Perry Paolantonio
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Posts posted by Perry Paolantonio
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16 hours ago, Dan Baxter said:
We can agree to disagree instead of you always fighting over everything. You think it's perfect, and I think it isn't and it's hissy - end of story.
I can't find the post now, but I did post something here a year or two ago about this, and I hope to get a version of it onto our site soon to try to put to bed this nonsense you keep posting. But the gist of it is this:
The hardware optical audio module for the ScanStation is a line array camera (not the same camera that takes the image of the picture). It images the optical track as the film passes its gate. Each line (row of pixels) of that image corresponds to an audio sample. The camera takes about 80k lines per second. The slower you run the film past it, the better the sound quality will be, because the audio sampling rate is higher. Any slower than 24fps and the differences are largely academic. Lasergraphics themselves will tell you that scanning the film too fast will result in lower quality sound and they recommend scanning at 24 or slower for best results. And this is easy to test - scan the same film twice, once at 60fps and once at 12fps, then load the files into an audio application that shows a spectrograph. You'll see a lot of noise in the faster scan but not in the slower one.
But let's say you ran the film through at slower than 24fps and it's still hissy. That's because you don't have the (unfortunately named) noise reduction feature turned on. I say unfortunate, because in most of the audio world, noise reduction is a step done *after* capturing the sound and is inherently destructive. In the case of the hardware optical reader in the ScanStation, it's done before the audio sample is even an audio sample. It works like this: The optical track camera takes an image of the track. It then looks at that image and eliminates the random noise of the film grain as well as transient gunk like dirt. The waveforms of the audio are smoothed, and the end result is a virtually noise-free track.
But then you might say "but that's altering the sound!" -- it's not. If you capture the same audio with and without the noise reduction, look at the spectrographs of the two and overlay them, you'll see that the *only* difference between the two is that the noise reduced version has no noise. The actual soundtrack is unaffected by this step.
16 hours ago, Dan Baxter said:I seem to remember you saying that ScanStations don't have software audio extraction - they definitely do and they recently added that "SoundView" feature to select the tracks precisely.
You remember incorrectly - I never said that. The ScanStation has two options: the far superior hardware track reader, or the ability to read the track from the scanned image. It does not offer both at the same time, it's one or the other. The SSP was the first to offer the software track decoding feature because they didn't have a hardware optical reader option for that (one or two of the very first SSPs did, I believe, but it was removed from the feature set of that model). The Archivist has the software option as well.
The difference between the two is that the resolution you scan the picture at, as well as the file format you scan to, can affect the optical track reading. If you're capturing to low bit depth files, or at lower resolutions, like 2k or HD, you're going to get fewer audio samples, because your starting point has fewer lines than the hardware reader does.
If you're capturing to a compressed file format, you're potentially introducing compression artifacts to the image of the track that could affect the sound quality. Probably not an issue with ProRes 4444, definitely an issue with ProRes 422 (non-HQ), or ProRes LT/Proxy, etc, where there's more compression.
The purpose of SoundView is to handle certain edge cases where the track is misaligned on the film. Sometimes when the track was printed to the film, it was slightly off. The hardware track reader does a good job of detecting and automatically centering the track but there are some cases where the track is misaligned enough that you need to manually set some boundaries. This is so the track reader is only picking up the track itself, and not noise outside the track area.
This feature is for the hardware track reader. I don't think it's available for the software reader (might be, but I can't test that as you can't have both running at the same time on the same machine). Perhaps @Robert Houllahan can test it on one of his machines with the latest version of the software and let us know.
16 hours ago, Dan Baxter said:You can plug a dubber into a Blackmagic Cintel - are you not able to do it with a LaserGraphics as well? You're probably right that it doesn't matter much.
Well that's certainly a throwback. I knew they had some hardware ports but didn't realize they made it work. I guess it makes sense since the Cintel engineers still treat that machine like a telecine in many respects. Nobody really works like that anymore though.
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5 hours ago, Andrew Wise said:
As for the standard gate, is it flat also? or does it have a slight curve in it to keep the film running on the edges?
The standard gate looks just like the photo above, minus the hinged pressure plate cover. The left and right sides of the gate assembly are curved but the film sits flat in the gate itself.
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12 hours ago, Dan Baxter said:
here's the hardware/keykode reader but it's hissy and doesn't do a very good job really,
This is objectively false. Seriously, why do you keep posting this?
