8mm & 16mm Scanning
Our Muller HD scanner offers exceptional quality transfers and is fully equipped to scan 8mm and 16mm film. It can transfer both negative and colour reversal film. Image capture is achieved with a vision machine camera sporting a 1920X1200 sensor with excellent dynamic range. The perforation holes are indexed by a laser for optimal flash and scan timing, creating a digital image for every film frame with amazing accuracy.
Log Scans
This option is ideal for digital editors. It gives you the flat image directly out of the scanner. You get the maximum resolution (1920X1200) out of the scanner and have plenty of leeway to push/ pull the luma and RGB channels. You will need to let us know what time base you're working with in your editor. For example 23.976fps, 24fps, 25fps or 29.97fps are all recognized speeds in digital editing. If you shoot at 18fps in camera you will have to slow your footage down in your editors timeline. For 18fps footage you would need to slow the clip down by 72% in a 25fps timeline to get correct playback speed. You will also have to scale and crop the image. No sharpening is added upon capture so this would also need to be added in your editor.
Corrected Scans
The corrected scans are perfect for customers that do not have lots of experience editing digitally. We initially scan your film as a log image and then do all the necessary post processing work as well. We do a 10% downscale from 1200 to 1080 to make the video compatible with platforms like YouTube and Vimeo. We carry out speed adjustments when required to insure the film is playing in real time. We add a tiny bit of sharpening in post to make the details pop. We carry out a sprocket crop which hides the sprocket holes on the scan with black bars (let us know if you don't want the crop). Lastly and most importantly we colour correct scene by scene to even out the exposure over the entire roll. We get quite a lot of film with extreme over/under exposure and we always try our best to save the film digitally if we can. Take a look at the examples below.
Popular Formats
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Log Scans:
DNxHR = 5GB per 50ft ProRes = 5GB per 50ft AVI = 25GB per 50ft TIFF = 40GB per 50ft |
We offer a wide range of output options for your editing needs. For the log scans you can choose the original uncompressed AVI/TIFF files that come straight out of the scanner natively or you can go with compressed options like DNxHR or ProRes. In our experience the AVI and TIFF files are a little bit bulky for most computer systems to handle. We'd recommend selecting either DNxHR or ProRes if you haven't got a purpose built editing system or if drive space is an issue. In our tests the DNxHR came out as the better codec for film. It handles film grain better overall and seems to retain details in the shadows more successfully than ProRes.
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Corrected Scans:
H.264 = 500MB per 50ft DNxHD = 5GB per 50ft ProRes = 5GB per 50ft TIFF = 40GB per 50ft |
We do the heavy lifting with the corrected scans so this allows you to go home with a more manageable file. The most popular format for finishing is by far the H.264 codec. It's very versatile and can easily be viewed on both PC and Mac. It can also be directly uploaded to platforms like Facebook, YouTube and Vimeo without additional work. If you want to finesse your film further with some simple cuts you can also bring the H.264 files into your editor of choice. If you're inclined to experiment with colour after our edit then we'd recommend going with DNxHD or ProRes as they retain more information. In or tests DNxHD handles film better than the ProRes codec.
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Media Storage
When you send us your films we kindly ask you to send us a blank hard drive formatted to exFAT. This can be a USB stick, an SD card or a larger SSD or HDD. Just make sure the drive is large enough to support the files you require. Sometimes it is necessary to format drives so please make sure no important information is on your drive before sending. By supplying us with an appropriate drive you make our workflow faster and we can get films back to you quickly. We can also do transfers via Google Drive but please note that there is a 5GB cap per file and upload speeds can be slow because now we have hundreds of files syncing to the cloud each week. More often than not it's just best to send us a drive.
Film Cleaning
Each and every film you send is cleaned before scanning. We clean all film on our re-wind bench with Solvon film cleaner and conditioner. Solvon cleans and lubricates your film effectively and has anti-static qualities making it ideal for repelling troublesome dust particles during and after digital transfers. We also replace any bad splices or disheveled leader as well.