Recommendations needed for n8 -> HD telecine

[hirudin]

Hi All,

I have about 400ft of regular8 film I need transferred to HD for a project I'm working on. Can you recommend a telecine shop that is reliable, fast and gives great results? I'm in Vancouver, and the closest place that does it is Victory Studios in Seattle; they have a Moviestuff sniper and I guess for the price it's ok. But I thought I'd tap the knowledge base here before I commit.

A note, I'm looking to get overscanned telecine so I can see the edge of the perf and slivers of the next/previous frames.

Thanks in advance for your suggestions!

-Jesse-

[Will2]

You're not going to beat prices on someone with a sniper. They probably know how to operate it well too (that's important).

Other HD options fort regular 8mm get expensive really quick.

I've had moderate success with these guys and they are cheap, but the transfers are a little too contrasty sometimes.

http://www.mymovietransfer.com/8mm_Pricing.html

If you are shooting NEW Regular 8mm, you can tell the lab NOT TO SPLIT the rolls and you'll have 16mm film that can be transferred on Spirits and any other modern high-end telecine... something to think about but of course it will be more money but probably higher quality...Cinelicious would be setup well for that.

[Nicholas Kovats]

Jesse,

I use John Gledhill at bitworks.com here in Toronto.

He provides a 16mm wide overscan edge to edge (visible sprockets) for my UltraPan8 footage on his custom engineered sprocketless scanner of his own design, i.e. http://bitworks.org/. John charges me 0.375 cents per scanned UP8 foot. My overscanned HD Super 8 film footage is charged at a rate of 0.30 cents per scanned Super 8 foot. Your potential 400 ft of Regular 8 might be calculated at the Super 8 rate. It is best to contact John directly at john@bitworks.org.

Here are some examples of his high resolution UP8 deliverables as overscanned 2080x870 pixel x 24 (bit depth) sequential jpegs, i.e.

http://vimeo.com/27492482
http://vimeo.com/27905787
http://vimeo.com/36705545
http://vimeo.com/39417454

He recently increased the pixel width for my UP8 scans to 2300 pixels with a slight corresponding decrease in the vertical by 100 pixels. There has been no corresponding increase in his rates.

I might add that he provides multiple variations of your scan...not just one single file. This also includes multiple compressed wrappers (DV15/25/50) for immediate playback. It can get a little daunting at times when I need to open up 18,000+ frames in my image squence jpegs for a quick peek!

Cheers!

Nicholas Kovats
Toronto

[hirudin]

Thanks for the recommendations. Bitworks looks good, I've emailed him and I'll see what can be done; I have a tight schedule.

Thanks!!

-Jesse-