QuoteYou can also hook-up interlocking mag audio to scanners, you get your dubber and put the soundtrack on it and then get your scanner and plug dubber into the scanner and away you go and you get synced audio.
What scanner does this? Telecines did this, but there hasn't been a need for it for years. Any late model dubber uses stepper motor control and runs at a fixed speed. xtal clocks govern the speed, so if you scan to a 24fps file and capture your mag at 24fps, they will sync perfectly. There will be no drift unless there's a problem with the machines, and no interlock is required.
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On 9/4/2023 at 3:23 AM, Andrew Wise said:
What does the archival/shrunk film gate on the scanstation/archivist look like? And any feedback on how it performs?
It is a hinged, spring-loaded pressure plate that closed down around the film. Additionally there are some rollers you replace on the machine that don't have the V-tracks like the standard rollers. These flatten the film a bit as it goes through the gate.
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Hi Andreas,
Sent you a DM.
But to answer some of your questions: I don't think you can overscan enough to get the soundtrack without modifications to the gate and the pressure plate units. They'd need to be enlarged in order to do that. If you do this, I would also lengthen the gate openings further, so that you can run VistaVision on it - this is just a configuration file change to support how far the projector moves. I did some tests with it using the 35mm 4p gate and it seemed like it would work, but the gate itself was too small, so it picked up black on the sides. We never did the gate mods to support the wider 8-perf frame size
The main thing is that with the physical gate doesn't allow the sensor to see beyond the current frame, and for AEO-Light to work, you need some overlap with the surrounding frames otherwise you have gaps.
Regarding the framing question, look at the config files in the packet I sent you. specifically the northlight.cfg file, which is in the Software Installers folder: Software Installers - v1.1.2711 Linux/fl/northlight-1.1.1297/etc/northlight.cfg -- those are how they were when we got the scanner, and they're a little bit of a mess. Definitely save a copy of your existing config file first, just in case, but it might help to figure out settings that might work.
Down near the bottom are the settings for the different gauges. If I recall correctly, the "format" section defines the area scanned (how much the projector moves). And the crop settings define the output. It may be that your crop size or positioning is not correct, and that's cutting off part of the image.
my guess is that things like the offsets are specific to each machine, so it's possible you have a config file that came from another machine, or maybe is a default value, and that you'd need to play with to get things lined up correctly.
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On 8/11/2023 at 6:27 PM, Tyler Purcell said:
Since it's actual image too, you can't just bake it, which is what you'd do with full coat.
Please don't bake your full coat mag stock.
Most mag that would require a treatment for sticky shed syndrome has an acetate base. (Sticky shed is the problem that baking addresses with audio and video tape) . Baking acetate based stock will destroy it. Acetate shrinks with heat. Please don't bake mag.
That said, baking might work for newer polyester based stock. ...maybe. But poly based mag was introduced much later and is usually in much better shape than acetate to begin with, so it's less likely to need much treatment at this point. There is some very old poly stock (i think it was introduced in the early 70's, but I'm not positive about that). We've worked on films from the mid-80s that still had acetate mag stock. And the widespread use of fullcoat tailed off not that long after, in the 90s, when digital audio became the new standard.
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9 hours ago, Dan Baxter said:
He accused me of spreading misinformation while he believed that Galileo Digital, the US sales agent, was a source of gospel truth!!! What a crock of shit, I didn't spread any misinformation. I wonder if Perry would concede I was right?
You're a real piece of work, man. At the time, confirmed with both Lasergraphics and Galileo digital, the archivist did not offer HDR as an option. The very first ones did, as I said. Then they didn't. Now it is apparently an option again. What is there to concede? I stand by what I said in your quote of my post.
BTW, Galileo Digital is the sole worldwide reseller, not just the US. Resellers in other parts of the world work through Galileo.
Putting you back on Ignore now. I don't know why the cinematography.com decided it needed to email about this post in the first place.
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I think the problem is likely that Yankees hat.
But seriously - the overall image (at least on my iMac, not looking at it with scopes) feels a bit too green. I'm not talking about the grass, which does feel a bit oversaturated, but there is a very slight green cast, which can really make skin tones look funky. The highlights look ok, so in a lift/gamma/gain window in Resolve, I'd pull the gamma a bit away from the green to see if that helps.
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Any modern scanner can create a 16fps file from your film, so just scan it at 16fps. Most edit systems will allow you to work at that frame rate as well and export to 16fps. Then when you're all done, if you need to deliver something at a more standard frame rate, you can pull up to that frame rate. If you're only going to upload the file. just upload the 16fps, because all the standard web-based video sharing sites can handle that.
