Jump to content

Transfer Company = New Lasergraphics "Director 10K"?


Scott Pickering

Recommended Posts

Im thinking future proof. 8K is supposed to come on scene to replace 4K as the high standard by 2023. Im also thinking of getting an 8K tv when they've been out for a few years and like to play my material in native format. I know it looks lofty, but if its possible, I'm considering it. Even if not mastered in 8K, downrezzing to 4K should help, since I have to crop the scan anyway (throwing out rez).

Link to comment
Share on other sites

3 hours ago, Scott Pickering said:

My reasoning for 5k and above is I may want a finished 8k file once done. 5k on Super 8 looks quite good, if a bit soft because of the lens used, though with K40, I still don't see the grain in some shots. To me that means you can go higher even if the detail doesn't improve. I am currently using the 5k file cropped which ends up being 3.3k. For UHD that is still acceptable because once dropped into a 16:9 frame for UHD, you still have more dpi then needed since the image portion is almost square.

Forget reasoning. Just run some tests and post the results. If work is done right, proof is in the puddin, not in reasoning.

Your scans may be poorly done, even at high res. The scanning companies may just scan things and not try for critical focus. Ask them if they can offer critical focus service. See if that helps the grain pop.  I don't know how the $$ scanners work, it may be autofocus, but grain should show up if it is scanned sharply.

Some color films seem to have clumpy grain that is different that BW grain. See the link below for photography compared to see color grain vs BW grain.

On 4/19/2019 at 6:17 PM, Robin Phillips said:

Film can not resolve infinite resolution. From what I've seen there is 0 way super 8 can resolve 8k. Its pushing it to say that super 16 can resolve 4k, and that assumes Ultra 16s or Master Primes are being used. This will almost certainly not be the case with a super 8 camera. So why throw away money on an 8k scan on a format that cant resolve it? 

I suspect if we all had that kind of money to blow, we'd all be shooting 65 lol

Apples to apples, oranges to oranges...film is less sharp than digital. 

35mm negative film = 3 or 4 mp with a P&S cam. (Chromes may be different.) 

Here are the test photos. 

http://photographycompared.tumblr.com/

Perceived sharpness on the big screen may be something different. But these are the results with still film. 

 

Edited by Daniel D. Teoli Jr.
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Here is one of the 5K DPX scans that was cropped for the frame and corrected from the flat scan (added contrast). The resulting file ended up being 4600x3400dpi, so a 4.6K image. First image is the full Super 8 frame and second shows a portion at 100 percent viewing.

Super8.jpg

Super8-100percent.jpg

Edited by Scott Pickering
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Dunno, looks good to me. What are you expecting with 8? 

You can only do so much with 8. Every film format has an optimum projection size and viewing distance. Just gotta suck it up if you work with 8 and accept you are not going to have hi image quality even with super hi res scans. 

Edited by Daniel D. Teoli Jr.
Link to comment
Share on other sites

3 hours ago, Daniel D. Teoli Jr. said:

You can only do so much with 8. Every film format has an optimum projection size and viewing distance. Just gotta suck it up if you work with 8 and accept you are not going to have hi image quality even with super hi res scans. 

With all due respect, this is the logical problem with the direction this thread has headed. It completely misses the point of scanning at high resolutions.

Nobody is saying that the plastic lenses, unstable film and old film stocks can resolve details in the way one could with, say, 16mm or 35mm using pin-registered cameras, fine-grained stocks and high end lenses. But scanning at a lower resolution means it will eventually need to be scaled up, digitally, to fit that higher res screen that will be the standard in a few years.

When you scale an image up, you always have to make up pixels where there weren't any before. There is simply no way to do this digitally in as sharp a way as you could with a scan done directly to the higher resolution. Yes, scaling algorithms have improved, and you can get away with a higher scaling factor now than you used to be able to, because of those improvements, but you can only scale upward to a point, before you start seeing softening. Then you have to add artificial sharpening to compensate. And now you have an image that doesn't really represent what's on the film, and won't stand up as well to compression, or multi-generation copies. From an archival perspective, this is a major no-no.

