Dan Baxter

Says who that image stabilisation belongs in post-processing? There was a trend away from the "telecine process" where the transfer goes straight to broadcast tape/finishing format. Most of the pin-registered machines don't even show the perfs in the scan/transfer either as they used the full width of the sensor for the picture. Image stabilisation in-scan is part of the optical pin registration, LG calculate how much the frame has moved between frames to correct for the next capture. The better the optical pin registration is the more stable it should be in-scan, requiring you do less in post. The number of different audio formats (whether hardware or software based) also gives them an advantage over competitors. Software audio extraction on a LG is better quality than AEO Light as you may have discovered if you've done some tests. They're not a film restoration software company, they're a scanner manufacturer. Arri and DFT also don't write Kodacolor decoding software. Doing it the way you're thinking would bake it in to the scan, meaning you can't go back to the start and start-over if you discover a better process in the future for the decoding.

It's not really their job to offer software that does things in the post-processing step as the scanner manufacturer. A $20,000 software licence to make this? Not sure who would buy it. It's good you identified the person working on it, that's where that work belongs. In the hands of someone capable taking it on as additional work for the sake of preservation.

Oh agreed. This is actually a 2015 re-enactment of the telecine process for television: With plenty more information about it on the website here: https://www.adapttvhistory.org.uk/16mm/telecine/ Well that really is all they could use back in the 1980's-1990's for the "home movie" market. Telecine prints for television were printed specially low-contrast so that those Rank-Cintel telecine machines like the one above could do a broadcast-quality job. The Elmo systems only had to be basic VHS quality. Anyway, the market moves on. Maybe someone will see this thread who has "scanned" their home movies with Got Memories and will send you some for a re-scan. 😛

Single-chip CCD I believe. That's what everything low-end used. Ha, not surprising! There's way more dynamic range and colour density in GOOD film than people realise. What you can do (if your workflow allows) is deliver both Prores + h264/HEVC. Well he's been transferring home movies exactly the same way for 22 years, so what was standard 22 years ago (2002) he seems to think is still (or should still be) the acceptable standard today. That's why I mentioned Rank Cintel as doing that stuff "professionally" back in 2002 would have been impossible, and prohibitively expensive even if you did manage to find somewhere that could actually scan 8mm on a real scanner. The TVTs were just there to fill a gap in the market until the professional tech improved and came down in price to allow the "professional" market to properly expand into the Archive/Collection/Home Movie work. Got Memories knows that their quality isn't great by today's standards. There's a video where that Phil guy admits it directly: Once you go above $5,000 which is at the top-end of what some of those Elmos and TVT-HD units cost (as well as older Moviestuff units) there's very few people willing to spend the money. Especially while they're still getting work from customers paying $400+ per order at the moment. $400 is a lot of money for individuals, and for what they're spending they should be getting real professional work not work that was "acceptable" for their market back in 2002. He's not doing any prep or cleaning prior to loading the film, he could at least attach Film-O-Cleans in-line but he hasn't. In fact we probably should have mentioned this way back with the first video and that horrible contraption! My guess is that he just would not want to deal the long threading paths and different process of professional scanners and having to actually build up onto the 400ft reels that he seems to detest dealing with, and that he just wants to get to retirement with the lest amount of expenditure on his ageing equipment as is necessary. Everything he's saying about 400ft reels in that other video, take note that he's putting them back onto plastic reels that look to be in good shape - is he also doing the same when customers send in rusted metal reels and putting the film back onto those? Probably, but he doesn't upload a video showing that. If you have access to a professional scanner you can make a DIY device that can come very close or even match the quality of the professional device, with the advancements in the tech it's relatively simple compared to complicated old devices. However when people build things or they have some of that lower-end tech most of the time they will never really see what they're missing if they don't know what a professional transfer would look like or if they don't have a good idea about how film should look. As Joerg Polzfusz mentioned here, a lot of the assumptions that had been made 30+ years ago about "getting all the dynamic range out of the film" turned out to be incorrect. Here is an example: "In order to provide as much creative freedom in the digital world as is possible in optical printing, it is necessary to digitize the full range of the original negative film. This allows the digital data to be 'printed' up or down without compromise in post production. It also allows color grading decisions to be made in context with elements of the final composite. The full dynamic range of a motion picture negative film can be captured in a 2.0 density range." Really the full dynamic range could be captured with 10-bit log by 1992? Note the information came directly from a professional transfer device manufacturer closely affiliated with Kodak, so a lot of that really old information came from "official sources" and from within the industry. If you had a time machine in 1992 and you could travel to 2024 and do a top-spec scan and then go back to 1992 and compare it, then you'd know that those old assumptions were incorrect - but they couldn't see it for themselves in the 90's because they didn't have the tech we have today.