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DPX is almost never necessary and it's a huge pain to work with - both in terms of the storage capacity required and the speed of that storage just to play the files. Most VFX work, if using image sequences, is done with EXR, which you could easily make from the ProRes files. ProRes 4444 is a good format that is essentially uncompressed in terms of visual quality. The benefits far outweigh the theoretical downsides. See: https://gammaraydigital.com/blog/prores-or-how-we-learned-stop-worrying-and-love-compression
As for the scanners, they're different beasts, and they work differently so it's hard to make an apples to apples comparison. The ScanStation uses a bayer sensor and runs faster as a result. The Arriscan is a sequential RGB scan, so no bayer loss, but it works at a much slower speed. That being said, in HDR mode, the ScanStation 6.5k's imager comes very close to giving you the same kind of color as you get from a sequential RGB scan. We've had some clients who did side by side tests with a Lasergraphics Director (very similar to the Arriscan in terms of how it makes images), and a ScanStation 6.5 in HDR mode, with an oversampled image (scanning the frame at 5k but outputting to 4k). The results were *really* similar. Close enough that they opted for the less expensive ScanStation scans and were very happy with them.
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17 minutes ago, Jaehyun Kim said:
I asked if this feature could be turned off, but they said it works automatically.
Yeah - that's what I was saying. they're wrong. It's something you can turn on and off. The ScanStation makes very sharp scans, regardless of the age of the machine (we have had every model since the very first 2k version), but there are settings you can use that will soften it - such as INR or filtering.
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6 hours ago, Jaehyun Kim said:
It works with INR auto of laser graphics.
This is a terrible feature that should not exist.
6 hours ago, Jaehyun Kim said:You cannot turn this feature off.
Yes you can. It's an optional add-on that you have to pay extra to get. It was devised s a crude way to mask the FPN on the ScanStation 5k camera, and it results in a very soft image. Scan it on a 6.5k scanner, or ask them to turn the feature off. They may not want to turn it off because it may expose the noise. If they don't have 2-flash HDR (a much better way of getting rid of that noise), then INR may be the only option they have at their disposal.
They may also have the terribly named "Filter" setting set such that it's softening the image. this is basically a sharpening filter. Zero is off, but if you set it to a positive number it sharpens and a negative number it softens. We keep it at zero on our machine.
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We have had our ScanStation for almost 10 years now. Only one thing has ever required mechanical/electronic repair: the camera in our optical track reader failed about 5 years ago and needed to be replaced. I can't speak to other equipment though.
As Robert pointed out though, upgrades probably head off some eventual failures. In the 10 years we've had the machine, we're on our third sensor, due to upgrades (from 2k to 5k to 6.5k). In the scanstation, there are a lot of moving parts in the camera assembly, and the upgrade entails replacement of the entire unit, not just the camera.
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25 minutes ago, Robert Houllahan said:
Everything but the Bones or PhantomII workstation to run it.
Pfft! Pull it apart and make a new scanner from it! It's a nice chassis, if a bit overpriced.
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11 hours ago, wally stall said:
I hate to bust your HDR Bubble. But HDR is an outdated offer. 2 people on this thread told me and both I respect highly. Alot of the negative feedback of the archivist. I bet NONE have ever had or seen scans or even in person has seen anything too do with the archivist. I have touched and seen scans from the archivist. And the scans are exquisite and beautiful.
This is a patently ridiculous statement, on several levels:
1) HDR makes a very big difference on multiple levels:
- 2-flash HDR effectively overcomes the lower color sampling of the native bayer sensor on the scanner.
- 2-flash HDR on the full ScanStation results in an internal 14-15bit image (this is inside the scanner, within its image processing pipeline. This information is direct from lasergraphics), vs the native 12 bit image on the sensor. This is important even if you're outputting to a 10 bit file. (This bit depth is less on the 5k version, which uses a 10 bit sensor)
- 2-flash HDR extends the dynamic range of the scanner measurably. Try scanning Kodachrome that's underexposed by half a stop, with both single flash and double flash. You will see a significant difference in the amount of visible shadow detail.
- 2-flash HDR on scanners using the older CMOSIS 5k 10bit sensor effectively eliminates most of the inherent noise of that sensor. This is what Rob is talking about, as he had his ScanStation Personal with that 5k sensor upgraded to include HDR functionality, and that improved the quality immensely. We pushed Lasergraphics to add HDR when we got the 5k upgrade and discovered the noise issues and that eliminated the noise in most cases.
