Dan Baxter

And what about the backlight then reducing the visible base-damage in-camera would you prefer it didn't do that?

Fine. Me: "What do you do to clean up the hiss of the scanstation audio (aside from use the cintel)?" Professional: "I use Izotope Rx if I have to clean up, but really we just use the Sondor or the Cintel to get better audio in the first place." That is quoted straight out of my email inbox word-for-word. You can message me in private if you really need me to tell you who said that. But what I would point out to you is that you are literally the only person claiming that the ScanStation audio reader is perfect - no one else is claiming that. No one. I would really like to know what you're comparing against when you claim the Lasergraphics audio reader is "very good"? If you want to actually identify where the hiss is coming from you need to scan the same reel of film twice on the same settings and then check if the audio is bit-perfect and whether there's deviation between each capture (and then whether the hiss/noise sounds different on each capture or not).

I do not think so. The audio is not an audio file on the print, it's a printed picture it's all about how you capture the picture and convert it to audio. The hiss is noise, and whether the noise is due to silver particles in the soundtrack or something else I'm not arguing about as I don't know exactly. One thing I can say though from my limited knowledge of electronics is that the power supply itself can introduce noise into an analogue signal, so one of the improvements you can do to projectors is change their power supply to something better. Some of my friends at the moment are working on getting perfect audio out of their projectors. Whatever the source of the hiss is though there's a science behind capturing the audio perfectly and it certainly not as simple as capturing hissy audio and then removing the hiss afterwards. If it was doing noise reduction in the scan it would sound deformed. Try this - take some audio of a ScanStation and run it through free software like Audacity and see how well it cleans up. It'll sound deformed. Two of my mates bought their ScanStations last year, one has experience with every version going back to 2013, and so for my other mate I confirmed with him whether it's worth buying the Optical/Keykode reader right away or not. He said you don't need it, and he's right the current ScanStations come with perfectly good software sound extraction that works better than the expensive Optical reader which you would only really want for Keykode (which you can always buy later if you land a job that requires one). I may sound like I'm bashing the scanner, but I'm really not - it's a great design overall you can bypass the useless P/T rollers, they've put the capstan on the take-up side on the new ones which probably makes threading easier compared with having it next to the sound modules, and it's got a ton of good software features that are all free like in-scan stabilisation, optical audio extraction, and failed splice recovery.

Fine Perry if you want to argue I'm going to call out your BS on this. You're a service provider and you're in a position to know better, and telling people that LG audio is "among the best optical soundtrack reproducers currently available" is false, deceptive, and misleading advertising and no different IMO to a company with a Retroscan or a Tobin or a Ventura Images scanner that claims their scans are top-shelf off the most professional scanning systems etc. Do you want to know how many times I've heard that claim in the past 12 months - half of it from the mom-and-pop companies and half of it from their customers that don't know any better that say things like "I don't think there's a problem with the scan I think the problem is with the film"? Too many times, that's how many. And I mean no disrespect to anyone, and especially the end-clients that just don't realise how their film should look or what the scan is missing. I might add here that MOST of the time someone makes a claim like that they're literally comparing downstream not upstream - i.e. comparing against a Wolverine rather than against a ScanStation. The professionals that I know transfer optical audio separately off the best machine they have available. In the past the go-to machine used to be the Sondor and in fact when I first heard about it I just thought/assumed the Sondor was literally an audio machine like a dubber (to be fair, they look like a dubber!) DFT even advertises in the Scanity brochure that they use the Sondor audio components (DFT bought-out Sondor). You will also hear from time-to-time people talking about "Sondor audio units" and what I think they usually mean is old machines that no longer capture video at all that are just set up for professional audio transfer. That is the point I was making regarding why Filmfabriek doesn't perfect theirs - the R&D to do it and the fact that it's 16mm-only would make it a fool's endeavour when you can literally buy the best 35/16 optical audio machine for ~$35K and half that on the used market (the Cintel that is - a used Sondor would be even less but either option will handle both formats). Really - is that how it works? So what about the base damage - would you prefer that the backlight is not designed to minimise the visibility of the damage in-camera so that you can then try to remove all the scratches after the scan artificially because the scan is preserving the film exactly as it is? You don't get to have it both ways there. I don't pretend to understand exactly how the audio capture is different - but whether the hiss is on the film or not doesn't change the fact that you don't need to pick it up with a well designed audio capture device. My understanding on it (and I may be mistaken) is that just like with the actual scan in the gate you need the film to be perfectly flat to get a perfect audio capture - it's doing the same basic thing that the image-scan does which is run the film under a sensor (imager) with a backlight. If you can get the film perfectly flat you get a perfect capture, and if not you get hiss - again I'm sure that's not the whole story but part of it that contributes towards getting perfect audio. You've absolutely no evidence backing up your claim that the LG optical audio reader has been engineered perfectly - please do a proper comparison sometime then report back. That's the same thing that people with Retroscans etc say about the picture - whether that's about noise or dynamic range or anything else "you can just fix it up in post - our scanner gets you exactly what's on the film". Again do you want me to tell you how many times I've heard people say in one variety or another "oh it's not worth doing 8mm on something better because you're not going to get any more detail out of the scan anyway"? Honestly it's the same claim except made about audio instead of video - you should not need to do any digital de-noising either way with a good capture.

