In & out: a look at some of today's top film scanners and recorders

Post, June, 2005 by Claudia Kienzle

Scanners that capture film's rich picture and color information for processing in the digital domain, and recorders that record that data back out to film, are critical to providing superior digital intermediate finishing.

Recognizing the need for DI houses to produce pristine images in very tight time-frames, vendors say their next-generation scanners and recorders have reached new benchmarks for quality and speed.

SCANNERS

GRASS VALLEY GROUP

"With respect to film scanners, there are three main differentiators: scanning speed, resolution quality and image stabilization," says Michael Schneider, GVG (www.thomson.net) marketing manager for EMEA (Europe, the Middle East and Africa), based in Weiterstadt, Germany. "I encourage buyers to take a piece of film with which they are familiar and have it scanned on different brands of scanners to compare the results.

"With prices in the $100,000 to $300,000 range, slow-speed scanners employ pin registration to steady each film frame before scanning it, making them ideal for complex visual effects, layering and compositing jobs. Thus, throughput in slow-speed scanners is limited as they scan at roughly one frame per second." says Schneider. "High-speed scanners, starting around one million dollars, are capable of scanning 4K film in near-realtime and 2K resolution film in realtime, making them ideal when speed and productivity are issues, without sacrificing quality."

The Grass Valley Spirit 4K (a high-speed scanner) provides 16-bit signal processing, with 4K resolution scanning at 7.5 frames per second. The Spirit 4K can scan 2K resolution in realtime (24 or 25 frames per second), or faster depending upon the speed of the disk array storing the images.

The new Spirit 2K scans 2K resolution in 10-bit, at a realtime transfer rate, and can be upgraded to a Spirit 4K by Grass Valley engineers in the field. Either can be configured for data or video output, or both.

The Spirit 4K and 2K are based upon a new design architecture, exclusively leveraging the Kodak Advanced Imaging Subsystem with customized optics for 16mm and for 35mm. For image stabilization, Grass Valley offers Bones Stabilizer software, which can be used downstream on the same Linux server platform that stores image data from the film transfer.

Schneider says 21 Spirit 4Ks have been installed worldwide, including FrameStore and Clear in London; Duboi in France; and Laser Pacific, Warner Bros, and Modern Videofilm in Hollywood. And they've been used to scan many major motion pictures, including The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy and The Aviator.

FILMLIGHT

While FilmLight is only three years old, the company's Northlight film scanner has met with success. "At first, we estimated the universe of high-end film scanners to be less than 100 units worldwide. But that simply isn't true today," says Peter Stothart, commercial director for UK-based FilmLight (www.filmlight.ltd.uk). "With the explosive growth of the DI market, and demand for high-end scanners dramatically increasing, we've already sold over 30 scanners in a short period of time. Facilities are buying scanners today that they wouldn't have considered buying years ago largely to jump into the DI market."

Northlight V.2.0, due to ship by year's end, will feature new sensor technology, optics, pin registration and electronics, resulting in an increase in scanning speed by a factor of four to six times. It's faster than two frames per second at 2K and one frame per second at 4K resolution. "Northlight actually scans at 6K in one scanning pass, then outputs the resolution you need," adds Stothart. "CCD scanners like ours use very high light levels to capture the true depth and dynamic range of film to get the best out of the negatives without introducing noise."

Northlight V.I.I has been used to scan such motion pictures as Alexander, Alien vs. Predator, Bourne Supremacy, The Day After Tomorrow, Lemony Snicket's, Troy and Gothika. Northlight customers include Frame-Store CFC in London; ILM in San Rafael, CA; Cinesite in London; Modern VideoFilm and Rhythm & Hues in LA; and Cinebyte Images in Toronto.

FilmLight recently announced a partnership with Kodak that would integrate FilmLight's TrueLight color management solution with Kodak's Display Manager color calibration software. TrueLight provides a realtime simulation of the entire workflow from digital data to final projected image so that the closest possible match can be realized when translating the color space of the digital domain with that of film.

CINTEL

"The main challenge for the DI process is tracking data, such as timecode, keykode and origination information--as it flows through the process," says Adam Welsh, managing director of Cintel (www.cintel.co.uk) in the UK. "Cintel scanners are designed to insert this vital information into the 'header' of each image file so it can be tracked."

Cintel has two film scanners: the dataMill and the very new diTTo. The dataMill is capable of (10-bit log-calibrated) scanning 2K resolution at 15 frames per second and 4K resolution at 3.75 frames per second using an HSDL output stream, with optional pin registration. Welsh says, "The dataMill scans film at 2K, 3K and 4K resolutions from all film formats from Super 8mm to 65/70mm. It can also offer a 10-bit log-calibrated HD or SD output in realtime."