- More flashes = better signal to noise ratio
- Even on non-bayer scanners like the Director, Arriscan, Xena, and DFT Polar, multi-flash HDR is a useful tool for extracting picture from very dense film. Digital sensors don't work like our eyes and have inherently limited dynamic range. So HDR is how you get around that.
2) There is very little negative feedback on the Archivist. I'm not sure where you're seeing that. People love them. It has many of the positive attributes of the full ScanStation, but with limitations.
3) You say the FilmFabriek is "is touted as the best quality scanner on the market." -- Again, not sure where you're seeing this. I've never heard anyone say that about that machine. This thread and several others here have pointed out the many issues with that machine. That it runs the film through alcohol before scanning is kind of meaningless. That's not a wet gate.
The archivist is a fine machine, and is arguably better than the original ScanStation Personal. But it is not the same as a full ScanStation 6.5k, which offers much better optical sound reproduction, HDR scanning, support for more gauges, higher resolution, etc.
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The soundtrack needs to be scanned on the same machine, at the same time as the picture - OR - the device used to capture the sound needs to be exactly 24fps. A projector is not.
It's the same as shooting film and recording double system sound: the camera and recorder both need a common, accurate, and consistent speed. This is achieved in cameras with a crystal controlled motor. In digital recorders, the clock inside the recorder ensures it's in sync.
Projectors have no such mechanism (at least none I've ever used), so it's no wonder the sound is drifting from picture.
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4 hours ago, Larry Baum said:
6.5K scans actually do seem to be stored in a format that allows for wide gamut colors
any scan under 6.5K does NOT seem to be stored in a format that allows for wide gamut colors (all my sample scans when I was first posting here were under 6.5K)
I have avoided this thread because, quite frankly, I think you're looking for a problem that doesn't exist and you have yet to post a single image demonstrating the supposed problem.
But I need to correct this:
The ScanStation's resolution modes have nothing to do with color. They're unrelated. The "modes" in a 6.5k scanstation refer only to the pixel dimensions (and subsequently the speed at which the scanner runs, because lower resolutions mean less data).
Inside the scanner, the camera and lens move closer to or farther away from the film, depending on the mode. In a lower res mode, the only difference from a high res mode is that instead of using the entire sensor it's using a crop, and can run at a faster speed. That is, in 2.5k mode, it's using a 2.5k crop of the 6.5k sensor and is capable of running at up to 60fps. In 6.5k mode, the entire sensor is used because the camera and lens are in a different position, filling the sensor with the image of the film, and this runs at a lower speed because - more data.
The internal processing of the data, the output file formats, all of that is identical regardless of the resolution. The only difference between the various resolution modes is the pixel count and the speed at which the machine can run.
Now, if you're comparing DIFFERENT SCANNERS - say an original 2.5k ScanStation (which used a CCD camera), or a 5k ScanStation (which used a 5k CMOSIS CMOS camera), or a variant with a 4k camera (which I think is still Sony IMX like the 6.5k but a different model), or an Archivist (which technically isn't a ScanStation and uses a different model Sony IMX camera), then potentially you might see some color differences. But those are different machines, not different modes on the same machine.
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This is truly a massive waste of my time but I'm just sitting here right now waiting for someone to show up. so...
1 hour ago, Tyler Purcell said:5 hours ago, Perry Paolantonio said:Maybe with a deep student discount, or a negotiated price for a large production. But certainly not for anyone walking in off the street.
Actually, I'd argue that many shops like our friend Robert's, Color Lab, Kodak Atlanta, The Negative Space, Gotham, etc... if you called them and had a bunch of negative to scan, that .20 - .30/foot rate would not be far off the mark.
I mean I literally said that and you repeated it as if it was your argument.
1 hour ago, Tyler Purcell said:So a random person you've never met calls you up to get work done and they know what they're getting?
Most of the calls we get are from people who have seen my posts here and on other sites, heard about us from another customer, got a recommendation when calling one of our film archive customers, or sent an inquiry through our web site and we discussed their needs and made recommendations based on their budget. I would say that if someone contacts us out of the blue, somewhere around 60-75% of the time we end up scanning their film. They almost all say it was because of the help they got and that other places they called didn't seem to want to be bothered with them.
1 hour ago, Tyler Purcell said:You don't even have a calculator on your website on how much it costs to work with you. To me, that alone turns people away.
