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New Super 8 Home Scanner


Anthony Schilling

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http://www.moviestuff.tv/

 

This is a pretty exciting piece of equipment for the S8 community, the first of it's kind. They recently added an option for scanning color negatives (which will still require desired correction) so this could be the replacement for the projector when all thats left now are 3 awsome color negative stocks. Even if it's out of your price range, they sold quite a few... should be some folks doing scans for a lot cheaper than pro houses-

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I was quite excited about this

however, I'm not sure why they are so reticent to put decent resolution samples on their website, the sample clips they've uploaded are really terribly encoded so it's impossible to get any sort of feel for what the machine is capable of.

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This is why Kodak needs to support their remaining labs better. Labs need to offer do it yourself transfer rooms for the filmmaker that is on a budget and would rather spend an hour transfering one or two rolls for 30 bucks, themselves, versus being forced into a half hour or one hour transfer minimum at a couple hundred dollars an hour price.

 

Chipping away at how labs stay in business doesn't necessarily help the super-8 filmmaker because NO LAB survives just off of their processing services.

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Alex, i think a machine like this is a good start. Your right about pro telecine, they are geared for pro end productions. $300-$450 for 8 rolls of film is a lavish luxury to most DIY S8 users. The 3 V3 negs give S8 more versatility than ever, but i fear it won't last long if that telecine link isn't bridged. Once I get my unit dialed in, i'm willing to do low cost transfers.

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“… with no sprockets, no advance claw, no capstan, no pinch roller, no belts, and no gears…”
What is the secret ? How does it work ?

 

I think they use sensors to.....sense the perfs. But yeah, that still leaves the question of how it advances at all...

 

If you have a DIY telecine you can put a turquoise filter in the light path to deal w/the orange mask, then flip in your NLE. The Moviestuff Retro8 uses its camera's firmware for this, which is probably better. ..tho not as cheap as a bit of gel.

 

Make sure to bring the neg in washed out, or milky, so you can control contrast. It helps if the camera used has a white balance function - if you can get pure whites, you'll have pure blacks.

 

The big thing with negs is they scratch so easily and attract dust so efficiently (!) I use a "wetgate" - black velvet moistened with 99% Isopropyl. Does the trick. Roger of Movistuff informs me they do not have a wetgate on there yet, but there are threaded utlility holes for mounting a wetgate unit of your own design. Since the design will amount to a clip to hold some fabric, I believe that was good thinking on their part, to leave it to the client - every little thing you don't add, keeps the cost down.

 

Mitch

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It (most likely) uses a servo motor attached to one of the pulleys, and counts on friction between the o-rings and the film to move. I'd assume they use an edge detection routine off the camera to find the sprocket holes. It's a headache to program, but costs nothing in production. Plus, it lets you remove the jitter in software fairly easily. Important since the unit doesn't have any registration.

 

Firmware is free. Costs nothing. Gels cost money.

 

A wetgate would be nice. A 16mm version would be nicer. I assume the design is scalable, and he'll release a 16mm version for more $$ when the bugs are 100% worked out. Just speculation on my part, though.

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He mentioned a 16mm version in the future.. I know there are 16mm versions of all the WP setups they have offered so i wouldn't be surprised. As far as the registration, i hear that it centers each frame within a very tight range, so even if you have some jitter it should come out pretty solid on the scan.

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"If you have a DIY telecine you can put a turquoise filter in the light path to deal w/the orange mask, then flip in your NLE. The Moviestuff Retro8 uses its camera's firmware for this, which is probably better. ..tho not as cheap as a bit of gel."

 

I guess they tried gels but it was cutting too much light since the unit uses a fast shutter.

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"If you have a DIY telecine you can put a turquoise filter in the light path to deal w/the orange mask, then flip in your NLE. The Moviestuff Retro8 uses its camera's firmware for this, which is probably better. ..tho not as cheap as a bit of gel."

 

I guess they tried gels but it was cutting too much light since the unit uses a fast shutter.

 

According to Roger, they didn't go the filter route for precisely the reason you have given.

 

Thinking more on the wetgate, I wonder how the film-transport will respond to Iso-slicked film. Obviously it's not an issue with sprockets. Maybe some solution less slippery than Iso?

 

But OTOH, some minor dust and base scratches are only an issue if you are doing narrative with the Super8 negs - art films and home movies, not so much....IMHO

 

Mitch

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Alex, i think a machine like this is a good start. Your right about pro telecine, they are geared for pro end productions. $300-$450 for 8 rolls of film is a lavish luxury to most DIY S8 users. The 3 V3 negs give S8 more versatility than ever, but i fear it won't last long if that telecine link isn't bridged. Once I get my unit dialed in, i'm willing to do low cost transfers.

 

Maybe once you set up your unit you could offer the closest lab to you, your transfer system as a rental. Maybe one day a week you come in, set it up, and supervise do it yourself transfers, you split what you make with the lab.

 

The idea being the lab can accommodate filmmakers who just a have a small amount of film to transfer and even if you just 250 bucks for a days work ,that is still 125 dollars in your pocket and likewise for the lab.

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Maybe once you set up your unit you could offer the closest lab to you, your transfer system as a rental. Maybe one day a week you come in, set it up, and supervise do it yourself transfers, you split what you make with the lab.

 

The idea being the lab can accommodate filmmakers who just a have a small amount of film to transfer and even if you just 250 bucks for a days work ,that is still 125 dollars in your pocket and likewise for the lab.

Movie Stuff is also renting units, so renting is prohibited. I am hoping to offer scans to local film makers (there are a lot of them here) in my basement studio.

