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.

Okay, that’s good advice, Perry. Thank you! I’ll order those supplies off of Amazon.

I get that these DIY film cleaners are scratch factories. But what do you guys recommend for those of us who don't have Lipsner Smith machines or BSF Hydras? I'm using a clean cotton handkerchief and 91% isopropyl right now. How could I do it better?

I wanted to clear up one bit of my bio that I didn’t communicate very well. When I said I shot at the Detroit Auto Show for 20 years, I didn’t mean that I was shooting vintage cars. The Detroit Auto Show is a contemporary auto show. I shot video there from 2000 to 2019. I have something like 1,048 from all those shows over the years. New models, concept cars, fantasy cars like scaled-up Lego versions of production cars, etc. Those 1,048 clips make about 10% of what I earn from vintage PD films each month, yet they’re the vast majority of the number of clips that I offer on Getty. If you want to see my Getty wares, go here: https://www.gettyimages.com/search/2/film?phrase=Curious cumulus productions&family=creative,editorial&sort=best&editorialproducts=&excludenudity=true&page=1

If you give customers what they want, they will return the favor with money, which will help you buy your time back to shoot whatever footage you want. It’s often a mistake to rely upon your art as a financial resource. I found that my natural desire to collect vintage automotive marketing could be turned into something that someone else would pay for (over and over). So I put my art down for awhile and put on my business hat. I’m not rich, but I’ve created a passive income stream that can eventually replace my day job. #Lifegoals!

Tyler, you were initially correct. I said that I shot at the Detroit Auto Show for 20 years. That’s footage I created. It sells for packaging peanuts most of the time. As I’ve said, it’s the vintage PD films that make real money for me. I suspect that my auto show footage will age like fine wine. When it gets to be old enough, it will start to make more money as future producers use it in their news stories, documentaries, etc. The cars that I recorded are like snapshots in time and really help to illustrate the time period that they were created. It’s like vintage footage of the Ford Mustang. You know it came out in 1965, and it’s a cultural icon. Someday, my auto show footage will be vintage, and maybe I’ll live long enough to see it make some real money! BTW, your Water film restoration is outstanding. I can’t begin to guess how many hours that took. I have one partner. He and I work on my films, and they take forever to restore. Even with automatic filters in Diamant, there’s still a ton of manual labor that we put into making these films look good. Yours look great. If I uploaded that film to Getty, I would cut it up into several shots. That long tilt down shot of the waterfall would be one clip. That POV shot inside the car on the city streets would be another. And there were others as well. See how you could turn one film into many sellable clips? That’s what I’m talking about.

Jon, the monthly revenue statements tell half of the story. But it’s a pretty interesting 50%. The customers are all names that you know: CNN, Viacom, Bloomberg, Disney, BBC, you name it. I don’t know what their specific projects are, but I do know how they’re using the material. The revenue statements will reveal whether it’s for a documentary, a web-based video, educational video, commercial film, etc. Getty charges for its clips based on the size of the audience. They also charge different rates for editorial usage vs. creative usage. For instance, Jeep might make a national commercial featuring some of my vintage Jeep footage from the 1970s. I make $500 or more for each clip included in that commercial. Yet that same commercial might only sell for a few dollars when used in a CNN news story. It depends on how the footage is used. A national commercial or Hollywood film will always make me a ton of money when compared to a news story. The production companies don’t know me personally. I’m just one of many contributors to Getty Images. But I also occasionally license footage privately to documentarians who know me. For instance, I’m currently working hard to provide a ton of b-roll to the guy who is producing a PBS documentary about the history of American Motors. He and I will work out a private licensing deal that has nothing to do with Getty. It will be much more profitable than anything I do with Getty. One more tangent: yes, I specialize in automotive footage, but the films I acquire often include lots of shots that have nothing to do with cars. For instance, in a 1938 Hudson (defunct auto brand) film, there’s a montage of people tuning radios. I uploaded this random clip to Getty, and omigod, it’s been a steady seller since the beginning. Has nothing to do with cars, but producers license it over and over and over. Sometimes it makes $3 a month and sometimes $50. But it sells month after month. These are the kinds of clips you cherish. Vintage public domain films are where the stock footage money is. Go with what customers want. Not with what you want them to want.

Whoa. I didn’t say that. I only said that Getty doesn’t provide feedback on the metadata I submit. To be clear, you must submit metadata tags along with your clips. I’m no different. I simply meant that Getty doesn’t tell me one way or the other if my tags were good, effective, or otherwise. Also, I don’t upload pictures. (I’m guessing you mean stills.). I now only upload vintage public domain film footage. There’s a ton of it. It makes much more money than me shooting my own stuff. But there are consequences. Virtually all of the film prints that I acquire and transfer require restoration. I use Diamant for restoration, Neat for grain removal, and Resolve to reassemble all the restored parts and pieces. It’s time consuming, but once a clip is up on the site, it’s sellable forever. I have clips that go years without making any money. Then suddenly, someone licenses it again. It’s been a reliable but uneven passive income stream since 2009.

Don't let that stop you. I never know if my metadata tags are useful or effective. Getty provides zero feedback about the metadata I create. However, I have a spreadsheet of all my clips and the metadata tags that I used for each clip. Once the clip has been published, I go back to the public listing of that clip and include tags that Getty has added by themselves to the clip. That helps me understand what they feel is important to customers. It's not direct feedback, but it's helpful. I've found that it's not enough to think like a content creator. You also have to think like a business person.

The secret is to stop trying to sell your own stock footage. Instead, try uploading vintage public domain films. I've been a Getty Images contributor for 20+ years. I specialize in automotive footage. I shot footage at the Detroit Auto Show for 20 years. That footage is still for sale on Getty's site, and it earns peanuts compared to vintage car films, industrials, commercials, etc. I've made $137,000 since 2009, and the vast majority of that income has derived from the vintage public domain stuff. The secret is volume. If you have a vintage 10-minute industrial, you might be able to yield 10 or 20 clips from that film. The more clips you offer, the greater the chance to earn passive income (aka royalties). It's true that you earn lower royalties than you used to. I've found that's true since Getty started offering premium memberships to high-volume customers. Many of my monthly royalty statements are filled with a few dozen 50-cent or $1.09/per clip royalties, but there's usually a shot (or two) in there that licenses for $100, $200, or $300. That little jackpot is enough of an incentive to continue uploading vintage material. Pivot away from shooting your own material. Upload vintage public domain material. Niche down to a topic that you can specialize in. Be resilient. Rinse and repeat.

I replaced the Retroscan MK1 with a Filmfabriek HDS+ and then added a Lasergraphics Archivist. The MK1 sits under a tarp unused. It was my starter scanner, but I had to move on, because there was simply too much time-consuming post-production work required to get good-looking images. The HDS+ also requires a fair amount of post-production work, but the images coming off of the scanner are so much better to start with. Also, it's not harsh on film prints. I used to snap prints in half on the MK1 when one side of the scanner or the other would lock up during capture or rewind. And finally: Roger just didn't offer a 4K option for capturing 16mm images on any of his Retroscan machines at the time. That seemed wrong or backwards to me, so I had to move on. No regrets.