FX1 Film Transfer
 

I have transferred several clips from FX1 to 35 mm film. Those clips were as follows.
From HDR-FX1 Sony HDV Info.com Forum
Kerr Cook’s
shottransove.4.m2t - a fast zoom out
car25side.4.m2t - shot from a moving vehicle

From DV info.net forum
Kaku Ito’s
bikepassngby.m2t - zoom out and a pan folloing a moving motorbike
day0dbf6.2.m2t - 2 children running towards the camera
eevgap.m2t - zoom out from a billboard to a wide shot of a street

horses.m2t - (I am not sure who shot this) merry-go-round with horses move up and down on the foreground while the background passes by

all of these shots contained lot of movement. On most of the shots the entire frame contained movement.

I de-interlaced the clips using our proprietary software, which works as a plug in for AE. I did not try any 24p conversion since my aim was to evaluate resolution on the film transfer. (I will be using a PAL camera anyway, since I am in the PAL region). Then I cropped the frame to get Cinemascope aspect ratio and stretched it vertically to fill the full 35 mm frame. Transfer was done using our proprietary film recorder on to FUJI 250D negative.

The print was viewed at the lab’s screening room, which has a 14’ screen. The screening room was designed to view the rushes at short throw, which would clearly show any defect on the print, that would not be noticeable on a long throw projection in a theater.

That was the best film transfer I have done. I have transferred quite a lot of advertisements, done using Sony DXC D35PL and D50P cameras with either Canon or Fujinon lenses, 2 feature films using Sony DSR 570 and D50P, footage from my own good old Sony VX 1000 (I still use that) and Panasonic DVX 100 (not the 100a) and Canon XL1s. But all these were no match for the resolution of FX1. Even after the cropping and stretching for the Cinemascope AR, the resolution was very much above these SD cameras. The technicians at the lab were simply shocked. I did not see any pixelization on these clips. Although little softening is noticed during the zooms, it is well hidden behind the crash zooms. I noticed it because I was looking for it.

I think I owe something to the people who shot these test footages. Please email me your addresses. I will send you sample frames from your footages. (If possible I will try to send you a copy of the entire 30-second film out.)

I am going to purchase the Cam.

Thanks every one.

Sounds very cool!

heath

Then can those people post the grabs so that the rest of us can see them.

Re: FX1 Film Transfer
 

<<<--I de-interlaced the clips using our proprietary software, which works as a plug in for AE. -->>>

How does your software works? Does it takes only one field and interpolates the picture or does it combine fields into frames with motion estimate and gives motion blur to the movement ..... ?

It combines fields into frames with motion estimate and gives motion blur to the movement. It wont do 60i to 24p since we did not need it. We are in a PAL country.

I have tried DV Film Maker with some of these clips, thought it was good. But I did not transfer those 24p clips. You could download the demo version of the software from DV film web site.

Maheel Perera,

Do you have a demo v. of your software I can download and try? I'm in Pal-land as well.

Laszlo Bodo,

Sorry, Lazlo, It was a software specially written for us and is not for sale.

Would you mind sending a frame to someone who did not shoot some of the footage? I would love to check it out and scan it with a Nikon 5000ED. Just very curious.

... or just post some frames after deinterlacing.

Kyle,

Of course I can send. But I doudt whether any evaluation could be done by scanning it. Those frames were stretched for Cinemascope. I remember someone at the DVInfo was a projectionist as well. Was that Heath.? Hoe about sending a copy to some one who has access to a film projector.?

Lazlo,

I could do that also. How do I upload the frames?. They are quite large. Chris will be able to help.

You can use www.imageshack.us to host a picture or even http://s3.yousendit.com .

i would like to see a scanned frame.

We'll host scanned images on our site, if you'd like to send them/it to us with the information of the shooter, and any information about your process.

Douglas,

I do not really think that the scanned images will prove any thing. Remember the clips were cropped for Cinemascope aspect raio and stretched to achive the correct Cinemascope projection.

How about sending the film reel to you?. I hope you will be able to view it at a theatre and report your findings.