No it's not - what are you comparing it against? When I get a chance I'll put a piece of sound film through a ScanStation followed by a better audio machine. The Lasergraphics is very hissy. I personally think the software audio extraction (which is a free inbuilt software feature) does a better job than the Optical/Keykode reader, but I'll admit I haven't done a side-by-side test on that. It just seems obvious because of how hissy the optical audio reader is. Why not do your own side-by-side test sometime instead of accusing me of spreading misinformation? Most of the FT_Depot Youtube videos have the audio straight off their ScanStation with no cleanup, people can judge for themselves if the audio sounds right to them or not.

To be fair optical audio off a Lasergraphics is unmitigated shit. Professional companies just transfer optical audio separately.

I forgot, there's also the Ventura Imagers scanners, you can buy them brand new they cost about $8K dual format 8/16. They have audio heads which Moviestuff doesn't have (they will add to the cost of course), but a low-res 1.3MP camera, and I'm not sure what light is in it.

You could pay him to do the upgrade mods if you don't want to do it yourself, it'll take a bit of argy-bargy trial-and-error to get the light right and things like that. We're also not sure if fitting the gates will be completely straightforward, in an ideal world they would be, but it depends on if there's variation machine-to-machine or not. 35mm is still an issue, we know how to fix the speed issue but I think the motors are too weak to reliably be used for full 2,000ft reels so that would mean 35mm is still short subjects only really. It's really still a 16/8 scanner that has some limited 35mm ability. A DIY write-up should be available soon as well, but it's really not complicated. If you want a 16/8 dailies scanner then it's not too much work, if you want an archival scanner then there will be extra work really (this is where you're going to want proper 3rd-party capture software so you can stop, rewind, re-calibrate etc). Optical pin-registration is also possible, theoretically if someone programs it.

Right and I haven't argued with that point. I even asked @Daniel D. Teoli Jr. to name a "better" tri-format scanner and he didn't. The options in that space are very limited. Even the Kinograph v2 (if it's ever completed) won't be tri-format. The cheapest tri-format scanner with any legitimate potential is the Retroscan Universal Mark II. If Moviestuff were smart they would just make a "premium version" and charge an extra $5K, but they don't and there's no point in expecting they ever will. But they can be modified quite easily. The main issue remains 35mm support, it doesn't really have proper 35mm support but it could. Right so you proved what I've been saying this entire time about a gate. We have them for the Universal Mark II now but I don't think that anyone would bother designing them for the MkI. It's obsolete even by Moviestuff's standards. A proper warped gate will get the film 99%+ flat no matter how warped, you see greater distortion in the sans of the 00's from the Spirits scanning film in perfect condition. All it needs for that is a (removable) sprocket-wheel to register the frames. But that would take someone the time to do the R&D to actually get it working.

