SCANNING GUIDELINES

SEPTEMBER, 2006 INTRODUCTION

All current 16mm and 35mm formats can be scanned. In the latter case this includes all frame sizes from 2-perf (techniscope) up to 8-perf (vistaVision). Our "Northlight" scanners can accommodate 2K, 4K and 6K frame sizes in 10bit/log cineon or DPX formats.

When we supply "2K" it is created using our special super2K software. This downsizes from a 4k scan, by means of algorithms developed in-house, to maximize the final image quality with particular emphasis on the requirements for . This includes special care with regard to "aliasing" so that the best possible blue or green screen composites can be achieved without the necessity of relying on 4K scans for "difficult" shots or of adding sharpening (detail enhancement) to standard 2k scans.

To ensure a timely turnaround incoming material should be in sealed film cans marked clearly on the outside with a roll number, source name, show name and with any other information that can help us recognize the roll and determine its contents without opening the can. A full contents list within the can is also very helpful. Please note that Cinesite accepts on the understanding that a safety Inter Positive has been struck from all material to be scanned.

Film being submitted to us for scanning needs to have the required frames clearly specified. This can be done using any one of three systems:

1 framecount (see below) 2 keycode (see below) 3 timecode (see below)

Our preference is to have all all three specifications in one file so that we have the means of double checking that everything is as it should be. Without a keycode it is impossible to definitevely identify a given frame on the film.

FILE FORMATS AND HEADERS

Once an image is scanned it has to be put into a data file. This is the equivalent to putting a drink inside a container such as a can. Just like a "can" has to have information on the outside so that the user can tell what is in there, a data container has information describing the contents. This is known as and is contained in the "header". In the early days of digital film, created a range of products under the "cineon" brand name and devised a file format (or container) to function within that system. This was known as the "cineon" format and represented by the extension ".cin" after the file name. The cineon format was originally designed for a specific set of equipment and circumstances.

When cineon had been adopted by the industry in general Kodak cooperated with an SMPTE committee to rationalize it into an international standard format for picture data exchange. This is known as ".dpx", has the identical image information coded in the same way and is the file format we would recommend. Both formats are used to store 10bit/log images but in the cineon format only keycode information can be included in the header. In DPX, 3-perf can be handled through the use of perf offset instead of frame offset, the file size is slightly smaller, and yet, the header can contain BOTH the keycode and the timecode which is much better for modern applications. With this information encoded in the header it is possible to track a shot throughout the post production process and at any stage relate it back to the original film roll (keycode) or telecine roll (timecode).

The cineon/DPX 10bit/log format is becoming a problem in that some modern film stocks are capable of exceeding its limits and therefore will eventually have to be replaced by some other more flexible container. The current best contender is "open EXR" although like, for example, the TIFF format used in still photography it has a number of variables and therefore needs very careful control to be applied throughout the process if it is going to be used successfully.

The image can simply be related to the shot it belongs to by choice of an appropriate name. Please note that in the creation of file names we cannot accommodate the special characters reserved by operating system use so please do not use "," "." "(" ")" "'" ":" ";" or spaces. If elements of the name need to be split up then the best character to use is the underscore "_" (e.g. name_part_one_and_part_2 ) although hyphens are acceptable also. see also ###link to document: DPX smpte standard ANSI/SMPTE 268M-1994 cineon : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cineon dpx : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DPX open/exr: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenEXR

For many applications, such as auto-conform and DI or digital mastering systems, it is necessary to have timecode and perhaps keycode too, so it is often advantageous to have both incorporated in the header. To do this it will therefore be necessary to have keycodes and timecodes provided with their relationship and synchronism clearly annotated. Keycodes are specific and only one keycode could belong to a given frame whereas timecodes are relative and therefore must be clearly specified. The best system is for editorial to supply a list with the timecode "in" and "out" points and the keycode "in" and "out" points specified along with the film roll number and shot name for each event to be scanned

SEE: electronic scan submission example (this is in the Downloads section of the Scanning and Recording website section).

ADDITIONAL CONSIDERATIONS

Assuming that working electronic lists are available, then film should be supplied head out if cleaned immediately before delivery for scanning, or tail out, if supplied without previous cleaning. If the film needs to be manually set-up then it should be supplied head out.

