Can someone tell me the difference??? (telecine)

[bahia0019]

Thanks for reading, I hope you all have some answers for me...

There are multiple places saying that they do Super 8 transfer. But what is good quality and what is overpriced?

I've seen places like Pro 8 which is ungodly expensive from what I can tell, and then there are places like this http://www.homevideostudio.com/video-se ... ansfer.cfm that do it for $.18/foot.

The place mentioned above said that they use the Sniper setup that scans each frame one by one. That sounds good, right?
But whats the difference between that and what Pro 8 does?

And what about the people doing their own at home, how do they do it? and are the results as good as Pro 8?

I have tried searching this info out on here, but it's hard to sift through everything to get teh definitive answer.
It would be nice if there was a Stickey or some resource that could explain the Telecine mistique...

Thanks in advance for any answers you can provide.

[JCook]

18 cents/foot for Sniper transfer sounds pretty reasonable. The sniper is a nice telecine unit.

A couple other items you may wish to consider are:
1) film prep prior to transfer, i.e. removing lint and hair from the prints using a non-abrasive cleaning method. Ask for the return of your films even if you no longer want them you'd be surprised what people pay on ebay for others' memories...shessh. :roll:
2) final delivered product, most of the transfer houses will compress your footage using mpeg2 or maybe mpeg4 onto DVD. I'd ask what formats are available and go with the least amount of compression. Also I suppose in this day and age I'd have to ask if anyone do MPEG4-HD transfers onto Blu-ray? I know some would argue that this is overkill but you only want to pay to transfer your memories once. See what the options are at what price before deciding.

Good luck, let us know what you find out.

Regards, John

[adamgarner]

I'll try and go first... There will be more in-depth answers to follow I'm sure, but let me attempt:

A DIY solution is typically a video camera pointed at a projected image. These results yield a flicker, typically, because they are not frame-by-frame. Frame rates of film and video do not match. (I'm not sure about the case of 24fps film and a 24p videocamera). Either way, this is not an ideal solution since you're basically shooting "off the wall."

A workprinter is a better transfer method as it is a projector that is modified to play frame by frame, and allows a video camera to capture each frame through a modified mouse, a condenser lens, and some other workings I don't fully understand. It's better than off the wall, but understand it still uses the projector as the source of the image. The projector in this case is modified to have an LED light as the light source. Roger also offers an RGB model for balancing the light.

Now, a telecine is an expensive piece of equipment that scans the film, frame by frame, using a CRT tube, or some other variety of light that can be balanced in a very precise way. The whole ensemble includes a console that allows for each scene to be color corrected, and for the light to be adjusted. The sensor on these are specialized, and very different than a video camera. In the case of Pro8, the millenium scanner will scan at uncompressed HD resolutions.

(note that if you are shooting negative stock, the ONLY solution that works, for most folks, is a professional scanner or telecine. Results are iffy if you try and telecine a negative off the wall or with a workprinter. Part of the challenge is that the film has to be clean and the light has to be perfectly distributed, otherwise you get some very weird results.)

Pro 8 is so expensive because the level of precision and quality (usually!). You're also paying for a professional colorist to get the image to be balanced. They also overcharge a bit, but they can since they are the only company with a millenium 2 scanner.

It's tough to know the differences since there's noplace to look at the footage side by side. On my website I have 3 films (http://super8films.trigger-studios.com). One is an off the wall HDV telecine that looks "ok," one is a cinelicious transfer that looks very nice, and one is a Pro8 transfer that looks very very nice.

See if you can tell the difference. It's tough since those films are 400x225 quicktimes. I wouldn't be opposed to loading some larger files up there to help. Let me know what you think!

[bahia0019]

To John and Adam:
Is it true that negative stock has to be transferred via telecine? Or could I give negative stock to someone using the Sniper?
I've got 15 rolls of Negative stock coming back to me that I need to have transferred and don't have a lot of money for it.

Adam: It turns out that you are my competition (well sort of) Haha. I'm in Austin too, and I shoot weddings. I'm mainly a photographer, but was inspired to bring super 8mm into my bag of tricks. You are obviously much more versed at it though. It's been tough learning on the fly - although I've been doing everything for cost - which has been underestimated.

Here are a couple small movies from a wedding and bridal session back in November. It was shot on Ektachrome and Tri-X.
http://williambay.com/2008/11/together- ... otography/

The stuff I am waiting for was 500 speed #73 from Pro 8 (Fuji Eterna 500T equivalent). Now after what you said I'm concerned about getting that transfered.