Think of it this way: Would you digitize your entire music collection at 22kHz? It *might* sound ok on some sound systems - a computer's tiny speakers for instance - but plug a player into a normal stereo or a pair of decent headphones and you'll immediately hear the difference. Why are CDs double that sample rate at 44.1? Why is the recording industry standard in 2019 to capture sound at 96kHz or higher?  Because more digital samples of an analog stream means a more faithful representation of the sound. It allows you to do more with the audio without causing artifacts. Will everybody hear the difference between a 48k and a 96k recording? I'd actually argue that most really can't. But again - that's not the point - capturing at 96k buys you flexibility. 

Capturing a film image to digital is really no different. You're taking an infinitely resolvable analog object and slicing it up into pixels (the same as samples in audio). The more pixels you use to represent that film, the closer a digital representation to the original you'll get. The point is NOT about making the film sharper than it is, it's about buying the flexibility to present it properly on changing display technology, and to be able to manipulate it without artifacting. 

 

 

Edited by Perry Paolantonio
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Im not scanning at 10K because I expect it to look high rez. Im scanning it to get the cleanest looking image when shown at 8K. As Perry mentioned, if you want to show on an 8K TV, you are best to have an 8K scan for it. Not only that, but if you look at my 4.6K scan, you still don't easily see the grain in the image. Going higher will show the grain more defined and result in a cleaner image. I don't scan at 5K for all of my films. Only the important ones. My 16mm reels I've been getting 2K scans just to have something. One day I might get a better scan for those, but its not high on my list to do. That said Im really curious what a 10K scan would look like off small gauge films.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

7 hours ago, Perry Paolantonio said:

With all due respect, this is the logical problem with the direction this thread has headed. It completely misses the point of scanning at high resolutions.

Nobody is saying that the plastic lenses, unstable film and old film stocks can resolve details in the way one could with, say, 16mm or 35mm using pin-registered cameras, fine-grained stocks and high end lenses. But scanning at a lower resolution means it will eventually need to be scaled up, digitally, to fit that higher res screen that will be the standard in a few years.

When you scale an image up, you always have to make up pixels where there weren't any before. There is simply no way to do this digitally in as sharp a way as you could with a scan done directly to the higher resolution. Yes, scaling algorithms have improved, and you can get away with a higher scaling factor now than you used to be able to, because of those improvements, but you can only scale upward to a point, before you start seeing softening. Then you have to add artificial sharpening to compensate. And now you have an image that doesn't really represent what's on the film, and won't stand up as well to compression, or multi-generation copies. From an archival perspective, this is a major no-no.

Think of it this way: Would you digitize your entire music collection at 22kHz? It *might* sound ok on some sound systems - a computer's tiny speakers for instance - but plug a player into a normal stereo or a pair of decent headphones and you'll immediately hear the difference. Why are CDs double that sample rate at 44.1? Why is the recording industry standard in 2019 to capture sound at 96kHz or higher?  Because more digital samples of an analog stream means a more faithful representation of the sound. It allows you to do more with the audio without causing artifacts. Will everybody hear the difference between a 48k and a 96k recording? I'd actually argue that most really can't. But again - that's not the point - capturing at 96k buys you flexibility. 

Capturing a film image to digital is really no different. You're taking an infinitely resolvable analog object and slicing it up into pixels (the same as samples in audio). The more pixels you use to represent that film, the closer a digital representation to the original you'll get. The point is NOT about making the film sharper than it is, it's about buying the flexibility to present it properly on changing display technology, and to be able to manipulate it without artifacting. 

 

 

Sure Perry, no one is suggestion to upscale his movie. The discussion was about getting progressively higher res scans. I thought he wanted hi res scans to project it bigger. My take is even with super hi res scans, 8 can only go so big for projection. 

With still photos, upscaling can work in some instances combined with sharpening. Upscaling is not as good as hi res scans, but sometimes it makes a more pleasing image to the eye than not upscaling. You got to view the results to see if you like it. If you are pixel peeping then you may not like it, but how does it look to the eye? That is the question.

