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

Post, June, 2005 by Claudia Kienzle

As a final note, most of these vendors wanted to stress that they've added tools for color grading and management to ensure accurate results as filmed images move between the different color spaces of the film and digital worlds.

RELATED ARTICLE: ALT supports the price-conscious market

BURBANK--The Solitaire Cine III film recorder reached its "end of life" in 2000, but ALT Systems is modifying these legacy 35mm film recorders to handle 65mm/70mm IMAX work. Using the original Solitaire Cine III base, ALT Systems refurbishes the unit by installing the MSM (custom) 65mm camera. "There's growing interest in the IMAX format, and that's the niche market that we are addressing with the Solitaire Cine III recorder," says Jon D. Guess, president of ALT Systems (www.altsystems.com). "It has become the platform of choice for large-format recording."

A CRT-based recorder, "the Solitaire has always been appreciated for its picture quality, although its speed is very slow by today's standards," says Guess. "Despite the slower speed, there are many facilities around the world that still own it."

Since 2000, the rights to the system changed hands between Management Graphics, EFI (Electronics For Imaging), Imation, and then finally, Decision One in Minnesota, which now supplies ALT Systems with the components and spare parts. ALT Systems also offers the Solitaire XP, a Solitaire Cine III they've modified to deliver twice the speed without sacrificing quality.

In 2004, ALT Systems signed an agreement with Digital Film Systems to become the exclusive distributor in America for the new Definity digital film recorder. "Definity is the first recorder to be based on the latest TFT LCD imaging technology and we see it being a great successor to the Solitaire," says Guess. "We're very excited about the 2K pictures we've obtained from Definity, which at around 1.4 seconds per frame on Kodak 5245 stock and about 3.5 seconds per frame on intermediate will be very competitive to Arri's Arrilaser recorder and CRT-based recorders from Celco and Lasergraphics."

--Claudia Kienzle