S8 --> digital --> enlrgr sftwr --> 16 or 35mm

[Scot McPhie]

S8 --> digital --> enlrgr sftwr --> 16 or 35mm

Has anyone ever tried or thought about blowing up via this route:

Original on Super 8 telecined to digital

Digital image graded corrected etc then enlarged SUPPOSEDLY WITH OUT LOSS OF RESOLUTION to comprable resolution of 16 or 35

and then transferred to 16 or 35

The software that does it is:

http://www.s-spline.com/redirect.php?pa ... d=sspline2
http://www.lizardtech.com/solutions/photo/

The examples on the S-Spline site are quite amazing http://www.s-spline.com/redirect.php?pa ... pid=family - and one review said it can get upto 7x enlargement with out visible loss in quality

I know ages ago Matt Pacini was talking about this kind of thing - did you ever try it Matt - has anyone tried it?

Scot M

http://www.mango-a-gogo.com

[David M. Leugers]

Very interesting! I read at least twenty years ago about a man in Canada who was experimenting with this very thing. Of course technology then was not what it is today. This may open the doors for more serious uses for our 8mm gauges. It may be practical to shoot an entire movie on S-8mm, edit on a computer along with sound, use a video master to print a 16mm sound print for festivals and other showings. This process would be a boost to S-8mm negative stock use I would think. I think that 16mm optical sound could be improved tremendously with the ideas for digital sound some have for S-8mm. You could have 16mm festivals with films projected on 16mm that were printed from 8mm film, digital video and 16mm film original material. One size (16mm prints) fits all.

David M. Leugers

[avortex]

These kind of programs only eliminate pixelation and other enlarging artifacts, but they NEVER add resolution to your original images. The sharpness of your original frames will be the the same, but at a bigger scale.

All post-houses make a similar process when transferring video to film.

Perhaps the solution is the proposition of Matt some time ago: Transfer the super8 with the workprinter but using a very good Digital Still Camera, wich has much more resolution than any video format and zero artifacts. It's like scanning your film to a HD medium!!

Any suggestions?

[mattias]

These kind of programs only eliminate pixelation and other enlarging artifacts, but they NEVER add resolution to your original images.

they actually do, or rather it depends on what you mean by resolution. they obviously can't create any detail, but the resolution is actually increased as far as high frequency edge data goes. just look at the examples on the site. what virtually all scaling algorithms do, as well as the post houses, is what you see in the "bicubic" examples.

that said, i don't really believe in this method for this purpose either. :-)

/matt

[Scot McPhie]

Yeah I've got to admit for all I've been looking at lately (this and the video as film thing) it's probably easier just to shoot film in the first place - the only problem is the cost when it comes to the larger guage stuff - but perhaps it's just a matter of putting more effort into that side of things

there was a feature shot here recently that went 35 --> digital for grading --> 35 -- I kind of know the director so next time I see him I'll ask hima bout it - surely they must have lost some qualty through that

I reckon film is the way to go - but who knows perhaps the s-spline thing might be alright (though not as good as shooting 16 or 35 to begin with) -- I wonder how it's algorithms would look over successive frames - moving images?

Scot M