Is an HD Super 8 transfer overkill?

[Uppsala BildTeknik]

FlashscanHDs deliver results worse than our FDL-60 (30 year old machine) with an HD upconverer acording to tests we've done.

It is interesting though that you don´t have any testfootage on your webpage to show how your transfers look like. And no images from this test you mention...

Why don´t you just transfer and upscale the super 8 SMPTE testfilm, so we have something to compare?

I remember you went FlashscanHD bashing in another thread, but when I wrote in the thread and gave links to my testclips you never replied to the thread again. Perhaps the clips didn´t look all that bad after all?

[Uppsala BildTeknik]

For converting 4:3 shot Super-8 to 16:9...crop it in the editing stage?

You could have it transferred and cropped by the Telecine facility, they can adjust the framing (if you trust their judgements regarding the cropping). I think it would be better to crop it in telecine.

But if you want to have "the last say" about the framing it is probably better to crop it after the transfer. This way you get the framing exactly the way you want it, and there is no need to get disappointed because they didn´t crop it exactly the way you wanted it to be cropped...

[Andreas Wideroe]

Well this test was a test done between 4 European transfer facilities/machines and the deal was not to publish images nor any company names. Ofcourse this is not reliable to you or the other readers. I understand that and I just say it because it is what we observed (and the quality differences were quite huge). I think it's important that serious people/clients know about the limitations of systems and that there IS a reason why a professional filmscanner/telecine costs 10 times more.

I don't have the SMPTE testfilm, but would love to do to a test. However, I understand that this is a projector testfilm and not designed for telecine. Therefore a proper testfilm for telecine/scanning applications would be more suited for telecine testing.

Another thing that should be tested are the colours and dynamic range which are quite different from these two machines. While the Flashscans use a built in off the shelf camera that has its limitations in colorimitry and dynamic range, the FDL telecines use 3 independent CCD sensors that have a larger dynamic range and do a better job in analyzing the three layers of film. Ofcourse the FDLs also have limitations compared to the newest professional machines out there.

About not commenting on your clips. Well, what can I say. I'm not here as often as I used to. I have seen the clips and they look good, but I haven't seen them compared to transfers done on other systems and in an uncompressed version and you don't say anything about what post-processing has be applied to them. One thing I can comment is that what you write about your machine being the only one that can handle damage sprockets :

2 - FlashscanHD är den enda filmscannern som klarar av att scanna helt söndertrasad film. Här är ett filmklipp i slowmotion som visar hur FlashscanHD passerar åtta helt sönderklippta filmrutor utan problem, tack vare den laserstabiliserade bilden. Utan laserstabiliseringen får man klippa bort avsnittet.

This is not true. Our FDLs don't have any problems handling damage sprockets and up to about 4% shrinkage. It may be true for sprocket driven systems, but most decent capstan systems should handle this without problems.

Anyways - I love your company website. I think it's one of the best ones out there. Congrats on that. You've done a great job with it.

Btw, we're watching the Swedish royal wedding/dinner/speeches on TV here right now!

/Andreas

[Andreas Wideroe]

For converting 4:3 shot Super-8 to 16:9 do you gentlemen think its worth the effort to make the correction at the time of transfer or to crop it in the editing stage? Will there be a significant difference in grain? Particularly if the 8mm was transferred at 1080?

I realize that its more practical to make the crop at the time of the transfer but since its not practical for myself as a client to supervise the transfer I'm partial to doing the crop myself. I've also been considering the idea of using the 1.66:1 widescreen ratio as a compromise to the increased grain.

Actually the best thing would be to scan it to data (2K or similare). Then you could keep the aspect ratio if that's an option.

/Andreas

[Uppsala BildTeknik]

...the deal was not to publish images nor any company names.

OK, then of course you shouldn´t publish anything. But referring to a test that has never been, and will never be published, seems a bit strange to me...

the quality differences were quite huge)

Might I guess that the test was done with negative film? Because I am the first to say that the Flashscan systems are not optimised for negative transfers.

Not knowing who transferred the films also makes the results very unreliable. There are lots of people who know way too little abotu transferring film, and they cannot even set up the machines for a proper transfer.