I do lots of upscaling with digital images of still photos. I never saved any before and after examples of it, but will look out for them in the future. The reason I upscale is I cannot always get a good digital original and it may be kinda low res. The upscaling can work to help make a better moderate size print, like a 8 x 10, but the upscaling wont magically make it a low res file to produce sharp 20 x 24's That is how I use upscaling. And it is just like you say with your audio example above. 

Sometimes the upscaled image does not look as good as the original, so it fails. You just have to try it Perry.  And I'm talking about moderate upscaling. When I come across a good example of a upscaling before and after success I will post it for you guys. 

 

 

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

3 hours ago, Scott Pickering said:

Im not scanning at 10K because I expect it to look high rez. Im scanning it to get the cleanest looking image when shown at 8K. As Perry mentioned, if you want to show on an 8K TV, you are best to have an 8K scan for it. Not only that, but if you look at my 4.6K scan, you still don't easily see the grain in the image. Going higher will show the grain more defined and result in a cleaner image. I don't scan at 5K for all of my films. Only the important ones. My 16mm reels I've been getting 2K scans just to have something. One day I might get a better scan for those, but its not high on my list to do. That said Im really curious what a 10K scan would look like off small gauge films.

Well, you gotta do it then and post the results. Get a 2K, 4K, 8K and 10K scan. Then put it up on the Internet Archive.

But color film is dye based and the grain is not sharp like BW film. And I don't think a movie film scanner will produce as sharp a scan as a flatbed scanner. But that is another test. Sometimes when I get some time I will compare a 2K Retroscan to a flatbed scan. But right now my computer is a mess, and I'm having trouble replacing it. So it is a test for down the road. 

Did you go to the link I posted earlier on photography compared?

You didn't see any grain in the color film example I posted. It is a hji res flatbed scan and blown up like hell. Color film does not have the grain structure like BW.

Here..from the Wiki

"In black-and-white photographic film, there is usually one layer of silver halide crystals. When the exposed silver halide grains are developed, the silver halide crystals are converted to metallic silver, which blocks light and appears as the black part of the film negative. Color film has at least three sensitive layers, incorporating different combinations of sensitizing dyes. Typically the blue-sensitive layer is on top, followed by a yellow filter layer to stop any remaining blue light from affecting the layers below. Next comes a green-and-blue sensitive layer, and a red-and-blue sensitive layer, which record the green and red images respectively. During development, the exposed silver halide crystals are converted to metallic silver, just as with black-and-white film. But in a color film, the by-products of the development reaction simultaneously combine with chemicals known as color couplers that are included either in the film itself or in the developer solution to form colored dyes. Because the by-products are created in direct proportion to the amount of exposure and development, the dye clouds formed are also in proportion to the exposure and development. Following development, the silver is converted back to silver halide crystals in the bleach step. It is removed from the film during the process of fixing the image on the film with a solution of ammonium thiosulfate or sodium thiosulfate (hypo or fixer).[3] Fixing leaves behind only the formed color dyes, which combine to make up the colored visible image. Later color films, like Kodacolor II, have as many as 12 emulsion layers,[4] with upwards of 20 different chemicals in each layer."

- - - - - - -

Scott, I'd tell you to scan a small section of your film on a flatbed scanner to get a reference example of what you can achieve. Then use that to compare your 10K scan to. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Here Scott, this is a 16mm raw scan, a 2K Retroscan file 1.17MB JPEG 2048 x 1536. I reduced it to 292kb for the forum limits.

818378966_sm_001.2048x1536_002631.17MB50.thumb.jpg.7e35bde6a2953c15a3c92e9757ac242b.jpg

The Retroscan does not have a film plate to keep the film flat, so maybe 2K will be sharper on another scanner. If you blow it up, the grain is not too sharp. The image falls apart before you can see the grain on the 1.17mb jpeg. From what I can tell, what looks like grain here is more of the texture from the sensor or something like that. 

I got some flatbed scans of this film and they don't show the grain either and some are 10mb jpegs for 3 or 4 frames. Well Scott, we will have to keep on the trail of the unobtainable scan that can show the grain! But in the future, shoot in BW and you may have an easier time seeing the grain.

