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Scanning Only Certain Parts of a Negative


Will Montgomery

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I'm in the process of putting together a film DP reel. I have scans/telecines of all the material but they are of wildly differing qualities...from SD to 4k.

 

If I know I only need 45 seconds of a particular reel, is it practical to tell the scanning house exactly what to scan from each reel...by approximate time or by frame grabs and only scan that vs. scanning an entire 400-800' reel?

 

I'm not trying to cheap out, but I also don't need everything on the reel.

 

My goal is to get quality and consistent 4k scans of everything and work locally with a colorist to make it shine.

 

Is that just a standard request or should I expect to pay a slight premium due to finding the part I need scanned then loading and unloading reels so much? (not opposed to such a fee.)

 

Thanks for any insight,

 

Will Montgomery

 

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Select scans are generally not all that inexpensive, there is time to do lineup and verify the edl etc etc. you may find that it is a wash between doing a selects EDL scan and just scanning the hole reel.

 

Maybe for a short single roll it would be ok but for larger projects expect to pay for all the labor it takes to do a selects scan.

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I would agree with Rob. In the past when scan costs were calculated in cents-per-frame instead of cents-per-foot, it could be cost effective to just grab selects. But we find that the setup time involved in doing EDL based scans, plus all the shuttling of the scanner, often makes it more expensive than just scanning the whole thing straight through (unless you're talking about a really big reel of course). Grabbing half a dozen shots off of a 1000' reel can take more time than just scanning the reel, depending on the settings.

 

It's probably best to physically cut out the section of film in question, give it enough leader on each end and send that in for scanning.

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It's probably best to physically cut out the section of film in question, give it enough leader on each end and send that in for scanning.

I was assuming that OP didn't have film handling equipment since he didn't mention cutting it himself.

Edited by Mark Dunn
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Building scan reels from an edl is also a ton of work and requires meticulous attention to detail.

 

One of the guys who used to work at Cinelab ended up at deluxe in LA and that was his job, building scan reels from edl.

 

Also expensive and with scanners being fast these days in most cases scanning the whole reel is the way to go.

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I was assuming that OP didn't have film handling equipment since he didn't mention cutting it himself.

 

I'm fairly certain Will has the hardware. But for something as simple as extracting a reel, all one needs is a set of rewinds and a splicer, and a clean space to work in - none of that is particularly exotic equipment. I'd definitely have the film cleaned before scanning though, since this process will almost certainly introduce dust.

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  • 2 weeks later...
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That's what I expected. It would seem more time consuming for the scan house to try and figure out what was needed vs. just running the whole reel down. I think I may need to do it locally and sit with the scanning guy to make it move more quickly for them.

 

The only reason I would pursue this method is that I only need like 20 seconds of some of these 400' reels. Hoping the reel will show off "what's possible" when shooting film that I can use to sell clients so scan quality and color is going to be important.

 

Film seems to be an easy sell for me with music videos but I'd like to broaden it's use with my clients where possible.

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if you would know the approximate position of the needed shots on the reel you could ask them to just scan those with couple of feets extra. for example "scan only from the 122ft to 210ft on reel 8" and if you would need something extra which is located close to that range on the reel you could just let them scan the whole range so that they would not need to find the other spot separately.

If the scanner needs lots of shot by shot adjustments it would be much better to sit with the operator and pick up the exact shots needed. or transfer the adjacent shots too but only make the fine adjustments to the select shots you know you will need

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