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Cost of shooting (and digitizing) 16mm film per minute.

michael zaletel

michael zaletel

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Just curious. What is the cost of 16mm film stock per minute (24fps) and the cost of digitizing that film for use in Final Cut Pro or etc? What is the resolution in pixels of a 16mm film scan?

-shooter
 
Traditionally here in the UK we've tended to reckon £200 per roll for S16, so that makes it £20 a minute. That includes stock, processing and 1 light telecine to Digibeta. It soons mounts up!
Steve
 
Steve Phillipps said:
Traditionally here in the UK we've tended to reckon £200 per roll for S16, so that makes it £20 a minute. That includes stock, processing and 1 light telecine to Digibeta. It soons mounts up!
Steve
Click to expand...

Thanks for the quick response Steve. How much more does it cost to scan HD resolution out of the 16mm stock? Is that possible? Is there that much detail there to begin with? Have you ever scanned 16mm at HD resolution?

-shooter
 
Lots of issues with S16, mostly on the transmission side. Lots of talk early on, arguments between Sony and Kodak about resolution etc. Theoretically S16 has massive resolution WAY above HD. And there was a huge fight by film guys against people like Discovery not accpeting is as HD when the specs said it was more than good enough. Turns out that the problem is with the transcoding on transmission where the compression used (MPEG?) is really upset by the grain in S16, it just screws it up completely. And I think this even applies in a smaller way to 50ASA stocks. So basically S16 is considered SD footage by Discovery and BBC so can only comprise 25% of program.
Steve
 
Steve Phillipps said:
Turns out that the problem is with the transcoding on transmission where the compression used (MPEG?) is really upset by the grain in S16, it just screws it up completely. And I think this even applies in a smaller way to 50ASA stocks. So basically S16 is considered SD footage by Discovery and BBC so can only comprise 25% of program.
Steve
Click to expand...

I did post on a drama series shot on 16mm, and indeed it MPEG does not play happily with, especially in broadcast situations where there's no tweaking or anything, just a standard MPEG compression profile. Similarly a video I had a passing involvement with where the director decided to add lots of grain for effect looked terrible when broadcast over MPEG-based channels.

TVNZ in New Zealand and I believe the Australian broadcasters have reached the same conclusion with regard to the classification of 16mm as 'SD'.

Also, TVNZ at least has declared HDV and any 4:2:0 compression to be 'SD' also, which in the case of XDCAM EX seems a little off the mark to me. I'm starting to think I find the image and compression quality of XDCAM EX preferable to DVCPRO HD.
 
yesterday i was looking at some 16mm 2k scans..
now this was after viewing some 4k Red clips - well actually it was 2k proxy's rendered out in FCP to cineform & viewing on a PC ...
well anyway... 1st things i notice in the 16mm 2k scans is GRAIN !!! ... then dust ... then i see a few scratches ... i can fix the scratches, dust & reduce the grain but all that takes TIME .. for this project i'll do it but i will NOT be shooting any 16mm in the future for my projects ....
 
Yeah, I think the 16mm debate is long over. There was a lot of amazement and arguement to begin with that S16 was not gonna be considered HD, but I think most people have come to accept that now. The only gap that the likes of the Varicam haven't filled is the Arri HSR 150fps role, essential for wildlife shooting. That's one of the interesting things about RED, the ability to get upto 120fps in 2k. And then with the Phantom HD taking over from there upto 1000fps you're covered!
Steve
 
Oh just after HDCam and DVCPro HD hit the market, it went on for ages at seminars and get-togethers and in trade press, basically Kodak and Sony arguing the toss, and quoting various figures etc. plus giving comparative tests. Did seem hard to believe that this new fangled video tape was going to as good as our beloved film, but there you go.
One thing though, is that I think a lot of the comparisons, and a lot of the problems with MPEG, were based on 500 and 800 ASA stocks, the drama staples, whereas in wildlife work (my area) we tend to use a lot of 7245 50 ASA and at most 250D, and the 50 stock in particular is very fine grained and I'm still sure would hold up well against HD even in the MPEG transcoding.
Believe me, it was a HUGE talking point for a good 2 years or so, and a short while in it just got very tedious and I'm glad it's over with!
Steve
 
16mm

16mm

Everyone in the video world (include Red in this) thinks all the problem is film but the real culprit is MPEG whether MPEG2 or MPEG4 just think take a good image and throw parts of it away if it shows no movement from the previous frame! MPEG formats have been gradually compressed more & more to fit in more channels and thats the real reason for this issue. I have two forms of digital delivery to my home and quite frankly their are many instances where digital is inferior to analogue sound being one of them as well as picture blocking etc..
Its easy to treat film as the villian but all things digital are not perfect otherwise for instance why did it take 16 versions of software to get better Red pictures?
 
Sycophant said:
When BBC/EBU were defining what HD means to them...
Click to expand...

I would rephrase that, at least in the case of the BBC, to read "when the BBC was defining what DIRAC compression can and cannot handle in an acceptable way."

As Nova Invicta just stated, the problem is not necessarily the source, but the chain it must be put through for digital HD broadcast, particularly in the UK. Compression does not like anything random - grain, noise, or fast movement. If you doubt this, watch any NBC NFC broadcast (shot on video, of course), or just about any episode of "Smallville" (shot on 35mm film) on a CW affiliate in HD. The fact is that 16mm is currently used for a number of HD television programs in the US, and numerous features as well. Television programs in 16mm would include One Tree Hill, Chuck, Scrubs, Burn Notice, Monk, Law and Order (the last season), and in recent seasons, Veronica Mars, The OC, and numerous others. The flavor of MPEG compression used for HD broadcast in the US is a bit more tolerant of the issues mentioned above than the home grown DIRAC compression developed and used by the BBC.
 
shooter said:
How much more does it cost to scan HD resolution out of the 16mm stock? Is that possible? Is there that much detail there to begin with? Have you ever scanned 16mm at HD resolution?
Click to expand...

You need to get your terms straight here. A "scan" is not the same thing as a "transfer". Transferring 16mm negative in a telecine to HD is a common practice, for finishing either on video or film (you do a film-out from the edited HD master), and (naturally) you get the resolution of the HD recording format. Last time I priced it, which was a while ago, the cost ranged from $26-$30 a minute, for color stock, processing and one-light video SD dailies. In most facilities, you'd have to add more for an HD transfer, and again more if you wanted a timed HD master.

However, a *scan*, typically at 2K, will be far more expensive than a telecine transfer, because it's a much more time-consuming process. Scanning 16mm film dailies at 2K for editing purposes is the road to bankruptcy.
 
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