I have read about this specific company in Germany, who is now using a FlashscanHD. I read that the results are very unreliable from this company, it depends totally on who is doing the transfer if you get good results or not. If you used them and got one of their not so talented employees, well then the whole test is off the charts...

I don't have the SMPTE testfilm, but would love to do to a test. However, I understand that this is a projector testfilm and not designed for telecine.

It is available from Wittner in Germany. Well all super 8 films are designed to be used with a projector, so using a film designed for a projector for this test should work just fine? I mean you are transferring stuff designed to be used with a projector every day... (negative films not included)

I have seen the clips and they look good, but I haven't seen them compared to transfers done on other systems and in an uncompressed version and you don't say anything about what post-processing has be applied to them.

Well they haven´t been transferred with other systems.
This is where the SMPTE films step in, anyone who wants to can use the same testfilm and compare to other results. It is much more difficult to compare "a real film" because we all have different cameras, different exposure, focus, and so on...

Our FDLs don't have any problems handling damage sprockets...

I must fix that on my next update.

Anyways - I love your company website. I think it's one of the best ones out there. Congrats on that. You've done a great job with it.

Thanks! Yep, I have put down a lot of hours on it, and more money than I want to admit to myself...

we're watching the Swedish royal wedding/dinner/speeches on TV here right now!

No, booo! I´m sick and tired of this wedding thing... Anywhere you go here in Sweden you can but shit-stuff with their faces printed on it. Cups, postcards, stamps, hell even tattoos!

I haven´t watches one second of that thing and never will.

Well, I´m off to author a bunch of DVDs, I´m way behind schedule again... Spent the last three days setting up a blazing fast internal network here at the office. Now all our media is shared across all our editing suits and authoring suits, both PCs and macs working together towards one huge server. Makes me happy just thinking about it!

[granfer]

Uppasala BildTecknik wrote...

"Excuse me, but where have I promoted my service in this thread? I merely linked to testclips and showed that the price difference is not that big. That is hardly promoting anything, I haven´t even tried to get him to use our service."

My observation was not intended as a critisism, but merely to put the sources of the two differing opinions into perspective...

But since you ask.... posting the links to the test pieces takes the enquirer straight to your COMMERCIAL website and virtually invites him to investigate what you have to offer. And anyone who trawls this Forum regularly knows that that is what you do for a living. And I see absolutely nothing wrong in that!

So why so upset about an innocent statement of fact?


granfer

[Uppsala BildTeknik]

...posting the links to the test pieces takes the enquirer straight to your COMMERCIAL website...

The testclips are on my website, It would be very difficult to show him the testclip if I can´t link him to the testclips. Using Youtube (or similar) as a means of showing the testclips is not an option due to the bad image quality on Youtube and such.

So why so upset about an innocent statement of fact?

Perhaps I overreacted, I´m sorry if I did. But I just got the feeling as if you thought I just had this opinion about HD transfers "just because I offer the service commercially" (if you understand what I mean).

Good for you that you manage to transfer your films by yourself, it saves you a bunch of money.

[granfer]

I would still be interested in the level of original material "Videoguy 326" is interested in; my own (Non-commercial) transfers of family Super 8 material performed to the best level I can personally attain using consumer level equipment and without complicated post processing are strictly SD and meet with universal approval in the Family environment.
I take it that the concensus is that anything from 720p UP is "HD"; so what do we call anything between "standard definiton" and 720p? Or would it not be more accurate to describe anything between SD and 1080p (Full HD) as "not quite" HD? In other words, exactly what is HD.... and can Super 8 acheive it?

[Uppsala BildTeknik]

I take it that the concensus is that anything from 720p UP is "HD"

Correct. "HD", is "High Definition", as in higher resolution than the former "SD" (Standard Definition). So everything from 720p and up is high definition because it is of higher resolution than standard definition.

so what do we call anything between "standard definiton" and 720p?

Ummm, nothing? Because there is no video standard between SD and 720p. Sure, you can have clips on your computer in whatever resolution. But if you stick to the standard resolutions you have SD, 720p and 1080p.

In other words, exactly what is HD.... and can Super 8 acheive it?

