Todd Ruel

I’m not aware that HS-Art offers a monthly version. Walter, their sales guy, would have already bugged the heck out of me by now if that were true. Their dongle is simply a license check, but you better not lose that dongle or else you’ve lost your entire license. Yes, you pay a yearly license for access to all their current software and updates. I paid $3,800 a few years ago to update two versions of Dustbuster+ (you might call it Diamant Lite) and a full version of Diamant. After that license expired, I got to keep all the software I’ve paid for but no more updates until I renew the license. I’ve found that with Diamant, the changes from one year to the next are not that dramatic. More evolution than revolution. However, this Dye Fade Correction Tool sounds exciting. Knowing Diamant, it’s the beginning of “exciting” and not truly exciting yet. They’ve asked me to send them a sample clip, so I’ll try that first and report back.

Hey, all. I noticed recently that HS-Art, which makes the Diamant Film Restoration Suite, is now offering a Dye Fade Tool in said suite. This tool seems to have been developed by a company called Scan2Screen which includes a bunch of film restoration experts including Dr. Barbara Fluekiger. Since some of you experienced pros have issues with some of her research in the past, do you have any opinions about the effectiveness of a tool like this? We use Diamant pretty much exclusively. They have a yearly subscription model, but it’s a pretty steep price for us, so we don’t upgrade every year. (We find the changes from one year to the next just aren’t worth it.). But we do a LOT of dye fade correction on vintage TV commercials. So do you think a tool like this would be worth it?

Again, I don't think scanning these films is a problem. Most, if not all, of the midrange-to-advanced scanners have special settings for capturing the full width of the film. There is also a variety of settings for scanning select areas of the film. I would never run these films even through a viewer, and there are many such 16mm viewers. It's not worth scratching them up or damaging them. Just scan them using specialized settings for 16mm film. The problem is sequencing the images correctly after you've scanned them. That's the challenge, and it will require some specialized computer programming. If there's anyone who could do it, Tommy Aschenbach of Colorlab seems like the guy to tackle the challenge. (I have decided not to try this myself. I don't use Windows, and I have no knowledge of Avisynth+, and, well, I ain't got no time to learn all this stuff.)

Greg, First of all, you have an excellent web site. You tell the history of the format very well with lots of valuable pictures. I especially enjoyed the shot of American Cinematographer Magazine from Late 1929 (I think). I loved the deep dive into the topic. I can acquire about three of these films from a local merchant. I live/work in Dayton, Ohio, and the content on the films has local relevance to me. It's also interesting that the format was developed just south of here in Cincinnati. I have a Lasergraphics Archivist if you ever want to take a chance on me. Plus, I have some interesting news. Tommy Aschenbach, who has developed software to enhance the color in old Kodascope films, has agreed to take a look at some Kemco HoMovies. The lesser problem is transferring them. Jeff Kreines could scan them just as well as I could. We both have excellent equipment to do so. The greater problem is sequencing the pictures so that we could create a digital file that plays them back in the correct order. Tommy has agreed to at least look at the issue. I just have to get some film to him. If you'd like to take a chance and have me scan one of your films (not the whole collection!), let me know. You can contact me through my web site: memoryhouse.tv. Or if you already have some scans done, you can contact Tommy either through his LinkedIn profile or through his web site ColorLab. If you do contact him, mention me. I'm the one who first brought this topic to his attention.

I am Mac-based only and will not move to Windows just for a project like this. Are there any Mac-based equivalents to Avisynth+? I’ve been researching this issue a little, and I really need some sort of front end GUI to work with. Anything even a smidge easier than command-line programming would work for me. Any ideas?