Edited by Daniel D. Teoli Jr.
Link to comment
Share on other sites

1 hour ago, Daniel D. Teoli Jr. said:

My take is even with super hi res scans, 8 can only go so big for projection. 

Again, this misses the point. If you project super 8 on a giant screen, of course it's going to look fuzzy. You're blowing up an 8mm image to thousands of times its original size. but it's going to look a lot fuzzier if he scans 2k or even 4k and uses an 8k projection system or huge screen to digitally scale it up to the display res. This is what I'm getting at - scanning at a larger resolution than you need or at least at the native resolution of the intended display is always smarter than scaling upwards because you're starting with 

1 hour ago, Daniel D. Teoli Jr. said:

Sure Perry, no one is suggestion to upscale his movie.

Someone in this thread did suggest exactly that, with 16mm. That said, in the very post where you say this, you seem to be advocating that it upscaling is a good thing. 

48 minutes ago, Daniel D. Teoli Jr. said:

Well, you gotta do it then and post the results. Get a 2K, 4K, 8K and 10K scan. Then put it up on the Internet Archive.

What does the Internet Archive have to do with this? Doing any test and then putting it up on *any* streaming service is not a good way to evaluate the image quality. By the time you're viewing it, it's been through hell and back with all the compression necessary to stream an image. The only, and I truly mean the *only* way to compare is to put the uncompressed scan files against one another. You can't do this on any streaming service. 

16 minutes ago, Daniel D. Teoli Jr. said:

The Retroscan does not have a film plate to keep the film flat, so maybe 2K will be sharper on another scanner

I'm sorry, but the retroscan is a toy and really shouldn't be used as an example in a discussion of image quality. It's not a serious scanner. It's 8 bit, it's got a cheap camera and probably not a great lens. It's basically a simple projector with a video camera grafted on to it. It doesn't work in the same way a high end scanner works, and doesn't use the same class of imaging hardware, optics or lighting. Also, if it's scanning to a JPEG sequence then it's immediately crippled because JPEG is a lossy compression scheme that works in part by throwing out high frequency information. JPEG will destroy film grain because part of the way the compression works is to minimize randomness (and grain is inherently random). It does this by smoothing out (that is, decimating) the grain.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Perry, the Retorscan is the only thing that is a somewhat affordable option in film scans. Sure, it is not great, but it is quite doable for low budget archives looking for a 2K scan. The Retroscan cost less than the on-site set up and training for the Lasegraphics. So of course it only does so much. It does scans in TIFF or JPEG, but I don't see any difference in the TIFF other than huge size.

But, lets get back to your problem you seem to have understanding the benefits of upscaling. I made a post that explains how upscaling can work to one's advantage. You can't post anything like this here due to the photo size limits on the forum. I explain in detail how I use upscaling. 

https://danieldteolijrarchivalcollection.wordpress.com/2019/04/27/to-upscale-or-not-upscale/

 

Edited by Daniel D. Teoli Jr.
Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 3 months later...
On 4/21/2019 at 6:12 PM, Scott Pickering said:

Im thinking future proof. 8K is supposed to come on scene to replace 4K as the high standard by 2023. Im also thinking of getting an 8K tv when they've been out for a few years and like to play my material in native format. I know it looks lofty, but if its possible, I'm considering it. Even if not mastered in 8K, downrezzing to 4K should help, since I have to crop the scan anyway (throwing out rez).

Anything ever happen with your scan plans?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Site Sponsor

There is a new Sony Pregius 6.5K CMOS sensor just became available and will be making it's way into scanners soon, I assume the Scan Station Kinetta and the Xena will be using it soon enough.

The new Sony Pregius line is far better than the CMV50000 5K sensor used allot currently in scanners as much as 12dB better dynamic range and for S8mm figure a real 6K possible scan of the camera gate.

https://www.imperx.com/cmos-cameras/C6440/

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Lasergraphics is already testing this new 6.5k sensor in the scanstation and are expected to have one up and running at IBC next month.

in the meantime in our scan station we got rid of the5k sensor (due to high noise levels) and replaced it with the Flir 4k sensor (which is a Sony Pregius and delivers far superior images over the 5k sensor. We will be upgrading to the 6k as soon as it is available.

