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When was this Spirit 4K scanner state of the art?


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Description from eBay:

I have a house full of spirits about 8 spirits come and pick whatever you want plus extra parts for $9000

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Boy, this person loves to collect old scanners. When was this Spirit 4K scanner state of the art?

Edited by Daniel D. Teoli Jr.
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They are excellent scanners and were $2M in 2008 and many high end shows still use the Spirit 4K for scans.

It is a very reliable true RGB scanner but really needs a proper space to live in an engineering support including having a parts machine on hand.

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15 minutes ago, Robert Houllahan said:

It is a very reliable true RGB scanner but really needs a proper space to live in an engineering support including having a parts machine on hand.

The sheer amount of electronics in those things is overwhelming - dozens of boards. Handling HD with all the colour processing in the 90s could reasonably demand that but I'm surprised it had to be so staggeringly overbuilt by 2008. I get the impression they were clinging to the original Spirit architecture and just beefing it up for 4K.

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6 hours ago, Phil Rhodes said:

The sheer amount of electronics in those things is overwhelming - dozens of boards. Handling HD with all the colour processing in the 90s could reasonably demand that but I'm surprised it had to be so staggeringly overbuilt by 2008. I get the impression they were clinging to the original Spirit architecture and just beefing it up for 4K.

No not really at all, the two machines I have are quite a bit simpler in terms of number of boards in them, in fact the whole right lower section of the machine is empty on the last models. The basic film transport is similar to the rest of the Spirit classic and Quadra etc. machines as is the lamp and how the CCD arrays are placed relative to the gate but the overall electronics got simpler and more robust.

They are great machines if your a lab or big post house and there are some definite advantages for some material compared to some of the newest generation of scanners.

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1 hour ago, Robert Houllahan said:

the whole right lower section of the machine is empty on the last models

Ah. That would make a lot more sense.

I seem to recall they were a lot more than 9K new.

What exactly is the big maintenance issue with them? Mechanical or electronic?

(Not that I'm in the market, I hasten to add.)

I assume the benefit is sheer speed.

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17 hours ago, Robert Houllahan said:

List price on a new Spirit 4K in 2008 was about $2M

 

$2,000,000 to $9,000. That is crazy depreciation. Pus they didn't pay $9,000 for it. 

This was title to listing...

Spirit 4k film scanner telecine 35mm + spare Cards + Davici

Lots of chip cards with it. Reminds me of the old Xmas lightbulb joke. One goes out and they all goes out. It also comes with some DaVinci gear and another film gate. But don't know what it is all for. You would think they would take that time to dust off the control panel.

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I understand the scanner companies want to sell you maintenance insurance when you buy a scanner. I guess you would really need it for this baby.

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17 hours ago, Phil Rhodes said:

That's a devaluation rate of over $400 a day.

Ouch.

Guess it is not bad if you are charging $10K a day to scan 35mm films. First little 8mm reel I had scanned years ago cost may $300+ for the MP$, extra DVD's, noise reduction and getting the TIFF files. Scanning companies are rolling in $.

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Unless you know someone who is a retired Thompson Engineer, who is willing to live in a trailer behind your house and work for food and you have 5 surplus units to scavenge, forget this scanner.  They were designed for a post production house environment that flourished when money ran as freely as cocaine in the business.  They are like Bugatti or McLauren cars;  beautiful, fast and broken all the time.

Don't get me wrong, they are great scanners but in no way are they practical in any sense for anyone less than a giant commercial company or a government institution (and not even them sometimes).

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7 hours ago, Frank Wylie said:

Unless you know someone who is a retired Thompson Engineer, who is willing to live in a trailer behind your house and work for food and you have 5 surplus units to scavenge, forget this scanner.  They were designed for a post production house environment that flourished when money ran as freely as cocaine in the business.  They are like Bugatti or McLauren cars;  beautiful, fast and broken all the time.

Exactly and DFT just stopped supporting them, so that's the end of that. 

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I think what you are seeing here (according to people who know) is a bunch of parts machines and random stuff, there are older DaVinci 888 panels and cards from various Spirits etc. I don't think these are running machines.

The Spirit 2K/4K series is a very reliable competent scanner but you do need a facility and parts machines to run them, good for a lab or post house definitely not for an individual in their house.

I have two at Cinelab and they are workhorse scanners and live along side our Scan Station and Xena machines.

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I know next to nothing about these things, I think if I were going to get into any of that stuff, I'd want to take some neg along, book out a good day or two and spend some time getting into what's there and seeing if a working setup could be assembled from it. And even then, I'd expect to discover some crucial part missing, and have to order it at some huge cost.

What services do they require? Just power? Compressed air? Some obscure bit of Irix software to run them? Irreplaceable custom PCI card? Strange cables which are long since lost?

P

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Spirit Data (2K 4K) machines are complex to setup, most run BONES on SUSE10 Linux and require very specific FC storage.

Spirit machines with the SDI video outs can be run standalone with the GCP controller or connected to a DaVinci 2K.

Spirit 2K 4K are usually 3-Phase power although they can be configured to run on 220v.

Not really machines for the uninitiated or those who think they are going to be an easy machine to run.

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Also while looking at these machines I think it is good to remember that it was not that long ago that none of this fancy digital high res sensor and fast gpu stuff existed.

Realtime 2K and 7-8fps 4K true RGB was pretty impressive when these were new in 2005ish on.

And post houses and labs which bought these scanners typically made that investment back in a year.

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1 hour ago, Robert Houllahan said:

Spirit Data (2K 4K) machines are complex to setup, most run BONES on SUSE10 Linux and require very specific FC storage.

Pin on 50 shades of NOPE

These damn things are an exercise in historic computer research.

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1 hour ago, Phil Rhodes said:

 

These damn things are an exercise in historic computer research.

I was able to get my Data Spirit migrated to SUSE11 and PhantomII software which is much more modern.

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