HD to FILM

[rohit]

thats very interesting...good to know!

[loops]

Yes - thanks for all your posts about film workflow Chris

[rohit]

Chris, hows yr sledge hammer system performing so far ? thinking of buying it too so would like to know...

[cnoellert]

Chris, hows yr sledge hammer system performing so far ? thinking of buying it too so would like to know...

Hi,

I'm actually sitting here logging material right now with it, funny.

It depends a little on workflow to be honest in terms of what set-up is required. A little info might help me out:

What kind of telecine?
What kind of Color corrector?
What size of pictures generally?

For us, I've got the Sledge hooked up to the Spirit so that the Pandora guys can drive log encoded 444 RGB down to the DDR input timeline as a one light transfer. Once the material is down, we load up the edls we've recieved from the client and apply them to the onelighted material so that the colourists can grade the material in Amode in Pandora. Once they've completed the grade the blow the lists back out to Cmode, load up the source timeline that had the onelighted selects, and then dual stream the playback through the Pandora and back onto the Sledgehammer to a new directory.

We haven't installed the Infiniband/10gigE cards in the Sledge or Flame yet (because I haven't decided which topology I want to drive yet for a few reasons) but for SD you could then go ahead and soft-import the material into flame, conform and go over gigE. The frames (and maxmedia timelines) are also immediately available for encoding via Xstoner, which has been a huge benefit for us, because it means that Quicktimes and MP4s of whatever material is always literally just a step away as timelines can be constructed with picture and audio on any system which has a web browser and a network connection to the Sledge.

Likewise once a frame has been recorded, it's available to everyone. So one Avid workflow might be, setting up a record timeline for the telecine onelights/rush scans that's just slightly longer than the length of the roll and save the timeline. Then, and this part I haven't tried yet, but you should be able to go into Xstoner, open the Sledge as your source and choose the timeline you've just created. Start transferring material from the telecine to the Sledge and scrub on the timeline in Xstoner to see your pictures being to fall into place. Then just encode it as Avid DV wrapped in Quicktime.

The Maya machine's will see the material immediately over CIFS and NFS, as will any software that's attached. When you're doing heavy Video IO the file serving aspect can and will go down in performance depending on your config, but there are ways around that via clustering and system design.

What more were you interested in knowing?
Chris

[rohit]

well i was thinking either a spirit OR a scanner with lustre OR a scanner with SCRATCH, 1 flame and 1 smoke would connect easy, and a few maya stations...as far as TC goes, i would use it for normal SD/HD grades and DI at HD and 2k

[NachoAssimilate]

well i was thinking either a spirit OR a scanner with lustre OR a scanner with SCRATCH, 1 flame and 1 smoke would connect easy, and a few maya stations...as far as TC goes, i would use it for normal SD/HD grades and DI at HD and 2k

Rohit, i think you'll find an interesting reading on a case study about a customer of Assimilate in South America. They are mainly using SCRATCH FINISHING for tape to Film workflow services with focus in commercials

http://www.assimilateinc.com/pdfs/ca..._Produrama.pdf

I hope it helps to give more light to what you have in mind
Cheers,
Nacho

[rohit]

the case studies always look impressive..but i would love to know which film scanner is recommended...arri, northlight, data mill etc are way to slow to incorporate into a workflow that excludes a traditional telecine - tape [sd/HD] suite... the spirit scanning options are way too expensive..the lasergraphics director seems impressive on paper..but has anyone actually used it ?

[cnoellert]

the case studies always look impressive..but i would love to know which film scanner is recommended...arri, northlight, data mill etc are way to slow to incorporate into a workflow that excludes a traditional telecine - tape [sd/HD] suite... the spirit scanning options are way too expensive..the lasergraphics director seems impressive on paper..but has anyone actually used it ?