 

Lasergraphics also plans to put the mono chrome version of the 6.2 k camera in the Director as soon as it become available.  

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 1 month later...

Just wanted to let you guys know we just sent in the PO and deposit for the 6.5k ScanStation upgrade. Gamma Ray Digital will have this installed in about 6 weeks.. Pricing for resolutions above 5k is TBD - our 2k-5k pricing will be the same, but we need to run some tests first to see what we're dealing with in terms of file sizes and speeds before we finalize on 6k pricing

BTW, @Scott Pickering: I believe the max native film frame resolution will now be 5k, for Super 8. Currently it's about 4k for the 5.1k sensor.

 

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

On 8/9/2019 at 6:41 AM, John Rizzo said:

Lasergraphics is already testing this new 6.5k sensor in the scanstation and are expected to have one up and running at IBC next month.

in the meantime in our scan station we got rid of the5k sensor (due to high noise levels) and replaced it with the Flir 4k sensor (which is a Sony Pregius and delivers far superior images over the 5k sensor. We will be upgrading to the 6k as soon as it is available.

 

Lasergraphics also plans to put the mono chrome version of the 6.2 k camera in the Director as soon as it become available.  

Who makes the 5K sensor with more noise? Are sensors easily swapped out with Scanstation?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

On 9/20/2019 at 11:19 AM, Perry Paolantonio said:

Just wanted to let you guys know we just sent in the PO and deposit for the 6.5k ScanStation upgrade. Gamma Ray Digital will have this installed in about 6 weeks.. Pricing for resolutions above 5k is TBD - our 2k-5k pricing will be the same, but we need to run some tests first to see what we're dealing with in terms of file sizes and speeds before we finalize on 6k pricing

BTW, @Scott Pickering: I believe the max native film frame resolution will now be 5k, for Super 8. Currently it's about 4k for the 5.1k sensor.

 

Good for you Perry!

Someday I hope to buy the 4K model...but lotto is not cooperating. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

On 9/21/2019 at 4:06 PM, Daniel D. Teoli Jr. said:

Who makes the 5K sensor with more noise? Are sensors easily swapped out with Scanstation?

The 5k sensor in the Scanstation is the CMOSIS CMV20000. We have not found it to be as bad as Rob and some others have. It requires a lot of tweaking to fine tune it to minimize the noise, but it's possible. In our case, with one of the earliest ones Lasergraphics released, we had to swap the camera, there were firmware updates to the camera that are custom to Lasergraphics, and they did quite a lot of tweaking for us to get the noise to an acceptable level for a single-pass scan. We only see noise on the densest of film. In 2-flash HDR mode, the noise goes away. 

With the new Sony, the signal to noise ratio is much better out of the box, so it shouldn't require so much adjustment and tweaking. Can't wait to see what kind of dynamic range we can get out of it with really extreme footage. We've got several clients who do experimental animation work with 16mm hi-con film, and that can be tough on the 5k sensor. 

As with almost everything on the Scanstation, upgrades are fairly painless, though this one requires a new host PC as well as a completely new camera module (that tall box in the center of the scanner that sticks up above the top of the chassis). The camera they're using for with the Sony sensor uses a 25GbE interface, not CameraLink, so this is a significant upgrade that will require a fair bit of work to install, plus we'll need to migrate our RAID over to it, so lots of interim backups since we've got 50+TB of internal storage in ours. Generally, though, you can swap out most modules pretty easily on the ScanStation. I don't believe it's quite as easy on the ScanStation Personal, however.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Perry, why would Scanstation release a subpar sensor like that? You should not have to do all that work to make it doable. With all the money they charge it should produce excellent results right out of the box.

Was it worth it for you to move up from 4K just so you could say you have 5K, but everything had to be reworked to make it acceptable?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

21 minutes ago, Daniel D. Teoli Jr. said:

Perry, why would Scanstation release a subpar sensor like that? You should not have to do all that work to make it doable. With all the money they charge it should produce excellent results right out of the box.

