16mm Film @ 1080p

C

curtisbouvier

Member
Does any one here have a Raw scan of a 16mm Frame? preferably about 4-6 MP in resolution...

I plan on purchasing a Nikon Coolscan 9000, so I can scan in my motion picture film (In 20 frame strips x 3 lol)

The scanner will scan an entire roll of 35mm film tho, wish it did that with 16mm.

All these film places that scan in film.... reduce it to some trash Dbeta tape or somthing, No idea how that works resolution wise... but TAPE is the last thing I want. Unless its a data tape?? not sure how those dbeta's work...

I want to have Each frame as a solid Picture, about 6 MP in size, and thats exactly what the nikon coolscan does. You would have 4000 pictures from a 100 foot roll of 16mm film, and then you would dump them all into final cut pro. You can then stabalize the image with after effects, and then crop the areas you want to keep, and your laughing. The quality of each scan is breath taking. You can easily get 1280x544 out of this, however 1920x815 might be pushing it I think, But I have Not seen a real scan if a 16mm slide, only 35mm slides.

any one care to post an example of 16mm film scanned in at its full resolution?
 
"any one care to post an example of 16mm film scanned in at its full resolution?"

not sure what you mean by full resolution ?
you can scan 16 at SD /720/1080/2k/3k ...

there are places that telecine 16mm at 10bit 1920x1080p uncompressed to hard drive ... or can telecine at 2k ...
or you can scan 16mm to 2k files at www.pixelharvest.com ( lowest cost is to scan to 2k cineform files)

http://www.bonolabs.com/ they charge by running min ( approx $12 per min) not how long it takes them ...
 
I have found out that the "true resolution" of a 35mm still film (36x24mm = 864 mm sqr) is about 8 Mpix absolute maximum. 16mm camera aperture is about 10.3 x 7.5 (77 mm sqr). Thus the real resolution of 16 mm cine frame is about 0.72 Mpix!

Really no point in scanning them at 6 Mpix resolution.

Of course it is possible to scan then at higher resolutions, but there is nothing there...
 
Dude,
There is NOTHING wrong whatsoever with 16mm footage transferred to Digibeta! DigitalBetacam has been a top notch broadcast format for years. I used to do national Ford spots shot on 35mm & HD (Sony F900 Cinealta) that were transferred to Digibeta for cutting on Avid. I don't know the tech specs exactly, but it's better than BetaSP, and the decks alone cost $45,000. It think that if that method is 'good enough' for national spots cut at big name post-houses, it's probably good enough for your needs.

If you're THAT concerned about gettig your 16mm transferred to a Hi-Def format, why don't you have someone bump it to HDCAM? It would be a lot easier than scanning in individual frames and then putting them together in an edit system AND AfterEffects.

If you can't afford to transfer your footage at all, that's one thing, but don't assume that a tape transfer is bad--- unless your palnning on bumping to S-VHS. :smile:
 
All these film places that scan in film.... reduce it to some trash Dbeta tape or somthing, No idea how that works resolution wise... but TAPE is the last thing I want. Unless its a data tape?? not sure how those dbeta's work...
Click to expand...

:eek:

What are you talking about! Digi Beta is the best SD mastering format out there. It gives out a 10-bit 4:2:2 signal. 720x486 res. Perfect, absolutely perfect for transfering to 16mm, definitely better than what your going to get scanning your own frames.

What's a data tape?
 
rofl, lets back track a bit.

Lets erase this tape subject entirely and keep our work strictly digital for discussion sake.

>>>definitely better than what your going to get scanning your own frames.<<<<

you are wrong about this.

I've been working with photoshop for about 8 years. the way i'm looking at it is using a high end picture film scanner. The nikon coolscan 5000 / 9000 has the Absolute BEST image quality and scan when it comes to scanning in pitures from film. It has all the latest kodak ICE etc, etc,. But instead of using it for individual pictures id be using it to scan 16mm motion picture film. It takes 16mm film and 35mm film. anyway you want, by the roll.... by the slide... etc. it's all automated and will scan in the entire roll of film for you.

I would do a few test pieces and determin a reasonable resolution to scan at. Now from this point you would have each and every frame as a 3-6 MP Image.

From here you can Easily import all these frames into final cut or adobe premier and save it as an ultra high resolution video. if it needs to be resized smaller that can be done so. and whatever else needs to be done as well.

But my point is cleary the fact that theres no way digibeta 2k image is going to beat a high end 6MP scan from a nikon film scanner. no way in hell, these scanners are made for ultra high resolution pictures and quality, and are capable of scanning in 35mm film at 12MP.

this is Exactly what the ARRISCAN Film Scanner does. It scans each frame at 3MP and saves it as a RAW TIFF file. frame by frame, at about 3 frames per second. but that scanner is over $100,000.00.

the Coolscan 9000 = about $2000.00
 
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the only downside to this, it the time it would take to scan in 100 feet a film, were looking at about 30 seconds per frame. instead of 3 frames a second like the arriscan film scanner. I'm also not impressed with the $300 dollar fee it costs at my closest outlet for scanning in typical 100 feet of 16mm Film. Id rather get my own scanner and do it myself.
 
Of course it is possible to make 1, 2, 4, 8, 16 etc megapixel scans from a 16mm movie frame, but the true resolution (amount of data in the frame) is less than 1 Mpix, so why bother? You are not going to see any more detail no matter how large a scan you make after a certain point. Like I said, a 35mm still frame (100 asa slide) equals about 8 Mpix. 16mm frame is less than 10% of that area. Make your own conclusions...
 
thats what i was thinking as well, about 1MP in size for 16mm, thats why i need some 16mm footage, so i can have it scanned with the coolscan9000 at various resolutions and just get a general idea as to what 16mm is all about quality wise.
 
curtisbouvier said:
But instead of using it for individual pictures id be using it to scan 16mm motion picture film. It takes 16mm film and 35mm film. anyway you want, by the roll.... by the slide... etc. it's all automated and will scan in the entire roll of film for you.
Click to expand...

I will shoot a S16 film at film school in April. Unfortunatly, we get only the film stock and a transfer to miniDV. So I was looking for a cheap way to get a DI at 2k. The description of the Coolscan sounds perfect, but I did not found any informations on the nikon webpage that it is capable of scanning a whole roll (400ft)

http://nikonimaging.com/global/products/scanner/scoolscan_9000/index.htm

"1 - 3 strips of 1 - 20 frames can be scanned with optional 16mm FILM HOLDER FH-816"

David
 
here is an aprox 2 grand solution


a canon HV20 (comes out in april) - $1100
http://www.camcorderinfo.com/content...s-Its-True.htm

coupled with a Black Magic Intensity card - $249
http://www.blackmagic-design.com/products/intensity/

this lets you record RAW uncompressed 4:2:2 1920x1080 24p or DVC100 (same as the HVX200) you need a mac for the DVC100 live encode i think...

and a 16mm projector - $699
http://www.8mm16mmfilmscollectibles....Projectors.htm

you project the film onto a nice screen - i don't know how much they are - in a dark room.

1920x1080 and 2k are almost the same it's negligible. i don't know how well this would work but people used this as a cheep method for super8 transfer to DV.

in total is should cost around 2.5 grand


here's a website on home film processing so you can save even more money.

http://www.geocities.com/cinetank/index.htm
 
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