A home made Telecine machine.

[mattias]

I will need to do more reseach to see if I am correct.

no need. you're not. we've already done your research. :-)

/matt

[ericMartinJarvies]

800,000 exposure cycles?? 8O The highest I heard/read about exposure cycles for DSLR was 200,000 for a very high end model (i think it was one of the pro Canon DSLRs). Typical exposure cycles I hear/read more often is around 100,000 for a DSLR of reasonable quality.

yes, i supposed i am blessed, or lucky, or one of the few who has ACTUALLY trigged this many shutter accuations. most everything i read is assumptions, or people saying how they read or heard from the manufactures, etc. and so on. i can only account for my canon digital rebel, as it, and my kodak dcs/c are the only two mechanical shutter cameras i have employeed in digitzing my motion picture films. and i have even taken this camera apart a few times, naturally cleaning it during the process. i trust it still has a good number of accuations left in it ... used it a few moment ago in fact to test our it's usb connectively with some code/software of ours.

Not assumptions but doing some research of what many others have posted on other forums .... their comments and experiences. I posted earlier .... just a micro small sample of links of such discussions. As stated before, it seems camera manufacturers ocassionally disclose in their specs, the approximate shutter life, but "only" for the higher end cameras. On message boards discussing this, the most frequently mentioned is about 100,000 shutter cycles. Also, as I stated before, the highest that I came across is approximately 200,000 cycles longevity. I remember now which camera .... it is the Canon EOS 1D Mark II and that is stated in their specs. No where, anywhere in doing research/reading about this, have I seen quoted, the almost unbelievable"800,000 shutter cycles". You indeed have the Gods watching over you and rewarding you with such a gift of an almost supernatural & indestructable digital still cam :roll:

what involvement do you have with stop motion? you make stop motion animation? or make stop motion animation products?

Click the "www" graphic link which is at bottom of this post to see my website. I am also a long time member & regular participant of a stop motion message board. My interest about DSCs has been through discussions at the forum in which animators are exploring and some are adapting DSCs for animation purposes. They tolerate some of the bugs and glitches using DSCs for animation, but in their striving for highest resolution for possible transfer for HD format (or 35mm, if they can afford that!), they tolerate the DSCs issues and have improvised workarounds ..... not ideal but adequate.
LIO 8)

how many shutter accuations have you obtained with your dslr camer(s)?

last year, when i started digitizing my films, i would let my canon run two and three days straight. it has not yet failed me in any big ways. the remote socket experienced some problems, but was easily fixed. the on camera display function goes wacky if the camera is running more then 12 hours at a time, wherein when the preview is set to off, it goes ahead and previews, hence causing things to bottleneck, thus resulting in the camera missing shutter clicks/frames of film.


i have shot over 150 rolls of film since i started filming with movie cameras. lots of 50 ft super 8, and many 100' 16 and s16mm. about 30 400' rolls, of which i have made single light and best light prints form about a dozen of those. in my fridge i have over 100 rolls of film in there right now, so needless ot say i am shooting a lot of film. when i digitze my films, there are times i may re-do a roll, or a portion thereof, either for framing adjustment issues, or testing, or having to re-do a previous unattended session wherein the camera went wacky with it's on board display, thus resulting in exposures of moving film, missed frames, etc. so this would account for about 12-18 months worth of film transfers.

i only report it as it happens ... if people refuse to beleive it, i have no intentions or desire to waste my time having arguments about it for those who do have dslr cameras that die at only a couple hundred thousand accuations, then the $150-200 repair, or $500.00 camera replacement is not bad considering what you are getting for your money ... high res frames of film that a telecine transfer to video is not going to give you! with 200,000 shutter accuations, one can digitize 13 400' rolls of 16mm film, or 51 50' rolls of s8mm film. divide these numbers into the cost of a $500.00 camera, and then compare it to having all that footage transferred on a telecine machine.

eric

[ericMartinJarvies]

My idea was for telecine one frame at a time so it should not be a problem. I would not use it for real time capture but you could if you needed to. A firewire 800 card or a SATA in a laptop connected to a portable FW800 or SATA raid zero (GRaid) should be fast enough. I have no experience yet with HD other then my home made HD Telecine at 1280X1024, but I have no problem capturing uncompressed frames to my raid zero.