Any chance you can acquiesce my fears?

BTW is the Beth & Johnny the wall transfer one? Was that done by Precision here in town?

[adamgarner]

Hey (William?),

That's great, I'm glad there are more shooters! There's plenty of room for a few of us, but hopefully no MORE. HA! I think our styles are very different. Welcome to the wonderful world of S8 though.

I would say just experiment to get your own look. It's tough to work within the bounds of budget and get the best product while still making a profit. My first several films were at cost, and even took a hit on some to experiment with films, transfer methods, etc.

I wouldn't expect much from Precision. They do ok SD transfers for reversal. It's cheap. I just cant bear to look at SD transfers after working in HD. The cost is huge though.

Negative is very touchy and I don't know what your results will look like. I don't think precision will touch it!, and the certainly wont worry about keeping it clean during transfer. If they will do it, you'll have to do all the color correction yourself. I've tried it with an off the wall transfer and the results were, well, terrifying.

The "beth and johnny" film is NOT off the wall!!! I think it might look that way since it was shot at 18fps to save cost. It's got a sort of smeared look, right? The Molly Jeremy film is off the wall, shot with my HD camera. Crazy right?

[Will2]

then there are places like this http://www.homevideostudio.com/video-se ... ansfer.cfm that do it for $.18/foot.

I love their comparison shots... "The Competition" looks pretty amazingly bad. Like the competition is shooting film off an old sheet with a 1985 video camera.

[adamgarner]

For .18 cents a foot, just like my local photo shop here, they're probably using moviestuff hardware. A sniper pro, or a workprinter is great, if you're using it right. I have heard that some places (like this one) mess up a lot of footage since they are trying to transfer as much footage as possible in a short amount of time. Heck, that's why they're advertising online everywhere.

So, messed up focus, or blown out shots are common if you're not doing things right. I've seen footage that looked like the shop just set the camera up with "auto" on every function, and it would change the iris and focus for almost every new shot and it was a disaster.

You get what you pay for. The end. I'd rather have someone doing scene by scene color grading, etc. But, if you don't give a sh*t, I guess this is a "good-enough" approach.

[bahia0019]

Hi Adam,
Yes it is William (Bahia by my friends).
Yes, at this point it's a "Good enough" application. I hate to say that, because I pride myself on providing a quality product.

I was pretty impressed by the Molly Jeremy film. I could on second viewing see the flicker, but it was not distracting.

I'm wondering if you would consider helping me out with the transfer with that same set-up. I would of course pay you, if you were up for it. As far as the negative film goes, I'm assuming I could always use a invert filter in FC or Premier - right?

My film should be in later in the week, so you have some time to think about it.

I do like your view on competition - "Good, but... let's limit it - I fully agree"

William

[adamgarner]

William:

We'll the issue is, with the negative, that won't invert well.

To help out, I'll tell you what will happen and save you countless hours of work.. fair? HA.

OK, when you project the negative it will be, first off, nearly impossible to focus. All I can tell you is that focusing an inverted image, because of some brain function, is not as easy as it sounds. In fact, I found it almost impossible.

Saying you can get around this, though, you'll have a second issue. When you project an image it will have a hotspot in the middle, no matter what. This is just physics. It gives a fairly "vintage" feel when you see this on a transfer or on a wall. Now, if you reverse this, the darkened corners will... of course.. not be darker but lighter. Suddenly the image looks like it's from the civil war. It's an aweful "vibe" if you will, and defeats the purpose of shooting on small format at all.

So, your best bet is to transfer it professionally.

Last thing I'll say. If you shoot at 24 fps, the flicker is god aweful. The math works out better for a 29.97 frame rate mixed with 18fps on a super 8 cam.

Bottom line, you really cant get away with an off the wall transfer unless you're shooting reversal at 18fps unless you've got some tweaked equipment.

I'd suggest having precision do it, no matter what. It wont be HD but it will, at least, look reasonable.

All that make sense??

[David M. Leugers]

To John and Adam:
Is it true that negative stock has to be transferred via telecine? Or could I give negative stock to someone using the Sniper?
I've got 15 rolls of Negative stock coming back to me that I need to have transferred and don't have a lot of money for it.

