sundance 2006 - Zoael

High Quality Cost Effective
Options for Digital Intermediate
Film Scanning with HD 4:4:4 Finishing
BY JIM E. JAMES, CHIEF ENGINEER,
POINT 360, IVC
THE CONCEPT
HD 4:4:4 RGB has become a standard
format for high quality, cost effective
Digital Intermediate. It has all the
quality of 2K, with a more efficient
workflow, resulting in lower cost, and
faster results. There are three ways to
get from your original film negative to
the digital realm of HD. Each has
advantages and disadvantages in the
areas of cost, time, and workflow.
THE OPTIONS
Option One: SD Dailies and 2K Scan:
One option is to create standard definition
dailies for offline, then after the edit
is approved scan only the selected shots
in 2K. A 1920x1080 extraction is then
taken from the 2K scans during the DI
process to create the highest quality HD.
Option Two: SD Dailies and HD
Selects: The next option also starts
with standard definition dailies, but
uses the Spirit Datacine to transfer the
selected takes to HD. This saves cost
and time over the 2K scans, but with a
slight loss of visual sharpness.
Option Three: Dual Sync Dailies: The
final option starts with “Dual Sync”
dailies where both HD “Digital
Negatives,” on HDCAM-SR or D5, and
SD offline tapes are created simultaneously.
After the offline edit is finished the
HD “Digital Negative” tapes are used for
the final conform, or online edit. This
saves time between offline and finishing,
and has alternate takes readily available
if needed. If you want to save time and
be ready for that alternate “Director’s
Cut” this may be the method for you.
THE CHOICES
All three options will yield a high
77
quality final product. Which is the
right choice depends on your budget,
time constraints, and the special needs
of your project. Either HD method
works for 16mm or 35mm. 2K scans
are usually from 35mm only.
2K scans can be pin registered,
which could be an advantage if you will
be compositing using this material.
They also have a higher visual resolution
due to 4K over-sampling in the
scanner. The difference is minor, so
whether this will be noticeable
depends largely on the sharpness of
your negative, and the nature of your
images. 2K will be more expensive and
takes far longer to scan then telecine,
which could be an issue if deadlines
and budgets are tight. Only “Selects”,
or shots that will be in the final movie
are scanned.
HD Selects has the advantage of
being a faster and usually less expen-
sive process. Again, only the material
in the final edit is transferred. The
shots can be transferred to tape, or
uncompressed to disk. If a lot of material
was shot that will not be used this
can be the most cost-effective option.
Dual Sync Dailies transferred all
your dailies to HD tape, so when you
are done in offline you can go immediately
to the conforming stage with no
wait for scanning. The tapes can be
archived so that if future re-edits are
required all the alternate takes are
available with no additional scanning
cost or time. While transferring all the
takes to HD may result in a slightly
higher original cost, there could be a
long term cost benefit by avoiding retransfers.
Also, if during the offline
process there is any question about the
quality of a shot, it can be viewed in HD
on the big screen without the cost of
having to pull and rescan the negative.