Regards,

Paul Cotto

hello paul ... long time no talk. nice to see your still alive

the irez camera you have been using for a couple years now is a GREAT camera for the money. i am surprised more people are not using it. for 1024 and lower it works great. although, it is a pc only solution out of the box. cameras with great sensors are now starting to flood the market ... and cameras with super great sensors are now starting to become affordable. it's an exciting time.

eric

[Justin Lovell]

what are you doing with your files once you capture at a higher res?

can you output to digibeta?.. or are you still ending up conforming the image down to a DV stream? I see the higher res option being worth while if you can find a way to manage the files afterwards to maintain the image quality. OR if all you want the higher res for is to be able to have a broader colour range for image manipulation/colour correction... then it makes sense to keep it higher res then downconvert to a DV signal.

How you you work with the files in your timeline as high res uncompressed clips, do they play back properly through using your OHCI firewire out to a monitor, or do you have a seperate analog output to deal with the higher resolution images?

Does it not bog down your system having to deal with larger size files?.. could the average person handle it (like me, running an AMD 1800 w/ 1.2gig ram?)

jusetan

[paulcotto]

Hello Eric,
I pop up from time to time when HD telecine is mentioned. I have 3 webcams as well as the iRez. One worth noting is the Veo Velocity Connect USB 2.0. It does 1280X1024 and costs $50~$100 USD online. I would say its close to the iRez at a fraction of the cost.

http://www.placesintown.com/malls/circu ... Camera.htm

Regards,
Paul Cotto

My idea was for telecine one frame at a time so it should not be a problem. I would not use it for real time capture but you could if you needed to. A firewire 800 card or a SATA in a laptop connected to a portable FW800 or SATA raid zero (GRaid) should be fast enough. I have no experience yet with HD other then my home made HD Telecine at 1280X1024, but I have no problem capturing uncompressed frames to my raid zero.

Regards,

Paul Cotto

hello paul ... long time no talk. nice to see your still alive

the irez camera you have been using for a couple years now is a GREAT camera for the money. i am surprised more people are not using it. for 1024 and lower it works great. although, it is a pc only solution out of the box. cameras with great sensors are now starting to flood the market ... and cameras with super great sensors are now starting to become affordable. it's an exciting time.

eric

[VideoFred]

what are you doing with your files once you capture at a higher res?jusetan

I can only speak for myself, with my 1024x768 machine camera.
I never capture uncompressed, but I use the lossles Huffyuv codec.
And even then 30 minutes of film takes 20GB!

These (huge) files ar playing fine on my HP pavilion 3ghz.

I work scene by scene: my files are almost never more then 1000 frames. This way, I have the best possible exposure etc.. from the beginning. But for this approach you need a projector with the possibility to rewind. I can load these 1024x768 files in my timeline without any problem, but I don't do this.

Why should I if my end target is standard 720x576 DVD? I have to resize anyway. But I don't do much corrections in my NLE program, I use it just for adding music etc... Instead, I do the resizing, color corrections etc.. in virtualDub, and the framerate conversions with Avisynth.

Actualy, the first thing I do is stabilise them, crop the borders and then resize them to 720x576. Then, I do some frame rate conversion, if needed, to have smooth panning etc.. At this point I could use Huffyuv again, but.....

No one believes me, but DivX can give very good quality, if well configured. DivX files ar playing very smooth also. From divX to Mpeg2 is something one can do once.

Then I load them in my NLE program and make an Mpeg2 of them.
I try to keep the Huffyuv originals, but I have many reels to transfer, I do not want 10 harddisks, so I must find a solution for this. Maybe I 'divX' the originals, too.

Of cource the question is: why this higher format? In my case, I did not need it, but there was no 720x576 machine vision camera. I had to choose between 640x480 and 1024x768, so I took the last one.

I took a machine camera because its very small, very easy to configure, and it gives very good quality.