The Retroscan isn't the "only" choice. There's the 8mm Filmfabrieks (the Pictors), and you can still get refurbished Tobins. If you don't want to scan for others/payment then you're self-limiting your budget. A mate of mine would not have been able to buy his Lasergraphics had he not started with something a lot more modest. There are plenty of companies out there charging people to transfer their home movies using Tobins and Retroscans, you could easily find a market there if you wanted it. A few paid jobs a month and you'd be on your way to buying something better. I don't know what you're expecting, but you can't expect to get a higher calibre of client with the Retroscan Universal Mark 1, it's a rough machine known to damage film. That's not to be judgemental of you or anyone else that owns one just pointing out you will not get commercial clients or archive work with a machine like that even if all they want is to "just see what's on the film" and they're not concerned with quality.

Daniel, you're taking your LG criticism/bashing far too far. All I wanted to get across there was the complaints that some of the owners currently have, that doesn't paint the entire company in a bad light. They make good products and they're still current. How many other tri-format (35/16/8) professional quality scanners are there that are actually current tech? Not many - DCS Xena and Kinetta and that's about it. Why not instead post about your own experiences with the Moviestuff? That is the space where there is genuine room for advancement for the small users like yourself - you can ask me about this one. It's got a 4K camera, a high CRI light, warped-film gates (the prototype 16mm one is fitted in that pic) and it's going to be used for software development to create 3rd-party capture software capable of controlling these things properly. Some people think it's a fool's endeavour to improve Moviestuff's product, but we think it can be made into a very capable scanner. Remember what companies were doing a decade ago (and even before that) was gutting out Rank-Cintel Telecines and making 2K digital scanners out of them, and as Robert has pointed a few times DCS has commercialised that option by providing a kit to do it.

The 3rd-party warped-film gates are designed and work flawlessly take a look at this photo. The gate is there fitted in-between the guides (but as it's a 3d-printed prototype it doesn't look like much). They will hopefully be available soonish as a 3rd-party product. Don't forget the light. The crappy low-CRI white light it has will do a poor job no matter what colour camera is used. And without proper gates you can't scan archival film (including home movies) properly at all. It took my mate months to design them, but they're working very well and just need to be machined and patented. I don't know how many Retroscan users would actually buy them, but it is something those machines desperately need if you want them to be half-decent.

My friends aren't "anonymous" and one of them at least would be well known to Perry and they have almost certainly done business together in the past. He has the most experience of my mates with LG going back to before the SS was even a thing (prior model Directors etc). Another one is on this forum he can speak up if he wants, but my guess is he'd rather not given the stubbornness and combativeness of some of the responses. Something I'd rather avoid. I'm drawing from the perspective of three owners in the main. Mr Teoli's posts are a bit on the eccentric side, but I think he's frustrated with not being able to afford a proper scanner. That is something a mate is working on changing - in fact I can report he has now begun discussions to get his Retroscan gates fabricated/machined. He's going to patent them before they go on sale otherwise we could show you the design - those of us who have seen the design think it's brilliant. They work perfectly and hold the film perfectly flat. They only fit the latest model. With gates a change of camera, optics, and light you have at the very least a capable tri-format dailies scanner, and also quite capable with small formats and severely warped film, you're most of the way towards a capable home-moves scanner although it does really need new capture software written which is one of the things that will be worked on next. Awesome let us know how you go with it!

And yet not on what LG themselves say. Your stubborn answer is that these people have no business scanning film if they want documentation for their scanner. Yes they're a simple machine if you compare them to anything older - but you shouldn't have to compare it to something else to make a valid observation or point about it. This isn't 2013. Sure but neither are the negative experiences. Sure that's true that they've made a lot of improvements since launch, and that's due to users requesting new features, changes, and bug fixes. On the bugs I've heard a few different complaints about issues but I won't repeat them here because I don't know how widely it affects the machines etc. One of my mates that owns one is a software developer, so believe me when I say he will find and notice bugs that the average user won't necessarily recognise as a bug or may dismiss (that's a part of his regular job), so I'm happy to revisit this later on. They did fix one issue he had with a software update. No this is not a single experience. Just checking though - a correction from my previous reply - it took them just over a month to schedule it (not two months), my other friend told him (to paraphrase) "don't be afraid to be pushy, you're going to have to harass that guy or they'll never get around to organising your training". Given that the scanner itself was 6 weeks or so late though on the original estimated delivery time, I do not think that such a delay is acceptable. Sure there's nothing they can do about the global chip shortage but the training is a part of the product, $3,000 on the invoice, so taking that long to arrange it is flat-out ridiculous and from what I've heard other buyers have just given up and gone without their training entirely. By the time he actually got it it was extremely limited use/value since he'd already worked most things out (which included getting a competitor on the phone to help him). BTW from what I understand LG agreed that the delay was unacceptable and they offered a discount on one of the options to make it right, but it's certainly not the first time or an isolated incident.