I live and work in Dayton, Ohio. The format was invented in Cincinnati. (The K in the Cincinnati radio station WKRC stands for Kodel, the parent company of Kemco.) The format used standard 16mm Kodak movie film. The films I can acquire were filmed by a Kemco customer in Cincinnati shooting content in Dayton. They are one of a kind. It would be fairly easy to digitize these standard 16mm Kodak films. I run a film/video transfer business in Dayton/Cincinnati called Memory House, and I have a Lasergraphics Archivist. The problem is sequencing the images correctly so that they play back correctly. Check out the link I posted above. The author does a beautiful job telling the story of the company and explaining how the format works. It actually makes a lot of sense. I can't believe it actually worked, but it did. I would never run these films through a Kemco projector or any kind of film projector. Films shrink with age, and this film is now about 93 years old. Instead, I would go ahead and digitize it, and figure out how to sequence the images electronically. I have contacted Tommy Aschenbach to see if he would be interested in this challenge. He's done amazing work interpreting the color in vintage Kodacolor films. He's also one of the authors of the audio extraction app AEO Light. Maybe this would be challenging enough to pique his curiosity. (Not sure who else I would turn to!) Stay tuned.

So I asked Lasergraphics about this, and they replied: "You can select "overscan" in image position and size. This will capture the entire image area." When I asked them if they could create some sort of sequencing software to play back the frames in the correct order, they predictably replied: "No. That is not possible with the Archivist software. It would be VERY hard and would cost a lot in NRE fees. It is hard because of the serpentine nature of the frame sequence (i.e. both horizontal and vertical motion at different times)." For some context, the projection scheme is S-shaped. (I like how Lasergraphics described it as serpentine. That's more accurate.) Here's a link to a web page that describes the brief, brief history of the company and the Kodel HoMovie format: https://www.kinocameras.com/apparatus/kemco-homovie Yes, the film is 16mm. The format was developed to shoot four frames in the standard 16mm image area, thereby increasing the runtime of a standard 100-foot roll of 16mm film by four times. A 4-minute roll of 16mm film could be increased to 16 minutes with the HoMovie standard. This format lasted about 3 years, maybe less. It was introduced in 1930. Sensing a threat to its dominance in the home movie market, Kodak released the 8mm format in 1932. Kemco HoMovies were immediately relegated to a footnote in history. Robert, this sounds like a good way to start. If I acquire these films, I'll start there.

Hey, all. Since a lot of you on these forums have been in the business a long time and have probably seen it all, I have a challenging question for you. What's the best way to digitize and then edit together a vintage Kemco HoMovie from 1931? This short-lived format shot 4 images in the space that a single 16mm image occupied on film. The Kemco HoMovie projector would then project the movie showing the A frame, then the B frame. Then the film would advance, and it would show the D frame and then the C frame. After that, the film would continue to advance, and the projector would start with a new A frame. The projection pattern was sort of S-shaped. The goal was to increase the run time of a 100-foot roll of 16mm home movie film so that buying film was more economical. A normal 16mm 4-minute runtime would be extended to 16 minutes with the Kemco HoMovie process. The format got steamrolled by Kodak when they introduced 8mm in 1932. Attached is a picture of a sample film. So I'm asking: what's the best way to transfer this with my Lasergraphics Archivist? And secondly: what's the best way to assemble this into a viewable sequence? Scratching my head on this one.

Hey, all. Since a lot of you on these forums have been in the business a long time and have probably seen it all, I have a challenging question for you. What's the best way to digitize and then edit together a vintage Kemco HoMovie from 1931? This short-lived format shot 4 images in the space that a single 16mm image occupied on film. The Kemco HoMovie projector would then project the movie showing the A frame, then the B frame. Then the film would advance, and it would show the D frame and then the C frame. After that, the film would continue to advance, and the projector would start with a new A frame. The projection pattern was sort of S-shaped. The goal was to increase the run time of a 100-foot roll of 16mm home movie film so that buying film was more economical. A normal 16mm 4-minute runtime would be extended to 16 minutes with the Kemco HoMovie process. The format got steamrolled by Kodak when they introduced 8mm in 1932. Attached is a picture of a sample film. So I'm asking: what's the best way to transfer this with my Lasergraphics Archivist? And secondly: what's the best way to assemble this into a viewable sequence? Scratching my head on this one.