I do negative and unless you are spending huge dollars on a "professional" transfer, I am sure you will love the results, especially the price. I had one customer who wrote me back wanting to pay me MORE than what I charged he was so thrilled with the results.

[url]moviefilmtransfers.com/url]

[super8man]

http://home.pacbell.net/mnyberg/super8mm/super8_13.html

[bahia0019]

Thanks for the info Adam.

Now are you saying to have Precision do the transfer? I was under the impression that they do it off the wall. I also have a roll that I had them do and the result is terrible http://williambay.com/2008/10/super-8-i ... s-are-next

For about the same price I would think that the frame by frame scanning on the Sniper would yield better results as far as clarity, then coming up with a solution to resolve the negative inverting... I guess I can play with the CMY filters to get something that looks decent.

I've written the Video Services place if they have any problems going to negative, so we'll see I guess...

All this info definitely helps for getting a workflow put together, from film, to developmemt, to transfer.
It looks like I will have to go High Def for future work too.
Adam do you mind if I ask what it costs per roll for the roll itself, development, and hi-def transfer?

I appreciate yours and every bodies comments here!

William

[MovieStuff]

I'll weigh in here, for what it's worth.

Just because someone is using a piece of equipment that is "good" doesn't mean you will always get good results. Likewise, while our equipment might be considered "good", it does not mean the people using it are any more committed to doing a good job than someone in a "pro" lab using more state of the art equipment. I'm not slagging my customers. I'm just being realistic here. I have seen incredible off the wall transfers that were far superior to what one of our Sniper Pros produced simply because the Sniper Pro user didn't know what the hell they were doing and/or just figured that since they spent $7000+ dollars, then the machine should be magical and they could just coast. It just doesn't work that way. Assuming that you are having your footage transferred on a decent machine, like a FlashScan, Rank, Sniper, Tobin, etc, operator input is -hands down- the make or break of the deal in terms of final quality.

Also, regarding negative: In my experience, the idea that negative is more "fragile" than reversal simply is a myth. I believe that reversal and negative scratch just as easily. However, because negative has low density, even when totally over exposed, scratches and debris show up easier as blatant and obvious white artifacts. But the very same artifacts on reversal are hidden by the higher density of the imagery. Try shooting shooting something of low density such as sky, desert or snow and see how "rugged" reversal is, regarding scratches and dirt. ;)

Hope this helps!

Roger

[Uppsala BildTeknik]

www.homevideostudio.com/...

The place mentioned above said that they use the Sniper setup that scans each frame one by one. That sounds good, right?

No, that place (homevideostudio) does NOT sound good. Just as Roger pointed out anyone can produce crap results with whatever equipment they have to work with.

They need to be honest, to begin with. Just for this reason I would put them in the trashcan, the comparisons "to other companies" is a joke. I have seen very bad transfers but what they put up as "the competition" is really a joke, probably something they messed up themselves in order to make a "bad competitor".

If we forget about the images from the competitor and look at the images that is supposed to be of high quality, their own transfers, they look like sh*t too. They are pixelated as hell, and are those interlace lines I can see? I don´t know, I just know they really do not look like something I´d want to show as something considered as "good".

I´d stick to someone who is honest, and who knows what good quality is supposed to look like. Perhaps the pixelated and unsharp images look perfectly fine to them?

[adamgarner]

are you saying to have Precision do the transfer? I was under the impression that they do it off the wall. I also have a roll that I had them do and the result is terrible

Bahia, Precision Camera, here in Austin uses a workprinter. I don't think that the guy there (Roger is his name if I recall correctly), really knows what he's doing. The color comes off as a grey/sepia tone. Not so focused either. I have footage from them that looks almost identical to what you've got here. Just purely muddy. Understand, also, that an old bell and howell will look pretty muddy in general. So, every part of the workflow is crucial, including camera! I was simply suggesting that precision is cheaper, and you can do limited quality control since you're local.

I think everyone here is dead-on. Operator is 80% of the result. Honestly, I thought my off the wall HDV transfer kicked Precisions ass, but... again... I spent hours getting the image to look right. If you think the dude at precision will do the same, you're in for a big ol' disappointment, right!?

So, we should go in halvsies on a workprinter. HAHA!

Also, Roger keeps telling me that workprinters aren't ideal for negative scans, but if I could get my hands on a unit I'd do everything I could to make it work. Roger, got any loaners!? :twisted: