Is it possible to telecine to REDCODE or prorez?

[Greg Voevodsky]

I have not done telecine in about 10 years. I do have some 35mm and 16mm footage that I would love to telecine and transfer to hard drive via red code or prorez or some high quality compressed format that i can edit and save drive space with.

Is this possible? If not, will it?
What other options are there?
Thanks.

[Clayton Harper]

You tend to pay handsomely for data files and usually just get some long ass clips.

Shops are setup to hand off tapes.

Once Mike Curtis had a good thing on www.hdforindies.com about taking your mac tower to the telecine. Search the blog.

[Noah Kadner]

You could capture uncompressed(better than anything out there, no offense meant) and then transcode to ProRes now. Redcode- not until it's made available as a QuickTime codec.

Noah

[Simon Blackledge]

Don't see why you couldn't take a macbookpro and an AJA io/hd in to TK and capture prores right into a sata raid.Can't recall if it has dual sdi in.. mind it's 4:2:2 so probably not.

s

[Mike Prevette]

Flameop, I've done that quite a few times, and it works very well, however you don't get the bonus of the keycode, and frame number system. So if you plan on finishing back to film It can be a bitch.

Also Redcode capture would not be optimal at all since, the sensor gathering the data is not a red chip so therefore there is no gain by using the format. Prores on the other hand sounds like a great capture format from a transfer. I also recommend a tape backup as well.

_mike

[Nick Shaw]

I think that the Io HD can read RP-188 timecode from the HD-SDI feed, so in that sense it would work just like tape. You could cross reference the timecode to the keycode.

[Bruce Allen]

You tend to pay handsomely for data files and usually just get some long ass clips.

Shops are setup to hand off tapes.

Once Mike Curtis had a good thing on www.hdforindies.com about taking your mac tower to the telecine. Search the blog.

If only someone offered a cheap, fast-turnaround telecine system where you send them a box with your film, plus a drive and a small wad of cash, then a few days later, you get the drive back with dpx files (or DNxHD or ProRes or SGI or whatever) on it...

Personally I'd prefer dpx because then they don't have to spend too much cash getting their telecine color correct spot on - I'll do that tweaking, thank you very much!

Then I'd totally shoot film more often.

Bruce Allen
www.boacinema.com

[donatello b]

are you looking for SD or a HD transfer ?

IMO it will take some time before you see proRes as option in telecine ...
most of the places i know telecine to hard drive using decklink ( blackmagic codec) equipment .... guessing it shouldn't take much to use the new Aja proRes hardware instead of decklink ??? ... they will not do it till there is some demand for proRes clips .. if proRes is a Mac only then it will take longer .. blackmagic clips are usable on Mac's & PC's ..

[roryhinds]

Bruce check out http://www.bonolabs.com/
they do what you are asking.

I've not used them and have read they do a one light so a proper grade is in order, but I've normally got that covered.

[M Most]

If only someone offered a cheap, fast-turnaround telecine system where you send them a box with your film, plus a drive and a small wad of cash, then a few days later, you get the drive back with dpx files (or DNxHD or ProRes or SGI or whatever) on it...

Personally I'd prefer dpx because then they don't have to spend too much cash getting their telecine color correct spot on - I'll do that tweaking, thank you very much!

Then I'd totally shoot film more often.


We do this all the time, in all the formats you mentioned except ProRes because prior to last week it didn't exist, at least not in a shipping form. I'm putting FC Studio 2 on our primary machine tomorrow (a Kona 3 based 8 core Mac, with a very fast array). We do support both Avid and Apple formats, as well as DPX sequences (or Targa, or Tiff, or just about anything else). Feel free to contact me if you need this done.

As for cost, define "cheap." We don't do it for free, but nobody else does either - nor should they.

Mike Most
Cineworks Digital Studios
Miami, Fl.

[Bruce Allen]

Thank you! Checking everything out...

Bruce

[miskamagic]

Do some searches on cinematography.com these issues have been covered extensively, a lot of times regarding low budget super8 filmmaking.

The best place I've seen so far is flying spot transfer in Seattle - http://www.fsft.com/ - they have a Shadow telecine (little brother of a Spirit) and will telecine to disk and send you a drive. I've been meaning to do tests of their service myself, but haven't gotten around to it.

I've heard not good things about bonofilms, their telecine is some old machine, a Rank I think. I saw test frames posted that were very soft. Their service is also extremely slow and painful. I sent them emails inquiring about rates and service at various points and didn't hear back for over a week or not at all.

AFAIK, DPX framesets, while ideal, are only going to come from frame by frame scans off an arri scanner or equivalent, i.e. expensive. Going off a telecine realtime usually means going into a g5 with a Kona card, i.e. 10-bit 4:4:4 RGB linear at best.

-miska

[Stephen Williams]

I've heard not good things about bonofilms, their telecine is some old machine, a Rank I think.
-miska

Hi,

The Bonolabs telecine is a Cineglyph, it's not that old.

Stephen

[M Most]

AFAIK, DPX framesets, while ideal, are only going to come from frame by frame scans off an arri scanner or equivalent, i.e. expensive. Going off a telecine realtime usually means going into a g5 with a Kona card, i.e. 10-bit 4:4:4 RGB linear at best.


There is very, very little technical difference between a properly done 4:4:4 RGB HD transfer done on a proper, high end machine - say, a Spirit or a Sony Vialta - and a scan done on most scanners at the same resolution. The primary difference lies in the ability to scan a full frame at 2K - i.e., a full 4:3 frame at 2048x1556 - vs. the 16x9 extraction done by a telecine approach. However, given that the extracted frame is all that is usually needed these days, there is very little loss incurred by going the telecine route, provided the telecine is set up correctly for full range scanning - i.e., treated like a scanner rather than a color corrected telecine transfer. In fact, there have been a number of digital intermediates done this way, at very high end facilities (see Laser Pacific's page regarding their "InDI" process), with excellent results. And it is often considerably more affordable.

[Simon Blackledge]

It is alot cheaper this way. Though make sure they don't scale up the images... and..er..

I had a list somewhere of things to check going this route.. I'll try and dig it out... chroma samples also I recall.