Well basically yes, but I think you're missing the point of the Elmos/Tobins: they are supposed to be plugged into a VCR or a DVD recorder directly so you can record straight to NTSC (or PAL) with no computer involved. That's what they were always supposed to do, and they do it in real-time unlike a comparable "frame-by-frame" Moviestuff doing 1fps or whatever the speeds were back then. What Got Memories is doing with them is not how they were designed to be run - that's the whole point. They're putting them to a digital file first on a computer that is hard interlaced to NTSC. There's a German company that sells converted projectors using DLSRs for capture and they are cheap at about half the cost of a TVT-8 all run on free/open-source software. They bought-out the rights for those projectors it seems, unlike other companies that converted projectors in the past. That goes directly to a frame-by-frame digital file with no interlacing in real time, but of course they're still converted projectors using DSLRs instead of machine-vision camera so they'll have their own limitations. But for a broke hobbyist that just wants something basic they can use themselves they're OK for the price. Interesting he says "yes I'm in it to make money" in that video. Typical art of the grift. Publicly shaming a competitor to make his very low-end company look better (according to Reddit his videotape transfers are no better than his film transfers). Real companies don't need to shame their competitors. You can see he has it plugged into a DVD recorder (as well as a Macbook) using composite video. He says "this is more than suffice for the average consumer". In the 1980's-2000's that may have been correct, but who is he to decide what is adequate for the "average consumer" now? Clearly this Phil guy knows that people are dissatisfied with low-quality work as someone sent him that film hoping for something better than what the last company did. He puts out a LOT of misinformation. "Reels are spliced together ..." So what? For an actual professional company with a LaserGraphics or a Filmfabriek HDS it's not viable to thread tiny 50ft reels individually onto them as they take far more leader than 8mm/Super8 usually have so of course they have to be built up to 400ft or larger reels. They're not self-threading projector motors like a TVT or Elmo. This idea that they can't be broken down afterwards is his own invention. I discussed this last year with a friend of mine who actually does this work, here's what he said about one job: "I recently did a Super8 job with about 2.5hs of footage on 50ft reels. The customer wanted them off the metal reels so I combined them onto new 400ft archival reels and I didn't have to wind them back onto the 50ft ones, which was nice. I labelled them so the customer knows where everything is." If they customer wants them broken back down then they get broken back down. Look how rough on film his machines are and his handling of his customer's film. He is also saying that his competitor's website is a scam because it has a fake 25% persistent discount, well doesn't his website say the same? 50% off - $20 per reel "after discount" with a $400 minimum order. Oh wait, this page says $15/reel "after discount" and as little as .12/ft. He blames the customers for not finding a better company. 16:30 in while he's complaining about the leader tape (which he should have removed BEFORE putting it through the Elmo) he snaps half a foot off the customer's film leader and presumably throws it away. So I wouldn't say he's being particularly careful with the film he's transferring. Towards the end he contradicts what he said at the start and claims "I don't need the business, I don't need the money". If that's the case why doesn't he just send the customers to a real professional? He also says his purpose is to "raise the standards" (of his competitors) - if that's the case why's he still transferring film the same way that he started 22 years ago? He is also telling people that the sound heads cost a fortune and are super rare, yet the German company I mentioned earlier sells their kits equipped to do sound and they're as cheap as anything. As for everything he says about reviews and feedback, I'll tell you a secret: he deletes any YT comments critical of his work. Go on, try it. 😉

No, this company uses a projector to transfer 8mm. They project it onto the wall and film it with a camcorder or something. 2005 - 19 years ago is when those TVT-8's and super-8 model transfer systems were made available. How much did scanning home movies cost on a Rank-Cintel with an 8mm gate in 2005 (was that even possible)? LaserGraphics didn't make an 8mm scanner until 2013 and Filmfabriek didn't exist either until 2011. If you read Clive Tobin's old website you clearly see it says "Replaces Elmo Transvideo". That AVP guy is the average type of person using a Retroscan to sell scanning services to "hobbyists shooting film" and to home movie clients. He thinks it's good enough, and as long as the service provider think that the service they're delivering is good enough in quality they don't care about matching professional work. Most of them do not understand how much better the scan could look because they've never actually put their test film through a professional scanning system to check how much in the way of colour and detail they're missing. Some of them probably only really do occasional film transfer jobs as well. Most small mom-and-pop places including small film labs are too scared to pay $35,000 for a scanner let alone $60,000. There are people that say publicly that Filmfabriek charge too much! As long as you have places like AMB Media LLC ("Kodak Digitizing Box"/"LegacyBox"/"Southtree") and that Black Lab Imaging place I linked to doing even worse quality work you'll still have the people doing transfers on their 20-year-old TCS TVTs or their 10+ year old Retroscans etc. On the topic of cleaners, they're certainly not going to spend $50,000 for a Hydra if they won't spend it on a scanner!

That's a bit unfair to Clive, I'm sure that in 2005 for $3,500 they were a bargain. They had a clear purpose, it's just unfortunate they're still used for that purpose now, same with these:

Looks like they're having some trouble with their "professional" transfer machines: But yeah, Tobins which were designed for 2005 not 2024. 😛

Kodak used to have a list of solvents on their website, that list is reproduced elsewhere though for example on the NFSA website (it leaves out some of the columns though). On the Archived page all the text is invisible, so making it visible and taking a screenshot, here it is (source) : Mirror: https://i.imgur.com/KHeUrGS.png

Here's another one that was shared on social media.

