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Sony’s Vialta
telecine is providing the clients of Seattle-based
Victory Studios with high-quality, robust
images for 16mm and 35mm film transfers.
“The Sony Vialta
telecine we’ve installed in our Seattle
facility does an incredible job of transferring
16mm film into high definition or standard
definition video,” says Conrad Denke, CEO
and founder of Victory Studios. “It’s better
than anything I’ve ever seen. You lose the
grainy look that 16mm transfers always seem
to have, and of course, the same technology
that works so well on 16mm does a spectacular
job with 35mm.”
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The difference is also clear to Victory
Studios clients including Gray Warriner
of Camera One in Seattle. He shoots
16mm, Super 16 and 35mm for the National
Parks in addition to work for television
series, commercials, time lapse and
specialty stock footage.
Warriner says he was “amazed” by
the Sony Vialta telecine, which he
uses to transfer 16mm color negatives.
The unit he says “provides outstanding
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resolution with virtually
no grain...”
Another Victory
customer is David Rosen of Shooters Film
Production in Hawaii, who says the Vialta
gives him freedom to shoot with 16mm or
Super 16 higher speed stocks.
“The transfers
used to become very noisy when we did color
correction and the Sony Vialta telecine
keeps everything really clean,” Rosen notes.
“It allows us to do open, multiple Power
Windows, color shifting, vignetting and
defocusing in a single pass.”
The Sony Vialta
incorporates a new generation of image sensors.
While previous generations have used CRT-based
flying spot or line-array CCD technology,
the Vialta uses Fixed Array imaging, employing
three full frame CCDs, providing a total
of more than six million R, G, and B pixel
samples per frame. This fixed array imaging
enables the entire frame to be exposed at
once, rather than line-by-line as in conventional
flying spot and line array systems.
In conventional
continuous motion imaging machines, each
line of HD video information receives approximately
38 microseconds of exposure time. In contrast,
Vialta exposes the entire frame to the CCD
for more than 1/48th second, or approximately
22 milliseconds. This methodology suppresses
video noise and helps explain the lack of
apparent grain when 16mm and Super 16mm
footage is transferred to video.
“In the beginning,
the idea of color correction was simply
to replicate on video what you had on film,”
says Victory Studios colorist John Davidson,
who has 22 years of experience. “But music
videos changed all that. In music videos,
you’re not concerned about matching the
exact color of the soda can. Aggressive
color correction became an opportunity to
create a distinct ‘look’ for your footage.
This thinking quickly spilled over from
music videos into commercials and even feature
films.”
Where conventional
telecines conduct color correction exclusively
through electronics, the Vialta system performs
primary color correction in the optical
domain. Three digital light valves modulate
the mix of red, green and blue illuminating
the film. This frame-by-frame modulation
represents a powerful first level of color
grading prior exposure to the image sensors.
Another key advantage
of the Vialta system is the Optical Picture
Stabilizer. Film perf position sensors detect
gate weave, which is automatically corrected.
The system is so precise that it reduces
vertical and horizontal positioning errors
to within a single high definition pixel.
“I’ve never seen
a telecine as stable,” says Denke. “It’s
right up there with pin registration. That’s
important in digital intermediate work,
when the result will be seen on a 40-foot
screen. So when someone tells you that there’s
no way to avoid grain in 16mm transfers,
don’t believe a word of it. I have seen
the salvation of 16mm. And it’s a Sony.”
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