For Visual Effects (VFX) exact "in" and "out" points will usually be chosen, but sometimes, for VFX and always, for DI, it will be necessary to incorporate "handles". This means that extra frames are scanned before (head) and after (tail) the specified frames from the EDL. This is because once the shot is seen on a larger screen there may be a requirement to alter it slightly by a few frames - it also allows for further editing after the shot has initially been selected. There are two ways of incorporating these - either the handles are added on to the scan submission so that it shows exactly what is to be scanned or, it is provided as a separate project wide preference and therefore added to all shots. Thus it might be stated that 8-frame handles are to be added to all shots (apart from single frames used for reference). In this case a shot with duration 120 frames would actually be scanned for 136 frames - starting 8 frames before the specified "in" point and ending 8 frames after the specified "out" point. It is most important that it is made extremely clear whether handles are already incorporated in the submission or that we are to add them as standard for the job.

It is normal procedure to scan full ap, academy or 'scope. Although the film might be shot, for example, in widescreen academy (a 1.85:1 slice across the sound image area) or super35 (a 2.35:1 slice across the entire width of the film) it is generally preferred to scan the entire area so that there is additional image both above and below the "active" picture area. This can be useful for limited reframing of problem shots, for "safety" so that there is image enough to fill less wide formats (such as TV widescreen of 16x9) or to provide the extra image necessary to allow stabilization techniques to be used on unsteady images without having to unnecessarily zoom in.

SEE: formats list (this is in the Downloads section of the Scanning and Recording website section).

Modern film scanning systems are designed to digitize masked negative or inter-positive colour stocks (i.e. where the entire film has an orange appearance). To scan unmasked print or stocks requires the machine to be modified, both physically and in software, so plenty of notice is required if it becomes necessary to work from such source materials.

We are happy to write out the scanned image files to media supplied, or, to provide new media at an extra charge. Although some organizations still use data "tape" based systems such as DTF our recommendation is to used hard disk storage to move data about from one facility to another. Firewire and USB are both fine for this although the newer versions of Firewire 800 and USB2 are much faster and therefore help get you your material that little bit faster. 2K is around 12.5MB per frame and 4K is around 52MB per frame. So, for example, a 200GB firewire disk would have a capacity of around 16,350 2K frames or about 4,000 4K frames. To put this into perspective the former would be equivalent to around 11 minutes or a 1,000ft roll as projected in older cinemas which still use changeovers. Any brand of hard disk is fine but the one most commonly used in the is LaCie which has proved to be very reliable and reasonably rugged http://www.lacie.com/uk/products/range.htm?id=10036

Where images are required to be shunted around the world in a big hurry then we can move them electronically via the internet. We can push material to a distant server or set up a local server from which the material may be pulled. For long distances the former is preferable because it means that, for instance, if going to California we can write the data onto the distant server during the day so that when its owners arrive in the morning the material is already sitting there waiting and as it is on their server is pretty quickly available to view. We have found that using "rsynch" (applicable on LINUX systems) is much faster and more reliable than FTP and would recommend setting up to use this if a lot of material is to be exchanged. Please check out http://rsync.samba.org/. To even contemplate such methods it is imperative to have a really broad "pipe" connected to your facility. We use sohonet which is extremely fast, designed with digital film facilities in mind and highly recommended http://www.sohonet.co.uk/index.htm

Moving material across the net is not really practical for large quantities of frames but is often used to send small numbers of frames such as when a number of shots have been transmitted via a firewire drive and courier and at the other end some frames have been found to have corrupted in transit. This can happen as drives go on transport systems which use large electro-magnets (such as the tube's compressors) or through airport security X-ray machines which also have large magnets under the conveyor belt (the X-rays themselves do not affect magnetic media).

Finally we have a "smartjog" account and can therefore send material via this route should somebody have an account at the distant facility. It should be noted that it costs money both to maintain membership of smartjog and per gigabyte of material transferred, however against this it is very fast and reliable so in emergency situations worth every euro! http://www.smartjog.com/smartjog/

FRAMECOUNT

In this method a count in frames from a known start point (e.g. first frame of picture, or preferably, from a hole punch) is provided up to and including the first frame of the required shot. Additionally, the duration of that shot is required in frames. In truth these are the only two numbers which are needed whether the negative has been cut or not. This is the two pieces of information which the scanner itself uses, and indeed, the numbers provided in any other system are converted to this one before the scanner can use them. If the film has been cut (e.g. just the slates being used are cut out from the original camera negative and joined together to produce a "composite" negative/roll or so- called "p-can") and various separated sections have each got their own hole punch then a separate column in the list should give the number of the hole-punch from which the count for that event begins. Finally "shot names" and roll number need to be provided so that the correct shot can be found and named according to production's requirements. The list can be in the form of delimited text or an excel spreadsheet.