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Movie Stuff is also renting units, so renting is prohibited. I am hoping to offer scans to local film makers (there are a lot of them here) in my basement studio.

 

What does that mean "renting is prohibited"? If you buy a unit you should be able to do whatever you want with it, no?

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What does that mean "renting is prohibited"? If you buy a unit you should be able to do whatever you want with it, no?

If there is software involved, then the license can be written to not allow rental. Remember, you never actually "own" software or music for that mater, just the license to use it in certain expressed ways. Not sure if you could legally prohibit rental of the hardware itself however.

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Does anybody have any real time experience with this or the software? What kind of quality can one expect? It sounds like it's basically delivering 'one light' xfers, but is it possible to do it timed? I do weddings and this could be a good investment...

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Does anybody have any real time experience with this or the software? What kind of quality can one expect? It sounds like it's basically delivering 'one light' xfers, but is it possible to do it timed? I do weddings and this could be a good investment...

The first units aren't delivered yet, i know they upgraded some features so there might be some exposure options now? i know they added an option for a bright setting to help scan under exposed film whuch is common in a lot of old home movies.

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my understanding, and please correct me if I am wrong, is that it only outputs 8-bit jpeg sequences and video, they call it 24 bit, 8 for each color. for the mom and pop transfer this is fine, but for the do it your self shooter, we want more color depth and resolution. I know that they are trying to keep the cost down, but with color neg, 10-bit does make a difference.

 

The other downside is the framing. In HD mode, you get pillar boxed output. Why not a high res 4:3 sensor that will capture full res(2k or 1920 x 1440) of the full frame? This is always a compromise, either pillar box or cropped top and bottom. This way you wouldn't need optical zoom or anamorphic de-squeeze, you have high enough resolution that you can do it all in post. all in all though, it is very promising and will probably play a part in lowering transfer prices overall.

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Just to give a relative idea, a really good 3.3K Color sensor with Camera-Link that runs at 14FPS at 12bit or 14bit a little slower is about $6k just for the sensor a 2K Color sensor 12-bit which runs at 10-15fps is about $3k just for the sensor. Also you really want a R,G,B LED lamp source with high CRI LEDs which is not possible at the price point of this machine.

 

-Rob-

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Just to give a relative idea, a really good 3.3K Color sensor with Camera-Link that runs at 14FPS at 12bit or 14bit a little slower is about $6k just for the sensor a 2K Color sensor 12-bit which runs at 10-15fps is about $3k just for the sensor. Also you really want a R,G,B LED lamp source with high CRI LEDs which is not possible at the price point of this machine.

 

-Rob-

Rob,

When you mean high CRI LEDs is that as a light source of >5400 in a scanner because there seems to be some criticism of using CRI below 5400/5500 but that maybe due to my lack of knowledge of this area.

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I was more referring to using individual R, G and B LEDs which have specific peak color temps and wide spectrum, which allows for an accurate lamp source which can be color tuned to the film. The tuning mechanism for a RGB LED lamp is usually a highly stable and repeatable PWM power supply which allows for setting the brightness of each of the colors without introducing flicker.

 

-Rob-

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Just to give a relative idea, a really good 3.3K Color sensor with Camera-Link that runs at 14FPS at 12bit or 14bit a little slower is about $6k just for the sensor a 2K Color sensor 12-bit which runs at 10-15fps is about $3k just for the sensor. Also you really want a R,G,B LED lamp source with high CRI LEDs which is not possible at the price point of this machine.

 

-Rob-

Any cost saving by using a monochrome sensor, taking sequential RGB frames + IR of each film and then combining them (even though the transfer rate would be much slower but you avoid artifacts due to bayering)?

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  • 3 months later...

my understanding, and please correct me if I am wrong, is that it only outputs 8-bit jpeg sequences and video, they call it 24 bit, 8 for each color. for the mom and pop transfer this is fine, but for the do it your self shooter, we want more color depth and resolution. I know that they are trying to keep the cost down, but with color neg, 10-bit does make a difference.

 

The other downside is the framing. In HD mode, you get pillar boxed output. Why not a high res 4:3 sensor that will capture full res(2k or 1920 x 1440) of the full frame? This is always a compromise, either pillar box or cropped top and bottom. This way you wouldn't need optical zoom or anamorphic de-squeeze, you have high enough resolution that you can do it all in post. all in all though, it is very promising and will probably play a part in lowering transfer prices overall.

 

From Roger Evans at MovieStuff "You can have a color in many variations such as 8 bit (4:2:2) or 16 bit (8:4:4) as well as color that's 24 bit (8:8:8). Many regular video cameras capture in 8 bit 4:2:2 and even 4:1:1 which can look just fine but doesn't have the range of full 8:8:8 on the color channels."

 

Also, I called up and asked about file format. It is an image sequence but it's uncompressed .tiff files compiled in a proprietary .FILM file (which is a form of .zip). Those can be converted to ProRes4444, DNxHD and other codecs. Chris, I don't know what you'd be doing with Super 8 that 8:8:8 wouldn't be good enough. I worked in post with the RED Epic for Univision and Warner Brothers and we worked with Final Cut in 4:4:4 and 4:2:2 and this was plenty of color space to key green screen footage in AE and do various sequences in Cinema 4D.

 

Regarding the sensor bit, I hear these are selling well. I've even considered getting one myself. Perhaps the internals will improve with subsequent releases. I heard there's going to be a 16mm equivalent at some point. That will be scanning a lot more surface area. Maybe an improved sensor for this will trickle down to the 8mm line. Personally I'd like one that supports MAX8/Super Duper 8 frame.

Edited by Ernie Zahn
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