In most cases I also prefer when pricing is out front and transparent. But you know what? pricing a scanning job is complex. We offer bulk discounts for large orders. We charge different prices based on gauge and resolution and file format. If the film needs color correction, you simply cannot accurately estimate that with a calculator, because it entirely depends on the nature of the film (Is it an art film with cuts every 3 frames for 30 minutes? or is it a film with long slow takes? those make a huge difference in grading time). Is the film A/B roll cut neg? are these uncored, bipacked outtakes with synced mag track? I mean, all of these things are very specific and some people just don't know the terminology so you need to walk them through it to even figure out what they're going to bring you. Most jobs we do would wind up with higher pricing if you tried to figure it out with a generic footage calculator. Plus, programming something that complex is a significant task if you're going to do it right. Could it be done? sure, probably. But we ask that people describe what they have and what their end goal is, and we make recommendations and send them pricing. Usually via email, and usually within minutes of getting their initial inquiry.
You can't call a carpenter and get an estimate on putting an addition on your house over the phone or on their web site. You will not find a mechanic who will tell you up front exactly how much it will cost to fix your car. For precisely the same reasons.
1 hour ago, Tyler Purcell said:SO even with an arguably shitty scanner, even our OCN clients, love the results. Thus proving, people just do not know, period. They don't! Which is kinda my whole point.
I'm flabbergasted by this statement. I mean, you're basically saying you're knowingly offering services on a scanner you call "shitty" but it doesn't matter because they won't know the difference. I mean, wow. Ok.
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18 hours ago, Tyler Purcell said:
Again, the fact you have clients that will pay your rates is insanity. It shows that people just don't know.
First, I need to point out that our rates are pretty middle of the road even though you keep insisting they're high. I don't believe you for a second that the "going rate" for 4k scans in CA is $.25/ft (I'm assuming 16mm here). Maybe with a deep student discount, or a negotiated price for a large production. But certainly not for anyone walking in off the street.
That said, it's not insanity that people pay what we are charging, which again, isn't high. And it's not that our clients "don't know," it's precisely the opposite. It's that our clients know exactly what they're going to get from us -- they're going to get high quality work, fast, and that we stand behind it. They feel they're paying a fair price for the experience and expertise we bring to the table. A business model that relies on undercutting the competition is unsustainable. It may work for a while, but those prices will eventually have to go up as overhead costs go up, for example.
And as Rob said, a lot of customers will be turned off by low prices, and simply not take their work there.
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8 hours ago, Robert Houllahan said:
The Scan Station's ubiquity has largely made film scanning a commodity as DaVinci Resolve has for color grading and there are shops who use Resolve and charge bargain prices and shops that charge top dollar. And there are shops with Nucoda or Baselight etc.
Racing to the bottom of the price scale is not a great thing and there are many many pro and other clients who won't work with the "cheapest" shop because they feel like something is wrong when the price is too low.
This is not unique to film scanning. I have been through this with nonlinear editing (Remember when Media 100 and Avid systems were close to $100k? FCP and Premiere killed the high end editor market). Yet we still have professional editors.
And optical discs (Our Spruce Maestro DVD Authoring system was $20k, used. DVD Studio Pro and Encore killed the DVD Authoring market - for a while: flooded it with people who had no idea how to make a legal disc, because the cheap software allowed you to do things that would break on some players. They eventually came back to us to have the work done right and the work only dropped off when people stopped wanting optical discs).
And like you said with color grading - it wasn't that long ago that a Resolve system was about $100k and required a rack full of hardware to run. I'm rendering out a bunch of stuff behind this browser window on a cheap iMac right now, in a $250 version of Resolve. And I know many talented colorists making a healthy living off of what is basically free software. Not because of the tools they have but because of the body of work they've produced and their experience.
It has happened on the production side too - who'd have thought you could buy a decent 4k digital cinema camera for a couple grand, just 15 years ago? Now everyone has a 4k camera in their pocket at all times.
In all cases, the people who know what they're doing are the ones who survive. We still have professional cinematographers, who are able to work with whatever cameras they're given. We still have editors and colorists. Hell, we probably still have DVD and Blu-ray authors ...somewhere.
The ones who have survived and are thriving are doing so because they adapted and dealt with the changes to the market. Services that focus primarily on lowering prices are often the first to vanish once the bottom feeders below them start undercutting their low prices. Eventually, there's nothing left to undercut so something has to give.
