Announcing Cintel Film Scanner

[Katie Colledge]

Blackmagic Design today announced a new model of Cintel Film Scanner, which will convert 35mm film into amazing quality Ultra HD digital content. There is no easier way to generate Ultra HD feature film and television programming from existing 35mm film archives.

Designed to be wall mounted, the Cintel Film Scanner is constructed using aircraft design techniques for a stiff and vibration free main deck to ensure smooth film handling.

The Cintel Film Scanner will be demonstrated on the Blackmagic Design NAB 2014 booth at #SL219. It will retail at $29,995.

To learn more, please visit: http://www.blackmagicdesign.com/press/p ... seID=60309

Certainly is an attractive looking device. Kudos for that!

Of course we are all curious about the projected tech specs for this device.

Separate Red, Grn and Blu Exposures or Single Bayer style Colour Exposure?
Native Capture Bit-depth (10, 12, 14 or 16)?
Image Export Formats (dpx10, dpx16, tiff16, exr, etc.)?
Dynamic Range and corresponding Signal to Noise Ratio?
Capture Formats (4k Full Ap. 4:3 = 4096x3112, or is it pillar-boxed in UHD 3840x2160)?
Esoteric Capture Formats (8p 35mm VistaVision, 3p Super 35mm, 2p 35mm Techniscope)?
Any 'At Point of Scanning' DRS option(s) (DICE, etc.)?

Also curious about transport/safety provisions for physically challenged archival assets (Shrunken, Torn, Damaged Perfs, Brittle film, Decomps, and Failing Splices)?

Sounds nice, but I'd like to have a scanner, which can handle 8mm, too (super and normal).
Of course there is much content on 16mm and 35mm, but let's not forget, that many of the starter-project where shot on super 8 or that some historical stuff is only preserved on normal 8mm film.
This doesn't need to get a 4k scan, but an equivilant crop would be nice. I think that this would upgrade the scanner to a wonderful tool for many documentaries and archives.

I would be very curious to know if this scanner handles optical and magnetic sound. That would seem a pretty important feature if the goal is to digitize the world's vast collections of film.

I talked to them at NAB and saw the scanner close-up. There are 2-3 ports on the scanner deck to the side of the gate, for add-on devices. One of these would be audio, which they said they're actively working on. Presumably the other port is for a keykode reader?

They didn't get into details on the types of audio formats supported, but I'd guess it's just optical at first.

-perry

I didn't notice if it was, but I would think it would need to be in order to swap it out for 16mm. Though, I suppose it's possible to have a gate that's not pin-registered and accommodates both formats if the design is clever enough.

Pin registration went out many years ago as being an old fashion concept when line scan telecine chains were coming into favour, as the sensors were simply a line of photo-receptors, not an area array. Of course line arrays are now very definitely old-hat, so pin registration may have a resurgence.

Among modern scanners, the Lasergraphics Director is Pin-registered, as are the Arriscan, and some of the DCS Xena machines. All use area sensors. An option on the Director, something we have on our Lasergraphics ScanStation, is a digital pin registration that lines up the sprocket holes to a fixed X/Y location on the output file, before writing the file to disk. This has become more popular, but different manufacturers do it differently. The steadiness of our ScanStation is remarkable, even with extremely shrunken film.

The Northlight and older Imagica scanners use line arrays. Both of those are pin-registered, I believe. The Scanity doesn't have an intermittent transport, so it does pin registration electronically, but it's not as good as that in the ScanStation or Director (the ScanStation is continuous motion, the Director is intermittent).

Physical registration pins are just fine if the film is newer. The Cintel scanner has sprocket wheels, so you're not likely to be putting shrunken archival film in it anyway - you'd damage old film before it ever hit the registration pin, if there is one. 2% shrinkage is a fair bit and that's what the scanner can supposedly handle, but our scanner can take film shrunken over 5%, because it's sprocketless.

If the gate is swappable, then the question is, where is it stored? It used to be considered good practice to store it in the same cabinet as the rest of the transport to shield it from dust.

Our scanner has removable gates for different formats, and we store them in a drawer in a cabinet near the scanner, where they're kept free from dust. It doesn't take more than a second or two to blast them with some canned air before installing.

-perry

Are there any updates on the Cintel scanner product or its availability? Will BMD offer any digital restoration software to replace Revival?

IBC 2015 - any news on a release date?

IBC 2015 - any news on a release date?

It's starting to ship. Check with your dealer.