This is true, but why start with a projector at all? It's better to start with something actually designed to scan film, here's the photo I posted of a modded Retroscan, the mods would take 1 day on a brand new one if you paid someone to do it for you. And I promise you I'm not lying when I say the film is running through a prototype archive gate in that photo. They took months of work to design, so when they're ready for sale you can see them properly and you'll be able to purchase them as a 3rd-party product. That one will be used for software development so that soon there should be proper capture software capable of running those things with a better choice of camera, and then you could continue that development to include the features of the "big boy scanners" like optical stabilisation, direct Prores encoding, perhaps even controlling proper RGB lights as well. Proper 35mm support will still take some work though, it's likely that you're going to need to put better motors into the Moviestuff to support full 2,000ft 35mm reels, it also doesn't capture 35mm properly it captures on every perforation and then decimates the unneeded frames, that will hopefully be fixed soon using a simple 3rd-party hardware mod to properly support 2/3/4-perf film. A projector will never support 2-perf or 3-perf scanning, you would have to run the film through multiple times and then matrix the frames to do it. A projector can't rewind film either, so you can't stop the scan adjust the settings for something spliced in and then rewind back to where you need to be and continue. The issue with the Moviestuff is that it's incomplete, but starting with a projector is starting with something even more incomplete! Sure you could get one up-and-running as a dailies scanner with a similar amount of work and probably save yourself $8K in the process since you don't have to buy a brand-new machine, but then you're on your own in terms of running it as a DIY machine or designing warped-film gates for it etc.

Perry you sound like a broken record. Please stop saying that. It is not what Lasergraphics themselves have advised my friends who own these. A couple of months ago one of them (Steve Klenk I think) said that they know they are behind in documentation and that it's a "work in progress". Sure you don't feel you need a user manual, but that doesn't mean the lack of documentation is normal or acceptable. On the other thing you keep saying: That's your experience, but some other users have had a different experience. Want me to list out their complaints? 1. Lasergraphics do not want to support the ScanStation Personal. They have even explicitly said that. 2. They do not provide bugfixes promptly (or - at all). The software as it is today is still buggy. 3. They charge an outrageous amount for support. 4. They do not have proper documentation. 5. The support is near useless - a friend of mine had to get another ScanStation user on the phone to help him with a couple of things because Lasergraphics wouldn't answer his questions and at that time (about 2 months after delivering his scanner) had still not given him his training. 6. If you don't harass them you won't get your training. I could note a couple more things as well. For example they continued selling them with the JAI camera until last year, on a brand new scanner you had to pay USD $20K for the proper camera or they would give you the junk one. To quote a friend "it’s awful and is designed as a red-light camera for traffic use". That's just what I can think of off the top of my head. There are plenty of pros though so let me be clear about that before you think I'm just LG-bashing as that's not the intention. Here are the pros: 1. Gentle on film, 2. Reliable, 3. Most software features are free but on other scanners everything is an expensive software license, 4. Direct to Prores plus proxy, 5. They come with good training, 6. you can bypass the useless P/T rollers (I'm listing that as a pro since if you look at the design of the Cintel or the Kinetta you can't bypass them and are forced to use them). So it has pros and cons.

The Cintel is good for the money. If it had no problems it wouldn't cost $30K.