Racing to the bottom on pricing is a losing game for everyone (Service providers and customers alike) because the market gets flooded with newcomers who lack the experience and knowledge necessary to do a good job. That leads to customers having to re-do bad work, and service providers having to deal with all manner of BS. You have no idea how many phone calls and emails I get from customers who got bad information from the internet from supposed experts who have only been at it for a little while. Seriously, sometimes it feels like half my day is spent explaining how what they heard somewhere is wrong.
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30 minutes ago, Tyler Purcell said:
It was quite common for negative cutters in the past to not re-splice after they pulled selects out of negative rolls.
So you're talking about outtakes. Yes - what you describe is fairly common. But most film we get from archives has already been re-attached with normal tape splices and the paper tape removed. We have seen what you described, and we simply fix it (though more often than not, the paper tape holds just fine and it scans without issue). There are rarely more than a few of these in a typical 1000' reel. Again, it's not really a big deal and not all that time consuming. While one reel is scanning, you can easily prep 5000 feet of film at the table next to the scanner including multiple papertape splice repairs.
30 minutes ago, Tyler Purcell said:The cement splices are the ones that fail for us.
I literally cannot remember the last time we saw this happen. I just asked Benn, who does 99% of our scanning, and he can't remember having seen a failed cement splice in the 8 years he's been working here.
30 minutes ago, Tyler Purcell said:The auto splice detect feature is nice, but the splices for us fail as the film comes off the reel, not as it goes through the scanner. Once the tension is lost, the film stops scanning immediately. You also can't watch what you scanned as it's DPX files, so you have to open Resolve, load the file up and find out where you last were. It's extremely frustrating and time consuming.
I don't think you understand how that feature works on the ScanStation. it doesn't detect splices. if the film breaks, you fix it, press a button and it figures out where you were and continues. You do nothing but press a button.
That being said, resuming a scan of DPX files that failed is even easier than a scan to a containerized format like a quicktime file. If your workflow doesn't allow you to resume a scan easily simply by starting where it failed, I don't know what to say. Resolve should have nothing to do with it. looking at the file should have nothing to do with it. You just tell it to start from the frame you want it to start from and let it run.
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3 minutes ago, Tyler Purcell said:
So $5 per 50ft to joint it to a larger reel or $5 per entire reel built?
No. We charge $5 to prep a single reel. We charge $15 to consolidate 8 reels onto a 400 footer. Both prices include splice repair if necessary (usually not necessary), leader, and basic inspection. It takes all of 10 minutes to string together 8 reels. I don't see why you think this is so difficult.
6 minutes ago, Tyler Purcell said:Your scanning rate is the same per foot no matter the format?
No. I never said that.
6 minutes ago, Tyler Purcell said:Yea for our restoration jobs, we've found half or so had bad splices that needed to be repaired. We do charge the clients separately for that work.
Restoration is our primary business and we've scanned millions of feet of film. And bad splices are rarely a problem.
7 minutes ago, Tyler Purcell said:5 hours ago, Perry Paolantonio said:Only the archives, and collectors of specific kinds of movies (prints, or in some cases things like Super 8 concert footage), want to keep them separate. We are almost never asked to return the film in the original boxes, but we always return the boxes with cross-referenced numbers for the film on the reels.
So far every archive we've done, wants the film back in the original containers. We have a system for it, but the process can be very time consuming.
Please read what I wrote, and then what you responded to. the first three words in my post, in particular.
For home movies, nobody wants their films separated, except in cases where the film is of some specific significance and they want to keep it apart from the other reels. This almost never happens with home movies, which was the context of my post. Please stop cherry-picking what I'm saying because you're taking everything out of context
10 minutes ago, Tyler Purcell said:The 8mm and Super 8 formats are totally garbage formats. Kodak can't even cut the perf's properly for gosh sakes, not that it even matters as the pulldown claw doesn't fit the perf, but it's a horrible design.
What matters is the content on the film and we treat it with great care, including wet gating and doing full restoration.
It's just MUCH more fragile than 16mm, you have to be very careful with it.
First, they are not garbage formats. That attitude, and several posts in this thread, make it pretty clear that you don't consider small gauge film worthy of the effort. Well I guess that's your prerogative, but I think it's a pretty bad attitude.
Super 8 is a format that was built for convenience, not quality. 8mm film actually looks very nice (usually better than S8) because the cameras and the transports are better. They are not "MUCH more fragile" they are simply smaller. They are the same film, cut to a different size.
