% (our ScanStation can handle up to 5.5%). It's definitely not suitable for archival scanning, at least as it's currently configured. But with such a small shrinkage tolerance, I'm not sure how it'll handle poorly stored film that's not as old. I suppose they could make an archival sprocket wheel with a more forgiving sprocket pitch, but I find that to be a clunky solution since you need a set of wheels for different shrinkage levels. Also, unless this has changed since NAB, 16mm is not scanned using the full sensor. That is, the camera/lens doesn't reposition itself for 16mm, it merely uses a window at the center of the 35mm sensor for 16mm, so it's not taking advantage of the sensor's full resolution. I wouldn't hold my breath for Super 8mm scanning on this machine, and even if it does happen, if this is how they're handling smaller gauges, Super8/8mm is probably not going to look very good, since it'd only be using a tiny fraction of the sensor's capability. Blackmagic has been tight lipped about shipping dates, and when a beta program might happen, if at all. I think this scanner has some very interesting uses, but I also think those uses may be inherently limited due to the design of the machine. I hope I'm wrong.

For Super 16, the resolution question (HD vs 2k) is less relevant than it is for a 4:3 image (where you get a lot more bang for your buck with a 2k scan). That is, you're not gaining a ton of resolution by doing 2k vs a 1080p transfer: it's only slightly higher res. That said, If you transfer it on a telecine, by the very nature of the machine, you're "baking in" color correction decisions at the time of transfer. Telecines are designed with a video-centric workflow in mind: Film to Video. That process always involves some kind of color correction hardware in the pipeline, and the resulting video is permanently affected by that color correction. If the blacks are crushed or whites blown out during this stage, detail that might actually be present on the film in those extremes would be unrecoverable. On the other hand, a true data scan is designed to capture the film without making aesthetic decisions about the color, with the expectation that you'll do the color correction later. This is a very different workflow. It's not as fast as telecine, since it adds that extra step, but it buys you a lot more flexibility. Additionally, many data scanners are not subject to the video-centric signal processing of older telecine systems. That is, you're essentially taking a photograph of each frame at full color bandwidth, without the signal being converted to a video color space somewhere in the middle. Thus, you have more flexibility to color correct as you see fit in a later pass. If you're dealing with film that has splices, I'd avoid telecine entirely, since most of them have issues with frame warping at the splice points. Line scanners (like the Spirit and Shadow) fall into this category as well. Even with a telecine, the frame rate will depend on the capabilities of the machine and the capture system they're using. You just need to ask what they can do - remember that most telecine setups are customized, so a Spirit in one studio might be able to output to different formats than the same machine in another studio. It's not at all unusual to capture a film on a telecine in HD at 24fps to a Quicktime file. It just requires some kind of digital disk recorder to replace the traditional tape deck (if you can capture to a 1080p/24 HDCAM SR tape, there's no reason you can't replace that tape deck with an appropriate DDR of some kind that does the same frame rate). That said, Telecines are meant to run in realtime, so they typically only write to files in standard video/HD frame rates: 23.976, 24, 25, 29.97, etc. Some data scanners only scan to image sequences, which are, as David Mullen says, whatever frame rate you play them back at. Others capture to formats like Quicktime or AVI at a frame rate specified by the operator. Our scanner, for example, can capture to DPX, TIFF, or to Quicktime/AVI files. (Simultaneously, even). We can scan an old 18fps film to an 18fps Quicktime file, or even to a 24fps file that pulls up the 18fps much like you'd do in a step-printing process in an optical printer. That said, as long as you're capturing to a progressive format, regardless of the frame rate, it's easy enough to change that frame rate later in software without affecting the image quality. This is harder (but still possible) when you bake pulldown/pullup into the scan. My personal preference is for scanning, though obviously I'm biased. But if you think about it, it's a simpler process that gives you the most flexibility in post. The cost, these days, should be reasonable for a 2k scan. We only charge a few cents more per foot for 2k vs. HD, for example, because our scanner can scan both at faster than real time speeds. So the main difference is in the data management of the larger files with 2k. -perry

DVD (and Blu-ray) Quality is mostly dependent upon the budget of whoever is releasing the disc. We have clients who insist on new 2k transfers, full restorations, extensive audio cleanup and numerous QC passes on the encoding, for all of their titles. And they win awards and have tons of fans, as a result. And we have other clients who take what the owner/licensor of the film gives them, whether it's a transfer from the 80's on 3/4" or a recent HD master or 2k/4k data scan. Hit or miss that way. Then once it's transferred, picture quality is about how the master is handled - quality of downconversions, quality of encoding, whether any filtering is applied during encoding, etc. There are so many variables along the way it's almost impossible to know from looking at the final product where an issue may have cropped up. (though that doesn't stop internet home theater forums from making assumptions - I've seen some wild conjecture about what films I've worked on from negative to Blu-ray master have gone through - usually totally off-base because they don't know the process or anything about the elements being used). But as for the quality of the film - I don't think it has to do with age, per se. We've seen film from the 20's that looks better than film from the 80's, and at the same time, we've seen film from both eras that's totally unusable. In this case, it's more about how the masters were stored, how frequently they were accessed, and about what elements were used for the transfer, and then the quality of the transfer itself and how the film was handled through to the optical disc master. -perry

How old was this western? Like, silent era? Because even if it's an old transfer of a sound film, it shouldn't appear to be running fast. If it was shot at 24fps, it would have been transferred to NTSC at 29.97 with pulldown - apparent speed will remain the same, but there will be repeated fields. Same *could* be the case for a transfer to 1080i. If the film was not shot at 24fps, then what you may be seeing is a 1:1 frame mapping of the original film to 24fps. That would give it the keystone kops effect of speeding everything up. -perry

Do you know which scanner they did this transfer on? The Muller is not bad, but not top of the line either. The Workprinter is a pretty low-end transfer setup and I wouldn't expect great results with that, since it's basically shooting into a consumer/prosumer camcorder, and the quality will largely be determined by the quality of that camera.

Hope I'm not overstepping here, but I just wanted to let folks know that we've upgraded our Lasergraphics ScanStation and can now handle both mono and stereo Super 8 sound. While mono was most common, since that's what most cameras recorded on the wider main stripe, it was/is possible to record audio to the balance stripe on the opposite side of the film, using certain projectors and viewers. The custom mag head can read both stripes, in perfect sync with 2k scans, at any of the frame rates that the scanner works at. The scanner compensates for pitch changes due to the faster (or slower) scan speed, automatically. Thanks! -perry

The perforations are different between R8 and S8. Many projectors have a switch that lets you change the projector over from one format to another - usually it's a lever or some kind of sliding tab that you pull out or push in. The film is the same width, but the perforation size, placement and image size are different so you need to make sure your projector can switch formats and that you use the right one, or you'll likely shred the film. If it's very old film, I don't recommend projecting it. Maybe look at it on a hand-wound viewer instead, which has a less complex film path, and in which you can see what's happening and stop if the film starts to get damaged. Old film shrinks - sometimes a lot - and putting it through a projector can destroy it in a hurry. As for the reels - the only difference is the hub. There are adapters, but it's not uncommon to see 8mm on S8 reels. -perry