16mm Hi Rez transfer in Los Angeles?

Post by **mr.skull** » Fri Jan 26, 2007 6:06 pm

I am wondering if anyone can recommend a place in the Los Angeles area that does high resolution film scanning of 16mm. I have about 1200 ft. of film to transfer. I would like it to be high resolution, and progressive frame scans, so I can do some post work in After Effects. It would be ideal to keep the original 16mm frame proportions, not the HD proportions. Maybe in the neighborhood of 2000 pixels across. Also, there are some tape splices, just to connect the various rolls together. Is there any issue with using tape splices on the high end transfer units? Any advice would be appreciated!
Thanks,
Joel

Post by **reflex** » Fri Jan 26, 2007 6:11 pm

It's called Telecine. ;)

There are several companies in the area that will scan your film. Here is one that offers good customer service:

http://www.spectrafilmandvideo.com/Telecine.html

Post by **cubsfan45** » Fri Jan 26, 2007 7:29 pm

We're not in LA, but we do offer high-resolution telecine from 16mm film. We're out of Northbrook, IL and have a fast turnaround so that should offset the time that shipping takes. Below is a sample of our 16mm to HD work. Contact me at eugene@filmtransfer.com with any questions and visit my site too at http://www.filmtransfer.com.

http://filmtransfer.com/media/HD_16mm.wmv

Post by **mr.skull** » Fri Jan 26, 2007 9:03 pm

Thanks for the replies, but telecine is not really what I want. Maybe I should be a bit more specific. Rather than an output to video format, I want frames. Sequentially numbered scanned frames in high resolution. This would mean the scans would have to be provided on a hard drive or data dvd. Definitely a more expensive way to go. Just wondering if anyone on the forum has done this and has a recommendation?

Post by **reflex** » Fri Jan 26, 2007 9:16 pm

mr.skull wrote:Thanks for the replies, but telecine is not really what I want. Maybe I should be a bit more specific. Rather than an output to video format, I want frames. Sequentially numbered scanned frames in high resolution. This would mean the scans would have to be provided on a hard drive or data dvd. Definitely a more expensive way to go. Just wondering if anyone on the forum has done this and has a recommendation?

Surely, you don't want thousands of individual images? That would result in all sorts of extra challenges just to be able to use your film. You'd have to perform your own pulldown and convert the images to a wrapped AVI file to be able to work with it.

Don't forget that high-end transfers are performed as discrete frame transfers. It's typical to see 1K or 2K (horizontal rez) transfers, and many places can write directly to hard drive if you want to avoid compressing your video to tape.

Flying Spot in Seattle does excellent work at almost 2K and will output to HD if you wish: http://www.fsft.com That should suffice unless you're planning to print your film to 70 mm.

Post by **Nigel** » Fri Jan 26, 2007 9:42 pm

If you want 2K scans of each frame then go to these guys http://www.moderndigital.com

The are the best.

Good Luck

Post by **audadvnc** » Fri Jan 26, 2007 11:03 pm

But you will pay a pretty penny for this type of service. What's your budget?

Post by **cubsfan45** » Fri Jan 26, 2007 11:57 pm

Mr. Skull, we do have requests like this from time to time. We can output the transfer to sequential TIFF's (1920x1080, each file is approximately 4 MB).

~Eugene
http://www.filmtransfer.com
eugene@filmtransfer.com

Post by **christoph** » Sat Jan 27, 2007 12:21 am

cubsfan45 wrote:Mr. Skull, we do have requests like this from time to time. We can output the transfer to sequential TIFF's (1920x1080, each file is approximately 4 MB).

correct me if i'm wrong, but you're still capturing with a canon hdv cam over HD-SDI, no?

if so, the resulting transfer will still be 8bit 4:2:2 sampling in HD color space, (not to mention the problems with color and/or contrast) - no matter what you save it in the end.

i think mr skull made it clear that he's looking for a true 2K scan (which typically is 2048x1556 at 10bit log or 16bit rgb). of course that will be much more expensive than your service, but it helps if you clarify your offer, both in price and quality.

++ christoph ++

Post by **Nigel** » Sat Jan 27, 2007 1:36 am

I think that a 2K scan sits about 25mb per frame so get ready to have a very very large array and make sure that it is smokin' fast.

Good Luck

Post by **christoph** » Sat Jan 27, 2007 2:15 am

Nigel wrote:I think that a 2K scan sits about 25mb per frame so get ready to have a very very large array and make sure that it is smokin' fast.

a 2k 10bit cin file is about 12MB per frame, so that's 288MB/sec, which is just about doable with a 6-8 disk raid..

however, for compositing/effect work you can conveniently work in non real-time and render your previews to RAM or a compressed codec, so you dont really need a raid.

++ christoph ++