Using a capstan film scanner as a film inspection table.

[Nicholas Kovats]

This questions was inspired by Steenbeck's recent debut of a new editing table with a very awkward name "Vintage Cloud Steenbeck", i.e. http://www.vintagecloud.com/

I suspect it is prohibitively expensive and it's market appears to be designated archival institutions. But the core idea is sound relative to my recent desire to build out a traditional film inspection table with rewinds, synchronizer, simple viewer and split reels. I have lost my patience with traditional dim viewing optics and uneven light sources.

Can any of the recent low cost digital capstan scanners be utilized in a similar manner with real time playback at 18 or 24 fps? I really like the engineered simplicity of the Retro-8/16 transport gate/channel but apparently it is limited to real-time 2 fps playback. I suspect a rudimentary setup could be had with a digital camera focused on a single frame near the synchronizer but maintaining the required constant speed would be a pain. I welcome your measured input and realistic suggestions.

[milesandjules]

Anyway of beefing up the light source in an elmo 912/s motorised viewer…we got one of them, it can do variable and 24fps and sound…but the brightness was crap ….if you could brighten it up with an led/fibre optics it would be great….we use it recently for winding and recording sound film stripe…works great for that.

[Nicholas Kovats]

Thanks for you input. However I should have stated some of my objectives more clearly. I am seeking beefy and geared rewind arms for multiple film formats, i.e R8, S8, UP8 2.8/16, 35 and potentially 70mm. And contemplating a machine vision camera mounted above and near the synchronizer. I am not a big fan of the Elmo's small screen.