I do not know if a 1024x768 file, resized to 720x576, actualy has more detail in it then if you capture in 720x576 from the beginning.

Fred.

[Andreas Wideroe]

last year, when i started digitizing my films, i would let my canon run two and three days straight. it has not yet failed me in any big ways. the remote socket experienced some problems, but was easily fixed. the on camera display function goes wacky if the camera is running more then 12 hours at a time, wherein when the preview is set to off, it goes ahead and previews, hence causing things to bottleneck, thus resulting in the camera missing shutter clicks/frames of film.

Eric, I'm really interested in seeing some sample images of your transfers in full resolution. Any chance you could share a few frames?

Best,
Andreas

[ericMartinJarvies]

roger, why not just call me a liar and save all of the retoric lines of questioning,

You're going to tutor me on how to write more conservatively? That's a laugh.
Roger

my stupidity ends here and now. this is my last reply to you roger, but certainly not my last reply in this forum. perhaps that contridiction or deception you have been looking so hard to find in me, is now here in full light. it just finally occured to me that the only value your words maintain are those i place upon them, or rather, those i use to repond, wasting both my time and energy. you are not worth wasting any of my time and any of my energy on roger ... i am a GREAT person, who helps people, and builds people up, honestly and sincerely. you are a bad person, who tears people down and causes negativtiy upon them in an effort to cause them hurt, and make them be in a lower position then you, as you beleive you sit high atop others, and for those people that buy into the way you are able to bully them, then they too have yet to learn what i just learned for myself. freedom from roger, man, all it took was one simple choice, decision, which i have maintained pocession of the entire time. the only power any person can hold over another person, is fear ... with fear one can prevent another from rising above. i was never fearful of you in the sense of feeling like you would beat me up or something like that. instead, i was fearful of of what you might say against me, as i was not wanting to have to deal with getting into an argumnet with you. but now, what you have to say against me is only valuable to you, and those who care to place value on your words.

hehe ... revelations and resolutions mr roger come in stange places. every since you entered my life and stuck in my side like a thorn, i wondered for what good reason. well, today i know. self discovery, and ridding one's self of fear or denials or avoidances, is what a productive life is all about. i wish you the same roger, i truly do. the alternative is sad and angry, as is evidenced.

regards,

eric

[ericMartinJarvies]

last year, when i started digitizing my films, i would let my canon run two and three days straight. it has not yet failed me in any big ways. the remote socket experienced some problems, but was easily fixed. the on camera display function goes wacky if the camera is running more then 12 hours at a time, wherein when the preview is set to off, it goes ahead and previews, hence causing things to bottleneck, thus resulting in the camera missing shutter clicks/frames of film.

Eric, I'm really interested in seeing some sample images of your transfers in full resolution. Any chance you could share a few frames?

Best,
Andreas

yes, i would be happy to. this week i am consumed, as we are preparing for open house starting this weekend, through next week(my pueblo-viejo 42 unit condo regimen/lifestyle community here in cabo san lucas). this is our grand opening, and 4 years in the works, so obviously very important to/for me. but immediatly afterwards, as both my time and energy permit, i will send you frames. anything specific or particular? frame size vs archive resolution?

eric

[ericMartinJarvies]

what are you doing with your files once you capture at a higher res?jusetan

I can only speak for myself, with my 1024x768 machine camera.
I never capture uncompressed, but I use the lossles Huffyuv codec.
And even then 30 minutes of film takes 20GB!

These (huge) files ar playing fine on my HP pavilion 3ghz.

I work scene by scene: my files are almost never more then 1000 frames. This way, I have the best possible exposure etc.. from the beginning. But for this approach you need a projector with the possibility to rewind. I can load these 1024x768 files in my timeline without any problem, but I don't do this.

Why should I if my end target is standard 720x576 DVD? I have to resize anyway. But I don't do much corrections in my NLE program, I use it just for adding music etc... Instead, I do the resizing, color corrections etc.. in virtualDub, and the framerate conversions with Avisynth.