If you're only interested in SD/HD what I would consider is buying what Thomson is calling the Spirit Classic / Spirit Datacine 2001 machine - the original Spirit with SD/HD/GSN data via Bones. Here's why:

If the bulk of your work is TVC/Promos with a small amount of long format work or aspirations of full DI's, there are no other machines that will offer the same amount of revenue streams versus your cash out lay than the Spirit will. When you're not driving it as a telecine in client sessions, it can be doing rushes/onelights, or doing log transfers down to an HDCAM SR or DDR (ie Sledgehammer), data down to the SAN/NAS via Bones - it can do it all. I found a Spirit on sale in the states with the full kit 16/35 sd/hd/gsn, rotation, extended ranges, secondary correction for like 600K USD. With the dollar where it is right now then that machine is only maybe 50K euro more than an Arri scan.

Control-wise you're going to have problem, since a Spirit by itself isn't really that interesting of a machine to have hanging around. Unlike Nacho, what I would reccomend is a slightly different approach hardware/software wise. Filmlght is on the verge of releasing a new version of Baselight which allows you to control the Spirit as well as all of the internal settings of the machine from directly within the Baselight timeline. When you want to do advanced secondaries you just select the event on the timeline that you want to work, hit digitize, and the media is automatically ingested into the Baselight in 444 at which point you can add infinite secondaries, shapes etc, etc,. When you want to play out the Baselight automatically plays through events from the Spirit that just have internal corrections and switches to the Baselight's internal rendered output only when needed.

In this kind of config and depending on how much grading you might want to do, you could buy either one or two Baselight HD systems and keep your telecine running constantly either to tape or NAS/SAN feeding your online and vfx systems while your second system is going fine grading directly from either it's internal raid or the san/nas in a publishing style workflow with the Flame.

There are also definitely benefits of having hybrid video/data workflows over just data as is a little of the trend today. From a vantage point of being able to offer calibrated long format dailies (by adding a keycode reader) and baking in Truelight cubes in the transfer, youre going to be immediately ahead of whatever your competitors are going to be able to offer in that department. Furthermore, your Spirit metadata from the rush, being baked into your timeline, will mean a conform for a long format project will be from film rather than from tape in 24fps in HD444 or via GSN to the SAN/NAS. Furthermore you're turn around for short form stuff won't require edls and film 24 hours in advance which will be welcome but you'll still have the capability of grading non-linearly if you want to.

Now, that would be where I would start. If I were on a budget, I would be looking at either the Arri, the Northlight or the Ditto depending on price and future aspirations. I think if you're just looking at things from the quality standpoint the Northlight is the undisputed champion. All machines at full density are running at 4.5 fps. The Northlight will eventually be scanning in 24fps - hopefully towards the end of the year but most likely I think it will be a year from now before it happens. But it will happen. the Arri on a single flash is doing a slight lower density at 8.6 fps which aint shabby at all, but unlike the Northlight it will most likely never go "real-time" and from a purist-scanning perspective doesn't really offer a decent 4k path. The Ditto, which is the cheapest of the machines is hindered only by it's cueing speed, 12fps and it's lack of a 2k S16 output (S16 output from the Ditto is only 1.5K). The DS/CO dirt nd scratch concealement is amazing and would be a welcome issue to both the Northlight and the Arri.

The Director is essentially pulling the same lower density trick as the Arri for getting the scanning speed, but is hamped in cueing speed, like hte Ditto, as both share the same principle gate design - non retracktable pins. I took a long look at the Director, and while it's not something I would buy I can see where the price and performance could be seductive compared to some of the other more expensive machines that are available.

Getting late, what were we talking about?

Best,
Chris

--
Chris Noellert
Senior Flame / Digital Post Technical Director / Prima donna

Nordiskfilm Post Production Stockholm
(Formerly Filmteknik/Frithiof Film to Video. AB)
Tulvaktsvagen 2
115 40 Stockholm

Tel: +46 8 450 450 00
Fax: +46 8 450 450 01
Dir: +46 8 450 450 17
Mob: +46 7 024 616 31
AIM: cmnoellert

Reel: http://se.nordiskfilm-postproduction...deo_250018.mov
Web: http://www.nordiskfilm-postproduction.com

[rohit]

thanks for ALL the info Chris!

[Chainge09]

Ilford and Rollei sell IR film. Both are black and white.

Kodak used to/still do not sure make an IR slide film.


Steve.