I never said it was subpar, and it does produce excellent results out of the box. As I've said repeatedly in this forum and others, it's a good sensor when it's properly tuned. We've done many scans on this system and the quality is fantastic. Check out Errol Morris' film WORMWOOD on Netflix. We did all the 8mm home movie footage, at 5k with full overscan on our ScanStation, and it looks amazing. 

No sensor is going to "just work" out of the gate without proper calibration and adjustment. It took some time for Lasergraphics to address issues that customers brought up with them, in part because the camera manufacturer's firmware needed adjustments. In most cases, the sensor worked great without those adjustments. The noise we're talking about happens when the film is particularly dense. For properly exposed film, it's not an issue. 

Others have had more problems than we have. And Lasergraphics hasn't handled this as well as they could have (I would say they should have been more proactive about addressing the noise issues - clearly it's something that can be addressed, as it was with our camera). 

Quote

 

Was it worth it for you to move up from 4K just so you could say you have 5K, but everything had to be reworked to make it acceptable?

 

That's not how it worked. There was no "4k" ScanStation. It went from 2.5k on the original machine (we have the first one that rolled off the line), to the 5k camera about 3 years ago. In the past few months, there was a 4k option offered, using one of the Sony IMX sensors.

The scanner needs to overscan (2.5k to get a 2k frame, 5k to get a 4k frame, etc) in order to do frame registration, so the sensor is always bigger than the most common resolution. And with the 4k Sony sensor, your top resolution is less than 4k because of that overscan, which is why we didn't go for that upgrade. 

Even with the occasional noise, the CMOSIS 5k gave us superior scans with better options than we had with the 2.5k CCD that we originally had. For example: Super2k, where we scan in 5k but downsample to 2k - this overcomes the color sampling limits of the bayer sensor, and gives you effectively an RGB scan. ...And a sharper image to boot, from the oversampling.

Edited by Perry Paolantonio
  • Upvote 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • Premium Member
On 9/21/2017 at 9:52 AM, Adam Frisch FSF said:

If anyone's in doubt about scanning at higher resolution, don't believe the old "no point in scanning 4K on super 8 as it can only resolve HD anyway" is BS. Compare a 4K scan vs a HD and see for yourself.

In absolute terms yes, 4k scan of Super 8 will look better than HD. But it helps when it's shot with a decent camera, great lens and actually in focus...something that the majority of Super 8 footage isn't. For things we shoot today with care I'd go 4k all day long. For my parents and grandparents home movies, not so much.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

23 minutes ago, Will Montgomery said:

In absolute terms yes, 4k scan of Super 8 will look better than HD. But it helps when it's shot with a decent camera, great lens and actually in focus...something that the majority of Super 8 footage isn't. For things we shoot today with care I'd go 4k all day long. For my parents and grandparents home movies, not so much.

With all due respect, this misses the point I've tried to make here several times: Will you get more detail of the *image* out of a higher res scan? No, not if that detail is lost to bad optics, etc. But you will get a better scan of the film that contains that image. It's exactly like high sample rates in audio - you don't capture analog audio at 22kHz for a reason...

And, at 4k you will avoid digitally scaling up to fit a modern 4k screen. Even a 2k -> 4k blowup is significant and will soften the image considerably. Given the predominance of 4k screens in 2019, it doesn't really make sense to scan (even home movies) to resolutions lower than 4k. 

FWIW, we've done probably 60 home movie transfer jobs this year so far, ranging from a few hundred to tens of thousands of feet. Only a few of them have been at 2k. The vast majority are done at 4k, HDR, to a flat ProRes 4444 file, and most opt for a simultaneous one-light HD MP4 file they can easily upload to YouTube or share on a USB thumb drive with family. Kodachrome in 4k can look amazing, even on mediocre cameras. 

I know I just mentioned it above, but do check out WORMWOOD on Netflix. The home move footage looks fantastic, and it was scanned at 5k.

Edited by Perry Paolantonio
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now
×
×
  • Create New...