Actualy, the first thing I do is stabilise them, crop the borders and then resize them to 720x576. Then, I do some frame rate conversion, if needed, to have smooth panning etc.. At this point I could use Huffyuv again, but.....

No one believes me, but DivX can give very good quality, if well configured. DivX files ar playing very smooth also. From divX to Mpeg2 is something one can do once.

Then I load them in my NLE program and make an Mpeg2 of them.
I try to keep the Huffyuv originals, but I have many reels to transfer, I do not want 10 harddisks, so I must find a solution for this. Maybe I 'divX' the originals, too.

Of cource the question is: why this higher format? In my case, I did not need it, but there was no 720x576 machine vision camera. I had to choose between 640x480 and 1024x768, so I took the last one.

I took a machine camera because its very small, very easy to configure, and it gives very good quality.

I do not know if a 1024x768 file, resized to 720x576, actualy has more detail in it then if you capture in 720x576 from the beginning.

Fred.

the software lewis and i are creating will automate all these steps for you ... i hope you will beta test our software, as you are ideal as you are doing what our software is going to provide ... so having bugs reported, and suggestions/etc made, will aid greatly.

do you have the irez camera? if you have a poor lpi resolving lens between your illuminatd film and your sensor/camera, then that will downgrade the image prior to it ever reaching the sensor. then, the sensor itself could have pixels that are physically too small, or smaller then is useful for the lpi value of your printing lens. then, you have the image processing that takes place, color depth, etc. etc. so many considerations.

our software will have a sensor vs film frame size chart in relation to lens lpi values. this will tell you the gains and/or losses one will obtain when using 'x' sensor with 'x' film guage with 'x' lens type, all assuming proper illumination of the frame of film based on kodak's spec's.

eric

[VideoFred]

the software lewis and i are creating will automate all these steps for you ... i hope you will beta test our software, as you are ideal as you are doing what our software is going to provide ... so having bugs reported, and suggestions/etc made, will aid greatly.

Hi Erik,

Shure I will beta test your software and report here, you can mail me.
But first I must know more about it.
Beta testing is always a risk, suppose my system crashes?

do you have the irez camera?

No, I have this one:
http://www.1394imaging.com/products/cam ... ccec397c1e

And this kind of lens:
http://www.1394imaging.com/products/optics/std_pentax/

But my lens is the C3516-M 35mm and its not on this list anymore.


Fred.

[ericMartinJarvies]

what are you doing with your files once you capture at a higher res?

can you output to digibeta?.. or are you still ending up conforming the image down to a DV stream? I see the higher res option being worth while if you can find a way to manage the files afterwards to maintain the image quality. OR if all you want the higher res for is to be able to have a broader colour range for image manipulation/colour correction... then it makes sense to keep it higher res then downconvert to a DV signal.

How you you work with the files in your timeline as high res uncompressed clips, do they play back properly through using your OHCI firewire out to a monitor, or do you have a seperate analog output to deal with the higher resolution images?

Does it not bog down your system having to deal with larger size files?.. could the average person handle it (like me, running an AMD 1800 w/ 1.2gig ram?)

jusetan

jusetan,

once captured, the sequencial images may be turned into whatever video format you so desire. if you have hardware cards installed on your ocmputer, our software will include those options/codecs as well, as well as any you may have installed or that came installed on your computer, or through other software applications. lets say you have 50,000 frames of film digitized, you open up the applicable rolls, sequences, frames, and assign an output value(digibeta for example), our software will tell you how large the video footage will be, and will ask you where you would like to store it. if you have a decklink or aja card, then you may output directly to tape(assuming your digibeta deck is connected), or, if you need to go to a post production house, then you may opt to save the footage on dvd disks, or your ipon, firewire drive, whatever. if your media is plugged into your computer, our software will tell you if the movie/footage will fit. naturally, you would record t odvd as data files, not as a playable movie. this is a very simplified explaination, as processing, converting, encoding, etc. can/will occur depending on what it is you are doing within our software.