HD is a videostream that has higher resolution than the old regular old fat-TV resolution.

SD = Standard Definition. Standard resolution 720x576 for PAL and similar for NTSC.
HD = High Definition. Higher resolution than SD. There are many different flavors of HD, some are not even with square pixels. But the thing that makes all these to qualify "as HD" is the fact that the resolution is higher than the resolutions of SD.

Then HD can look like crap too, of course. If you compress it enough you can make a HD clip look worse than a SD clip, but it would still be a HD clip because it has high resolution. It would just be a bad HD clip, just as you can have bad SD clips.

...and can Super 8 acheive it?

I believe it can. To begin with you don´t need to think about the TV degrading your films due to de-interlacing. And if you have a good stock, a good camera and proper exposure/focus you can put images on your super 8 filmstrip that have so fine details that a regular SD transfer will miss these details.

A proper HD transfer of the same material will, due to its higher resolution, capture these details. The HD version will look better on your big HDTV, because there is no need for the TV to de-interlace nor to upscale all the way from SD resolution. The combination of de-interlacing and upscaling will degrade the image quality of your SD transferred material compared to a HD-stream that is fed to the TV from a computer or from Blu-ray.

I have a few HD clips from "normal films" too, you can find them here: http://www.uppsalabildteknik.com/english/?page=137 check the clip with the dog and the butterfly (the other two clips have nothing to do with image quality). You wouldn´t get this high quality from a regular SD transfer, I´m quite certain of this. sure, if you transfer to HD with a Spirit, downscale with special hardware/software...

But I bet the Spirit transfer to HD, downscale and deliver as SD, would be more expensive than a FlashscanHD transfer directly to HD. Wich makes the whole Spirit comparison even more weird.

[avortex]

Woods01 wrote

I've also been considering the idea of using the 1.66:1 widescreen ratio as a compromise to the increased grain.

I've always thought this is a terrific idea for different reasons:

1- Transfer a normal frame to 1.66 makes use of practically the same image area than any Super duper8 or Max8 film transferred to 1,78 (full 16:9)

2- You don't have to modify your camera and you can see all the frame in the viewfinder.

3- You're benefiting from the 16:9 capabilities without losing lots of frame information.

[MovieStuff]

Numbers, numbers, numbers, resolution devolution, blah, blah, blah.

The math aside, it's really very simple: If you transfer to SD with a good system and fill the SD video frame and watch it on a dedicated SD CRT type monitor, it will look as good as SD can look and the film resolution will be sufficient to be enjoyable. However, filling the SD video frame means you will lose part of the left and right hand side of the Super 8 frame due to a difference in aspect ratio between SD video and the wider S8 frame. If you pull back during SD transfer to include that extra film area, and then letter box top and bottom, you will no longer be getting the full resolution of the SD video frame. Since HD can allow you to see the entire width of the film with no film resolution loss, it only makes sense to transfer to HD. Otherwise, you are potentially leaving information behind with SD, even if you find the difference in resolution acceptable.

Also, no matter how good your SD transfer is, if you watch it on an HD monitor, then you are at the random mercy of how well a particular player or HD monitor handles a live up-convert. And, let's face it, not all of them do a comparable job of handling SD video source material because SD functionality is a secondary consideration for many HD manufacturers. More to the point, no matter how you work the math, a live up-convert of an SD signal isn't going to look as good as an original HD signal on any HD set. This is clear as a bell when you watch a BluRay and DVD of the same movie on a 42 inch, full 1080p monitor.

But if you transfer to HD at the beginning, then all of this becomes moot since every BluRay player has a down-converted SD output for regular SD monitor use and BluRay players are freakin' cheap now. ($68 at Walmart)

Go HD. It doesn't really cost more and you won't have to worry about up-rezzing issues in the years to come.

My two cents....