And as for the S8 Perfs, you are again spreading bad information. The perfs are cut to the specifications of the format, likely using the same equipment they were using in 1965. We have scanned some of the first Super 8 films made, from the mid-60s, and they exhibit the sawtooth-pattern behavior we've talked about here in other threads. That is not "incorrect" it's by design. In projection, you don't really see that weaving so much. When scanned (something Kodak's engineers in the 60s probably never imagined), using a different mechanism than projectors and cameras use, the problem will manifest as lateral weave. But this is easily fixed simply by emulating the edge guide in the camera, in software. This is what the ScanStation does, and we get nice, steady images out of the machine for S8. If your scanner isn't doing something similar, it's doing it wrong. It's that simple.
16 minutes ago, Tyler Purcell said:Our machine has a really good imager, arguably with less problems than the 5k imager in the Archivist.
the Archivist does not use the CMOSIS 5k imager that the SSP and the ScanStation used for a while. I believe it's the same family of Sony sensors as the full ScanStation uses, just at a lower res. Don't confuse the two. I don't think Lasergraphics has used the CMOSIS sensor for a while now.
19 minutes ago, Tyler Purcell said:I'm hoping Blackmagic releases a new scanner at some point that actually works. I'd prefer to go that route because it integrates much nicer in our workflow and with a decent imager, it would be a nice scanner.
they won't. it took them years to release a minor iteration to the scanner that basically improved the light source to try to overcome the noise. It's a poor design.
20 minutes ago, Tyler Purcell said:Where I agree, we'd probably get 20% more work if we had a scan station, but we'd have to charge .60/ft to stay in business, where everyone around us is charging between .20-.30/ft.
There's so much about this that makes absolutely no sense I don't even know where to start. So i won't. Enjoy complaining about your HDS that is simultaneously garbage and the only machine that can possibly fit your business model.
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18 minutes ago, Tyler Purcell said:
Babysitting is being by the scanner and waiting for a splice to snap.
You know that 5 of our last scan jobs, sent us camera negative that had failed splices? Some rolls were fine, others weren't. If you drop a splice, it's now costing you more money to scan that film. We do charge clients for the extra labor, but it's very time consuming when you have hundreds of 400ft rolls, some with and some without splices.
Failed splices in camera negative, including 50 year old A/B roll cut neg like the one we have on the scanner as I type, are so rare I can probably count on one hand the number of times we've had to deal with that. If you're having this problem with newly processed film, you need to talk to the lab. Either that, or the scanner is putting too much tension on the film.
We deal with failed tape splices on workprint and on home movies occasionally, but most of them go through the ScanStation without issues. Those that do fail, only require that you fix the splice and press a button, and the Scanner will figure out where it is and resume the scan (a feature exclusive to Lasergraphics scanners, I believe). We mostly see this with old presstape splices on 8mm because either the adhesive failed or the person who applied the splice only did one side, or didn't burnish the tape enough to really get good adhesion. Even so, this doesn't happen that often. maybe once every few months we'll get a reel that's just riddled with bad splices and like I said earlier, we confer with the client and if they approve we fix it and bill them for the time it took.
Honestly this is not the major profit-killing problem you're making it out to be. If your scanner is having this problem this frequently, I'd question how much tension the scanner is putting on the film.
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10 hours ago, Tyler Purcell said:
Oh so you prep, clean, wet gate and post cleanup every roll you scan? I've never heard of such a thing.
So you'd charge me the same rate if I send you a brand new cleaned, prepped roll of color negative per foot, then you would for old home movies?
As I have already said in this thread, We charge a nominal prep fee, which includes adding the necessary leader, and inspecting for and repairing any bad splices. Cleaning is extra, though it's not always necessary.
We charge for scanning by the foot. If your reel arrives prepped from a lab, you pay the per-foot rate. If your reel requires prep, you pay an extra $5 to prep the roll plus THE SAME per foot rate, yes. If your reel requires cleaning, you pay extra for cleaning. We recommend that newly shot film is prepped and cleaned at the lab, since that's just best practice.
10 hours ago, Tyler Purcell said:So you've never had brittle film, with bad splices and cracked perfs?
All the time. The ScanStation doesn't really care about broken or even missing perfs in most cases, unless the film is so damaged and brittle that it can't be scanned without further treatment. That is not a service we currently offer in house, we refer the client to a third party with proper ventilation, who can treat the film (a slow process of soaking in something like FilmRenew, to bring some pliability back to the acetate base). We evaluate each reel and let the client make the call about what they're going to do with their very damaged films.