SEE: electronic scan submission example - framecount (this is in the Downloads section of the Scanning and Recording website section).

The problem with this simplistic approach is that it does not provide any way of cross checking to see if the scans have been correctly defined. Therefore framecount in association with method *2 (keycode) and 3* (timecode) is preferable. Without keycode it is impossible to check that the correct parts of the film have been scanned. If there is a mistake in the framecounts we have no way of detecting the fault whereas with keycode we can check that the correct frame has been defined (at worst by actually looking at the film with a magnifying glass !!!).

KEYCODE

Film negative has "keycode" numbers printed along its length. These take the form of barcodes every 16 frames (one foot) with a human readable number next to each. Obviously, as there is only a barcode every 16 frames the "in-between" frames have to be specified and this is done by an offset number written in the form of, for example, "+ 7" which would be the seventh frame after the last barcode. This number is estimated by the system counting perforations or rotation of sprocket wheels. Using keycodes to specify which frames are to be scanned is a foolproof method since each single image on the film is attended by a unique keycode belonging to that one frame and only that frame. Things become a bit more complicated with 3-perf 35mm movies because unlike the 2, 4 and 8 systems the number of perfs per barcode does not equally divide into 64 and therefore an affix is required to determine which perf marks the commencement of a frame. Thus the three possible positions for e.g. frame seven are specified as +07 P1, +07 P2 and +07 P3. Full details are contained in the SMPTE standard RP 195-1998.

In the early days it was just keycodes which were given to specify the start and end frames of an event to be scanned. However this was dependent on a manual line-up method where an operator physically winds through the roll of film to find the pertinent keycode. A manual framecounter then provided the count from zero point which was then written onto a line-up sheet so that it could be input to the scanner. This method involves a lot of human intervention, potential errors and wear on the film not to mention exposing it to the elements so that it can attract dust and other airborne particles. We do not recommend use of this method anymore and prefer to scan directly from "electronic" lists such as Excel spreadsheet files or delimited text which provide all the necessary information to directly scan. If we are required to manually find keycodes then there is a surcharge per roll of film so presented to cover the extensive additional activities it involves.

SEE: electronic scan submission example (this is in the Downloads section of the Scanning and Recording website section).

As long as the original negative has not be cut then it is possible to scan using a simple list of keycodes from which the exact framecount and duration of each event can be calculated by our data management system. However, if the negative has been *cut* then we are back into a situation where unless additional information is provided it will be necessary to manually find the keycodes as they will jump each time a physical cut occurs. Automatic equipment will not be able to pick this up since if on either side, the cut has a number of frames between it and the nearest barcode, the system will loose trace of the keycode. It will not pick up again until it sees at least two keycodes from the new piece of film. It will not know that the number has largely changed until it hits the first of the new barcodes and will be confused as it will usually occur at some number different from 16 frames from the last! To counter this it is either necessary to go through the film and manually find and annotate the places where the keycodes change or be provided with a "neg cut list" which specifies which parts of which original rolls have been combined and how. A combination of cut-list (or neg log) and keycode scan-list should, if correctly designed, supply enough information to decipher by a database system and thus enable automated scanning.

TIMECODE

It is also possible to use a timecode to specify which frames are to be scanned. If the timecode is zeroed to a known frame such as a punch and then telecine'd to tape or disk then either an EDL generated by an editing system such as Avid or timecodes read off from a monitor displaying "burnt in timecode" (i.e. the image with timecode in vision over the picture) can be listed. The timecode should commence from a specified point such as a hole punch and an appropriate timecode such as 01:00:00:00 where the hours "01" may, for example, relate to film roll or video reel number. By loading an EDL and setting the film to the zeroed frame a given timecode can be converted to a frame number and the image thus found automatically. Obviously, as with keycode and simple framecounts, a name for the file will need to be specified as will the roll number on which to find the shots.

If timecode is being used then it is essential that we be told the timecode speed in frames per second (FPS). Without this information it is impossible to calculate the framecount from the start point - obviously 150 frames equals 5 seconds at 30fps but 6 seconds at 25fps!

The identical situation occurs with timecode as with keycode, in that if the original film rolls are cut, then additional information will be required to determine which sections of film from which original rolls have been assembled in the p-can. Once again this would take the form of a neg-cut-list or neg- roll-log. Using the neg-log in association with an EDL it would be possible to merge these using a suitable database system and thus derive a count from zero and associated duration for each event