A Scanstation, normally. But he also has a modified Retroscan Universal MkII that's basically just used for the transport, it has a 3D printed heavily polished film gate not just the "cam guides" that it comes with. I think it currently has a 100 Watt high cri white light and a 4K Sony Pregius 2nd gen imager camera, so I'm thinking he could probably set the optics up for 8mm on it and then scan 16mm without too much trouble (and debayer the camera raw files for you if needed). The scan would look very similar to the ScanStation and it shouldn't really be a problem to do a ScanStation scan at the same time so you can compare and have the assurance that you got good dynamic range etc out of the reel/s. I've sent you a PM with details. The only real issue I could envision is stabilisation as I'm not sure how steady 16mm comes out, much less 8mm. The more you zoom in the more a tiny bit of unsteadiness will affect the scan, and if you can't see the perfs or the frame edge then it might be difficult to stabilise in post. Scanning it at 8K+ on a RGB scanner will make the reel stick out more if you're marrying with ScanStation scans as it will come out much sharper, although it may not be too much of an issue if you're extracting out 4K from a native 8K scan. I'm sure there's probably an easier way to achieve the look you're going for though!

Nah that can't be done. A 6.5K ScanStation has 3 focal points and that's it, there is absolutely no way to zoom in closer and have the perfs outside of the scan area and if you somehow did that there'd be no way to track the frames as it relies upon the perfs in the same scan image to track them. So it's not just optical stabilisation, it wouldn't know where one frame ends and the next starts. I'm happy to refer you to a friend of mine who might be able to do what you're asking though (zoom in 8mm size 4K on 16mm) and he is on the US East Coast.

I still don't really understand the purpose of what you're proposing. Here's what you'd call a "sampling scanner for film archives": And you can listen here (or rather read the subtitles) as to how it's actually used by one particular archive customer (Deutsches Filminstitut & Filmmuseum ) One of their main uses is to use it to inspect damage after they lend out a film and it comes back to them. Basically that reduces manual work having do be done doing it on a rewind table manually. It makes an automatic condition report which includes finding new damage like new lines in the print or new splices and missing frames etc. New lines in particular it can find because you can just compare your previous condition report to the new one, and if the line was in there the first time it was inspected it should be in the report the second time. Most of the professional restoration scanners won't work if you try to make all the base damage visible - if you do it on a sproketless LaserGraphics for example the sproket detection doesn't work and it looses all registration. So again, how does dropping frames help the Archives do what they need... and wouldn't you think the companies making these things know the needs of the Archives they're making them for? Film scanners aren't high speed rewinds, their speeds are normally capped at what the manufacturer thinks is safe, so if you really need to drop frames for some reason why not just do it afterwards? I'd note by the way, that they don't even call the device a "scanner". Quoting from the subtitles: "we have deliberately not bought a scanner, we have bought a device that we have acquired for our archiving purposes, which also now includes digital restoration. It's not a scanner, but a device with which we can see information edge-to-edge. We need this information." He also gives examples of how it can assist them with restoration - they can use it to make an access copy of a print as a reference for color timing the negative, they can also use it to compare the condition of different materials of the same film so they know which ones they should send for restoration and save money not wasting their time on something in poor condition.

You could try Prasad: https://prasadcorp.com/film-tape-video-digitization/

The scanner manufacturers buy them wholesale not retail. 😛 But if you're building your own scanner from scratch, here 'ya go: 4K and same brand that LG uses. Or, Teledyne Flir $1,800 brand new retail price. As I mentioned to Mr Teoli we all know what components go into a modern digital movie film scanner, it's hardly a secret and the designs are relatively simple requiring less in the way of complex engineering. The being said, they require engineering - they require maintenance, they require software development, they require technical support for the users. People don't seem to appreciate the amount of R&D that goes into these devices. It took Blackmagic about 4 years to bring their Cintel scanner to market, and ever since then the pace of development has been glacial. They bought-out Rank Cintel so they started with industry knowledge and existing IP. Obviously they haven't just gone and used a Rank Cintel telecine transport module - but every part of it became Blackmagic's knowledge: film tensioning, roller/sproket designs, gate designs, etc. 2024, that's 8 years, is when they released a dual 8mm gate for them - and of course it will only work on the capstan model Cintels not the older pre-pandemic models that are sproket-driven. What surprises me is that people are saying the Filmfabriek Pictor is too expensive. If that's the case what's stopping someone from buying something cheaper? Here's a Super-8 sound "transferkit" used by a Spanish university: They only cost €2,000-€3,000 each and the kinds of users that would buy them are most likely replacing older projector-based 8mm/16mm transfer systems including filming the projection off a wall, Tobins, or Moviestuff equipment or even DIY equipment. Is it perfect? Of course not. Is it as good as a Pictor? No. To make them at that price compromises are made, and similarly compromises are made for usability. Yes they did, the line-sensor CCDs are single-tap and speedy. Given the engineering costs involved in making line-sensor scanners as well as the other downsides, I don't see the point now.