our software allows you to set the amount of memory you wish to use as playback cache. it will load as many of those images/frames into memory and playback in realtime. naturally, the faster/better your machine, the better/faster the playback. you may immediatly play thumbnails movies of any res sequence/movie you may be working with in our software ... including 4k images. you can open/edit/output dpx/cineon files, as well as EVERY other image/movie format you can think of, and that does not cost us(the software maker) licensing fees.

if you have some 3k cineon sequences that you have just edited in after effects, you may open those in our software, and elect to play them back at ntsc ... depending on youyr system, hardware, it will allow you the applicable options. if you have 1920x1080 footage, and a decklink card or aja card, etc., you may playback in realtime and down convert to ntsc on the fly, out to a deck and to a monitor, or hd to to an hd capable monitor and ntsc/pal to a ntsc/pal monitor, at the same time.

you may pan and scan, resize via crop, resize down or up(image loss occurs when up-sizing), remove jitter, change frame rate, etc. etc. take note however, this software of ours is NOT an nle ... it is merely what is required when transferring film to digital, including all aspects relative so one does not need to jump into another application during this process. when we get a leg up, and if the software catches on, we will create easy ways for the files to move between final cut pro, after effects, photoshop, shake, motion, etc. cross dissolve overaly with blinking and onion skinning, as is used by stop motion animators, is used in our software for rewinding or finding in/our frames when swapping between rolls of film that are indexed in the software's dB, amongst other things. image stabilization/jitter removal allows the user to select the in frame, using cross hairs to select the area on the frame you wich the following frames to conform to. you then select the out frame, and press go, and all those frames inbetween will align with the in frame, which was the reference/set frame. if the registration error is significant, then so shall be the need to crop and blow up. we are working on filters that allow the user to select the frame immediately BEFORE the in frame selected for the stabilization/jitter removal, and the frame immediatly AFTER the out frame of the same, and using AVERAGING methods, all of the cropped and enlarged frames inbetween will be processed to match the above mentioned unaltered frames, so that they conform as best as is possible. if this does not make sense, tell me, and i'll send you some screen captures that visually will help you understand.

so it's these types of things where one would benefit using our software. on the hardware side of things, our software will be able to control microprocessors/stepper motors/servos, so when used with hardware like the film digitzer we are building, you will be able to move the camera and lens up, down, left, and right, in exact increments, that can be stored/saved. this is a big time saver having machine based pre sets. also, the opal diffusion may be moved closer to the frame of film, or further away, as can up to 4 filters behind the opal, between it and the diffused magnification lens, which behind it is the led illumination ... and this is also movable forward/aft via presets in the software. so one will basically be able to get any desired results one so chooses. we will sell a special test strip of film to calibrate the device with the software and your monitor(s). we will also sell a special leader, which will serve to id the roll of film, and establish the in and out points on that roll, thus having full accountability of every frame inbetween, which comes in handy if you have to re-digitize a scene on a roll of film ... the software and device will do all the work for you ... you need only instruct it what scene/frame you need to get to, and it will do the rest. this is a BIG time saver for people digitizing lots of film. the transport device has fast forward and rewind, and super fast forward and super fast rewind. also, an optional low res camera can be installed pre gate for realtiem monitoring on a tv monitor, or other computer screen, or same computer screen, perhaps used for inspecting/catching frames with problems prior to getting to the gate ,and being digitized. cleaning the film can be performed while loaded onto the device, and an optional anti-static zapping componant with air blower will also be available(assuming anyone buys these and we keep moving forward with advancing them).
ok, gotta go to bed now ...

eric

[mattias]

this is my last reply to you roger

fair enough, but it was you who brought him in. are you going to continue to talk about him but not with him?

/matt

[MovieStuff]

I have removed my comments from this thread because they do nothing to further the discussion. My apologies to the forum for sidetracking this thread.

Roger
http://www.moviestuff.tv

[ccortez]

Eric, I'm really interested in seeing some sample images of your transfers in full resolution. Any chance you could share a few frames?

Same here.

If a picture is worth 1000 words, EMJ owes us about 100 pictures!

It sounds like you've got hard drives full of the stuff, so post some frames and clips. And some pictures of all this equipment. And a link to this magical software.
Thx,
c.