If the film has an unusually large number of bad splices, then we confer with the client and will fix them all, for a small additional fee. But we do splice repair as a matter of course when prepping old film. It doesn't take that long, it's simply not worth it to get all nickle-and-dimey over something so trivial unless the film is literally falling apart and it will take someone more than 30 minutes to fix it. That happens sometimes (we just did this with an old 16mm workprint with maybe 100 splices or so that had to be replaced), but it's rare. You make it out like all home moves are like this - most, the vast majority - are not.
10 hours ago, Tyler Purcell said:If I were to hazard a guess, the reason you've been successful is because you got a few contract jobs very early on, which helped guarantee you a consistent nut.
You'd be wrong.
10 hours ago, Tyler Purcell said:You bragged about doing 750k feet of home movie stuff from one batch. That's not a grandson dropping off a box of home movies, you're talking about a huge contract job.
No, I never said this. I said we have scanned approximately that much film on our scanner. I never said one job. That's over several years. And the number is actually higher. The scanner reports frames of 8/S8 combined, since they share a gate. there are different frame counts per foot, so it's probably closer to a million, since we have done a lot more Super 8.
10 hours ago, Tyler Purcell said:All of the archives on the west coast have their own scanners. In fact, the UCLA archive has it's own photochemical machines as well. So the idea they'd "sub out" any of this kind of work, just doesn't happen. The luck you needed to have in order to secure a contract with a company that doesn't have a scanner, blows my mind away.
You have a very limited view of how this world operates. Hollywood is not the center of the universe and is not representative of the hundreds, if not thousands, of film archives around the world. UCLA is a unique archive in its scale and the type of collection it has (and FWIW, we have scanned film that lives there, though for a filmmaker, not for the archive - they don't scan everything in house). Some of our archive clients own perfectly capable scanners, ScanStations even, but continue to bring work to us because of the quality and turnaround times we offer. Sometimes it can take months to get something done internally because of bureaucracy and budget machinations.
10 hours ago, Tyler Purcell said:This work is about the same I've had on my friends home movie rolls as well. They all wanted the film back in the original boxes, though what reel they go on, didn't matter.
So my experiences are different then yours. Again, it's not my business.
Only the archives, and collectors of specific kinds of movies (prints, or in some cases things like Super 8 concert footage), want to keep them separate. We are almost never asked to return the film in the original boxes, but we always return the boxes with cross-referenced numbers for the film on the reels.
10 hours ago, Tyler Purcell said:I don't shun 8mm home movie stuff, work is work, but to classify it as "identical" to freshly shot and cleaned 16mm or 35mm color negative is asinine.
You absolutely do, and are, shunning home movies. You just did it in this very sentence. My point here is that you're treating small gauge film as if it's a second class citizen in the film world. That's wrong. It's not, and the people who own that film, even if they're "just" home moveis, are as interested in seeing high quality transfers of it as anyone. They deserve, and get, the same treatment we give any of our commercial clients.
10 hours ago, Tyler Purcell said:For the record, I'm friends with many archives up and down the coasts, they all have their own staff and machines. Finding an archive that has the funding and hasn't already been scanned or who doesn't have their own machine, is not easy, we've tried.
Just a thought, but maybe you're having a hard time trying to sell scanning services because you're using a completely inappropriate machine for that task, while simultaneously telling the world how bad it is and that it scratches your film!
FWIW, I have yet to meet an archivist who has a completely scanned collection of film, or even a hope of getting there. It's a years-long task that requires multiple people to pull off, even for medium-sized film archives. It simply isn't done. It's such a rare feat, in fact, that the University of Indiana's Media Digitization an Preservation Initiative just did it and felt it was a monumental and rare enough task that they built a web site to show how they did it. https://mdpi.iu.edu/
I have no idea where you get these ideas.
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Anyone try the Lasergraphics Archivist scanner?
in Post Production
Posted
Of course they're all different. Each company is going to process the sound in a different way depending on how they implement it. My point in specifying that it's a line array camera was to differentiate from the main sensor in the imaging camera (used for software track extraction as well), and from the more traditional optical photosensor track readers like the one in the BMD Cintel.
As for curling, that's a red herring - that's going to be an issue no matter what kind of soundtrack reader you're using.
It is possible to enable the software reader on our system. It requires physically disconnecting the hardware optical track reader. The scanner's software only allows one type of soundtrack reader to be active at any given time. You cannot soft-switch between them. We don't usually muck around with the insides of the scanner unless necessary, but I will be doing this when I do some test scans for the blog post I mentioned.