Roger

[christoph]

Also, no matter how good your SD transfer is, if you watch it on an HD monitor, then you are at the random mercy of how well a particular player or HD monitor handles a live up-convert.

i think this is a very good point.
so yeah, if one can get HD with the same color and contrast as a good SD transfer for the same price, then there's really no reason not to go HD (except if one wants to keep his CRT SD monitor, which is a good reason too).

but , given the choice between a good SD transfer with good colors and contrast and a HD transfer with high pixel count but poor colors, i'll take the former any day.

i reguarly screen SD DVDs of 35mm films on an HD beamer with realtime up-convert, and they look way better then anything you could get from from a HD super8 transfer - which isn't to say that a blu-ray disk of the same film wouldn't look better, but that resolution is really only a rather minor point in comparison to other factors.

So you downscale all your super 8 transfers to SD then, and keep the SD versions as you originals?

see above, if i'd had to choose between an SD version of my transfers (or a spirit) and a HD transfer from a flashscan, i'd take the former.
since i can have both, nice colors and high-rez, i'm obviously keeping my full quality masters (which apart from some disk space and render times are free to me).

i'm not bashing your service here kent, i think you are very dedicated and do a terrific job, specially for the price.. in fact i reguarly point people your way that are looking for a transfer, because most transfer places dont care about their work (most of them are are under time pressure and want a local service though).
it's just that you should be aware of the limitations of the flashscanHD, and be proud about your skills rather then the machine.

++ christoph

[videoguy326]

Thanks for all the comments. I didn't mean to start any arguments thought :mrgreen:

I just wanted to get some opinions about HD super 8 transfers. Again, thanks for all your responses!

[MovieStuff]

but , given the choice between a good SD transfer with good colors and contrast and a HD transfer with high pixel count but poor colors, i'll take the former any day.

Who wouldn't? But that doesn't really address the original poster's question, which wasn't "I'm thinking of getting a poor HD transfer and wondered if it was worth it or should I just go with a great SD transfer."

Clearly, we're talking about quality transfers for both HD and SD. So, all things being equal (or equal enough for aesthetic purposes), then the only thing that is left is resolution. Regarding such, you stated:

i reguarly screen SD DVDs of 35mm films on an HD beamer with realtime up-convert, and they look way better then anything you could get from from a HD super8 transfer - which isn't to say that a blu-ray disk of the same film wouldn't look better,....

But the BluRay disk will look better, and that's the whole point. Whether your original material is 35mm or HD video, the BluRay on a true 1080p, large screen will show an obvious difference in overall sharpness and detail and quality. That difference will also show up when watching 8mm material on both SD and HD disks, whether your transfer is top of the line or an off the wall capture on an HD camcorder.

And let's be clear about something here, while it is true that a Sony 3CCD broadcast standard definition camera can output as much as 950 lines, there is no known capture/edit/release format for SD that will sustain that resolution. After DV editing, authoring, etc, the most you will get off a regular DVD once you take into account MPEG degeneration is about 400-450 lines per video frame, which is far short of the accumulative resolution that even regular 8mm film has to offer when running at full speed and you won't be able to get the full super 8 frame in the SD video frame without pulling back and dropping even more resolution.

....but that resolution is really only a rather minor point in comparison to other factors.

Not being argumentative but there are factors related to how your SD material is going to be viewed that are as important as color and contrast of the original transfer, whether SD or HD. If you transfer to HD, then there will be zero up-rezzing issues and all BluRay players can down-rezz to SD with no visible problems. But if you capture in a resolution lower than HD -even if your colors and contrast are perfect- then you have a variable in how that SD material will be displayed because there is no consistency in how various HD systems up-rezz.

So resolution isn't a minor point at all, IMHO, because it dictates how the footage will be displayed and the degree of potential degeneration that might be inflicted. As stated previously, even the best are not going to display an SD signal as well as a native HD signal.

Roger

[Uppsala BildTeknik]

given the choice between a good SD transfer with good colors and contrast and a HD transfer with high pixel count but poor colors, i'll take the former any day.

Ehhh, of course you would. You give one good alternative and one bad alternative, I´m not sure what you are thinking about this actually.

Why do you specify the HD transfer as one with bad colors?

i'm obviously keeping my full quality masters

So then obviously you don´t think a HD transfer from super 8 is overkill.
Because if you did you wouldn´t transfer to/keep your HD files. ;)

... be proud about your skills rather then the machine.

Thanks, I´m proud of both.