I don't think of it as belonging anywhere. I'm thinking from the bottom up. The Wolverine and Filmfabriek scanners, for instance, don't have image stabilization. You have to do that in post-production. So I consider it a post-production process that others, like Kinetta and Lasergraphics, do inline. This is a semantic argument. You say tomato. I say to-mah-to. Two things: 1) All of these inline features have an OFF button. You don't have to turn them on. Why worry about baking a look into a scan when nobody is forcing you to do that? 2) I don't do a tremendous amount of archival work. I recently scanned 16mm football games from 1970 for a customer. I'm not too worried about revisiting this material 10 years from now. It's not that precious. I always advise my customers not to throw away their films after scanning them, because scanning technology has greatly improved in the last 15 years. It might do so in another fifteen. But I have to take a more practical point of view about this material. Not everything can or will be considered archival. If the scanner is, in any way, stabilizing the image like Lasergraphics does through software-based optical pin registration, I consider that to be "doing stabilization." Again, I'm approaching this from the bottom up. Lesser scanners don't do this inline. Lasergraphics does, and I think that's fantastic. That's one of the reasons I bought one. Once again: will any of these companies offer a feature like interpreting vintage Kodacolor as an inline scanning feature? I seriously doubt it for super insightful reasons you've all listed above.

That doesn't make any sense to me. I could consider image stabilization to be a post-processing step. I could consider audio extraction to be a post-processing step. Indeed, both of those are post-processing steps for other film scanners like Filmfabriek and Kinetta. Why should processing Kodacolor inline with the capture process be any different? Nevertheless, Lasergraphics has chosen to include those other features with their scanners, and those features are real differentiating factors. My main point was to ask: why can't the Cadillac (or insert your favorite brand of luxury car here) of film scanners become a McLaren by adding a super exclusive feature like processing vintage Kodacolor? The answer is still the same: too little content to justify the expense of development. It's the perfect challenge for someone like Tommy Aschenbach.

I'm guessing that's why Lasergraphics has not created some sort of $11K software license for this like they did with 2-Flash HDR. Too much work for so little content. Also, results are unpredictable, because the condition of the source material is unpredictable. Nevertheless, it's kinda breathtaking to see the 1933 Chicago World's Fair in color. Or the Royal Family from 1930. Or Charles Lindbergh in color. I guess I'm shipping that stuff off to Colorlab!

I recently asked my Galileo Digital rep if Lasergraphics had any solutions for successfully digitizing vintage Kodacolor film made between 1928-1935. I got back a word salad explanation of Kodacolor and a suggestion to "hire a software engineer to write code to convert the lenticle stripes to color (or gray-scale if the scan is B&W). To make the output look good will presumably be difficult and expensive." (Sure, I'll just get right on that.) As it turns out, Tom Aschenbach of Colorlab has been working on this for years and has written his own software. I found this interesting link on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:7211366878466719744/. It's his third version of his own software for Kodacolor lenticular film. As I understand it, Tom was also instrumental in the development of AEO Light, the optical sound extraction app available for free on the interwebs.

Thanks, Andrew! I certainly don't want to be damaging the film even though the intention is to carefully clean it.

Okay, all. I took Perry’s advice and bought Pec Pads and 99% isopropyl alcohol from Amazon. I started using the Pec Pads & alcohol on some 1970 Kodachrome film. I noticed that some yellow chemical was coming off on the pads. Question: is this some kind of yellow dye from the film? I thought it might be nicotine, but nicotine is usually a dull, dark, ugly yellow. This stuff is brighter than that. Follow-up Question: if I am, indeed, removing the dye from the film while cleaning it, is this bad? I mean, am I removing enough of the dye to make it too hard to grade the film later (or allow my Archivist to do an initial dye fade correction)? Should I just abandon this method and potentially use some other chemical to clean Kodachrome? I’m stumped. I followed directions, and I’m getting results that look like I’m doing more harm than good.