method

Frame Discreet's frame by frame film transfer system has a specifically enlarged gate which allows us to see the full frame of your film, which is normally only available from a high end rank transfer system. This allows you to see more of the image and also can allow you to effectively shrink the film grain giving you a sharper, crisper image.

There is no flicker in our transfer and no blurring of the frames that would normally be associated with a typical telecine transfer. Because each frame is scanned into the computer individually, each image maintains its integrity exactly as it was originally shot. The quality of work we provide is only nominally surpassed by a Rank transfer system which could easily cost you 3x the amount that we charge.


We provide scene by scene colour correction through our TCUBE colour corrector (which was engineered in France specifically for our suite). This allows us full control to restore and ensure that your film has accurate colour balance throughout. No more blue exteriors or flat, boring washed out images.


We also apply a true pulldown to ensure that your footage plays back at the exact same frame rate it was originally shot at. No 'charlie chaplin' scenes here. This also provides a more accurate speed if you are planning on syncing up dialogue.

How we do it:

1. Take your 50' reels and wind them onto one of our 400' Balanced Reels (essential to getting perfect film registration).

2. While winding your film onto our Balanced Reels we also inspect your film for damage. During this process your film is run over PTR rollers (Particle Transport Rollers, to remove dirt and dust). It is also cleaned and an anti-static lubricant is applied to insure smoother transport.

3. We load your film and align the scanner to show us as much of the frame as possible without showing frame lines (gives you tighter grain and a sharper image).

4. We illuminate the film with a cool diffused LED daylight balanced light source. Gives us perfect illumination across the frame, no hot spots and no chance of burning the film as a typical bulb could.

5. Adjust our white balance to give the film an accurate replication of the colours the film was originally shot with.

6. We begin to scan/photograph the frames, 1 frame at a time. A series of commands allows us to connect to a computer and save each frame as a digital still frame. As soon as one frame is photographed and processed, the next frame of film is registered in the gate to repeat the process. We run at 6 frames per second to allow the computer time to process the images. To digitize a 50' roll will take approx. 15-25 minutes depending upon how much the exposure shifts scene to scene.

7. While photographing the frames we monitor the film density/exposure. Added contrast is inherent in a film to video transfer. Video does not have the same latitude that film has (hence the beauty and magic of film!). Highlights 'blow out' or 'burn in' much easier on video and there typically isn't as much detail in the shadow areas in video. For example: If we rated the latitude of film from the blackest black being 1 and the whitest white being 10, the same scale would rate video's blackest black being 3 and whitest white being 7. Some of the information in the blacks (1-3) is lost and some of the detail in the highlights(7-10) is lost in transferring your film to video. So in order to get a perfect transfer, you must monitor the transfer and adjust your exposure for what is most important in the scene. Do you let the white areas burn out to maintain detail in the shadows? Do you let the shadows fall into a deep rich black to maintain information in the highlights? That's what you pay us to take care of for you.

8. Your footage is now onto our computer system and we apply a pulldown. We convert all footage using industry standard pulldown patterns. A pulldown is necessary to get your film to playback at the correct speed. NTSC (north american standard) video that you watch on TV plays at 29.97fps (frames per second). Your film was probably shot at 16, 18 or 24fps. In order to get your film to play back at this rate, we have to apply a pulldown (doubling certain frames in a defined pattern). This allows your film to playback naturally on a 29.97 television, true to the speed it was shot at.

9. We now pass on the footage to our colourist. We do additional colour corrections to remove colour casts that may have come from incorrect filter use, or from fading of the footage. We can add colour/saturation and contrast to the image if it is faded or old. If having a supervised transfer, you can sit in with us on this stage and have full creative control on how rich you want the image to look.

10. Quality Control. One last pass of the footage to ensure your film has a consistent look. (If requested, we can email still frames for approval before mastering out).

10. Master out to tape, disc or harddrive to suit your needs and cash in our funds for a long hard days work.

Transfer comparisons

Below are some still frames comparing a typical '5 bladed shutter' realtime transfer to our 'frame by frame' transfer.

Another filmmaker brought us this footage to re-transfer after she was thoroughly unimpressed by the original transfer done somewhere else. This was shot on COLOUR NEGATIVE 500T (7218) Super 8mm. The original transfer was washed out, missing all colour information and had no sharpness. (Check out the hands on the watch). Appears more like low grade VHS rather than super 8 beauty!

In this image you can notice notice how much sharper our image is. Particularly look at the how the grain shows up much sharper in the sky. Also look at the "50" road sign and metal guard rail. The detail and sharpness is completly lost in the typical transfer method
(thank you to Nicolas Renaud for k40 images).

The above image shows how much more contrast can be gained from frame by frame scanning. We are particulary pleased with these results. Many clients have come to us because the typical telecine method leaves their footage looking too 'flat' and 'washed out'. Also take note of how sharp the image is around the henchman poking in the fire.

This is the motion blur that comes with a typical transfer. As the video camera records the projected image, sometimes it catches information from 2 of your frames of film at once, giving you a blurred softer image. This can seemingly give you a smoother looking transfer but in turn sacrifices image sharpness, detail and contrast. If you are shooting Pro footage and understand your camera's shutter angles, then a typical transfer method is unacceptable and will ruin any type of sharp shutter effects you are trying to create.

Frame discreet is the way to go to resolve these issues get as close to the original image as possible.