He's not talking about scanning 35mm at all, and most of what he has is probably prints. Any old CCD scanner cannot scan prints to the same quality as negs without multiple exposures per frame ("HDR scanning") which most of them do not do. The reason why the NL1 is not an archive scanner is because it wasn't designed for achieves. Archives need fast, cheap, reliable, and easy. If you're determined enough you could get the Retroscan Universal Mark II to beat the quality of the ScanStation for special cases. It would take a lot of work though, and would still be more limited, but it should be possible soon it's one of the things a friend of mine is working on. You have to build a circuit to fix the issue with 35mm, but if you don't care about 35mm and just want 16/8 and you're happy with quality that is GOOD but not as good as the 6.5K Scanstation you'd be looking to spend in my estimation around $15K-16K all-up. It's a WIP but here's a photo. Although it's very hard to see because it's a 3d-printed prototype, there is an archive gate that the film is running through that holds it perfectly flat unlike the stock machine that only has the "guides and is useless for keeping film flat or in focus. It'll be some time yet before proper software is developed, so hopefully by the end of the year. The one in the photo is going to be used partly for software development for proper 3rd-party capture software that can run these things without the limitations of the Moviestuff software and that will make them a bit more usable, so that may be available later this year.

From what I understand it's a piece of junk.

No it isn't an archive scanner, you will never be able to afford the parts for that and even if you could it still isn't an archive scanner. It was made for professional use (digital restoration and post-production) and that's really the only use a company would have for it today. Also it's so slow that it's designed to be operated in a dust-free cleanroom. It had limited use when it was made and its use today would be even more limited. There's much less film that's under 40 years old today compared with when it was made that's just a fact of time, and Filmlight hasn't kept up with development. The NL1 is a 2002 scanner I think, so way way way before CMOS imagers were capable of anything even approaching equal quality for film scanning, and well before LED lighting technology was capable for proper illumination. To use it for commercial scanning today you'd have to charge the commercial rates of the 00's and that's just not going to happen, and archives won't touch it due to the light. You can't buy the 6K CCD imager any more and the software almost certainly doesn't support a choice of replacement. So it probably would be a good scanner for a post-production house that needs an extra RGB scanner for a light load of use over the year.

Yeah, the point I was making is that a Moviestuff, Tobin, or even a Cintel can only really be classed as "entry-level" scanners especially in 2022 (the going price on a used Cintel is $15K I think). They're not suitable or even intended to do serious archival work. If someone is using one of those machines for longer than a couple of years as their only scanner, then it probably means they don't have the skills/motivation/business plan required to get something better - or they're just very happy with what they have and don't see the point in getting something better. By the way on this question: Take a look at the photo. That's with a 4K camera, not all the mods are clearly visible though in the picture. The film is running through a 3d-printed prototype gate that is nearly invisible in the photo. Without gates it's useless for anything that isn't brand-new lab developed film.

Yeah but you've got a $6,000 scanner and no way to buy a $40,000 or $100,000 scanner. With no business plan you won't get a lease or a loan to get one either. Don't take that the wrong way!! That's because the market is saturated by Retorscans being used for home movie transfers, and the companies that use them and other cheaper scanners for that are happy with the quality. I've seen the websites of way too many of these companies in the past few months, it's unfortunate. E.g. Reel Box has two old model Retroscans halfway down on their website, yet they say "We use only the latest in cinefilm scanning technologies to professionally scan your 8mm & 16mm film frame by frame into high definition 1080p MP4 files." Got Memories "At Got Memories, we use the latest, advanced equipment for processing film and completing the digital transfer process. This results in a perfect reproduction." They use Tobins, I'm not sure I'd call those things the "latest" technology given you can't buy them new any more (you get support for those from Urbanski Film now). The major issue I think is that people have no clue what their old home movie films should look like. Your average customer doesn't understand the scanning tech, so if a company is telling them "we have the latest tech" they may get the impression that there won't be much difference for their films between a company like the ones linked to above, or a company with more capable equipment and their staff trained to give their customers a consistent service.

That's right, but it's not a 6K sensor. You can't always use 6K. For example if you use the warped film pressure plate it limits the scanner to 3K with no microscanning.

It uses a 3K sensor. You are correct, I stand corrected there. Director 10K was the first model to offer an 8mm option.

The Director has an 8mm option that was added, so you should be able to purchase the 8mm gate for it. Neither the Arriscan XT nor Imagica scanners can do 8mm.