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SECTION: 6.10 is for an overview of the subject of Digital Cinema. See also the program files in the current distribution of my programs, the other parts of this HTML documentation, and the current On-Line version of this Web site for information more specifically about my programs. Any comparisons of my programs or methods to some others is only given as a vague generality of my opinion and is not intended as a recommendation or reference to any particular products, always make your own evaluations and comparisons before taking any action.

A Movie Film Scanner is a machine that makes image files for each image frame that was photographed onto a strip of motion picture film.

Motion picture film has one image photographed onto it for each of twenty four images photographed per second of time. 35mm motion picture film has 16 images or "frames" as they are called per foot on length. 35mm motion picture film prints for projection in theatres are usually about 2000 feet long and can show about 22 minutes of a movie (about 90 feet per minute), each 2000 foot length of a movie is called a "reel" since the movie film is shipped on holders called reels. 16mm motion picture film has 40 frames per foot, Super8 motion picture film has 72 frames per foot, and 8mm motion picture film has 80 frames per foot, so the smaller the gauge the slower the film will pass through the projector in a theatre and the slower it will pass through most film scanners, that is the feet per hour billed will be lower for the smaller gauges. Other movie film formats like VistaVision (tm) and 65/70mm are not used much any longer, some 35mm movie film scanners can scan VistaVision (tm) film since it is just 35mm with 8 images per foot rather than 16 per foot. 65/70mm (65mm for the negative and 70mm for the print to have sound on the extra outside edges) requires a special wide movie film scanner, and these are rare since the 5 perf pull-down 65/70mm format is not used much or really at all any more. IMAX (tm) uses 70mm film with a longer "pull down" but it may be phased out soon as filmmaking transitions to all Digital Projection.

Movie film is shot in a movie camera. In order to make digital frame images from the movie film, the processed movie film is scanned in a movie film scanner such that each frame on the movie film is used to make one high resolution digital image, e.g. DPX or 16bit 48bpp TIF file type.

In order to automate the movie film scanner to photograph each movie film frame with a digital camera some kind of computer and software are used. My program DANCINES.EXE (tm) can be used to automate a DIY movie film scanner if you want to do your own movie film scanning to maybe save money or keep your footage in-house.

There are two basic ways to scan movie film, you can use a precision step movement movie film projector like those used in older movie film optical printers made by ACME (tm), Photo-Sonics (tm), or Oxberry etc., or you can move the movie film continuously past a "line scanner" that scans a single row of pixels over the width of the film frame as it moves so that a set of lines are scanned. There may also be some that do not use an Optical printer film movement but still stop a movie frame to shoot a digital image of it then move the film with rollers to shoot the next frame. In the type that use optical printer movements the registration of the images is controlled by the holes in the edges of the movie film, just as in normal motion picture optical printing. In the type that move the movie film continuously or the type that use rollers, the digital camera can photograph the holes edges and use software later to adjust the registration of the images based on edge detection of the images of the holes in the edges of the movie film. Which works better depends on various factors, mechanical registration has been used for about 100 years, using images of the holes edges is newer and subject to the resolution of the scanner looking at the film. Not using registration pins in an optical printer movement can be more gentle on film and is used for archive scanning of shrunken or damaged film.

An important adjunct to the mechanical and computer parts of the movie film scanner is a TB storage unit, since the DPX or TIF frames are many megabytes each, and scanning long rolls of motion picture film results in 1440 frame images per minute of film scanned. 22 minutes of images is 31680 frame images times about 60 megabytes per frame comes out to maybe 2TB of storage required for each reel of motion picture film scanned.

One important factor to consider relating to movie film scanning is the resolution of the digital images made for each of the movie film frames. The standard resolution of movie film scans used for making a motion picture DI has been 2K or 2048 pixels wide. As computer storage has gotten faster and cheaper more movies are being scanned and having the DI done at 4K or 4096 pixels wide resolution. Doing your DI at 4K takes about four to five times as long and takes four to five times as much storage space on the computers used (more and bigger harddrives), so doing a 4K scan and DI costs much more and takes much longer than doing a 2K scan and DI.

If you are going to build your own movie film scanner you should look into high resolution monochrome digital cameras rather than color digital cameras and DSLR since making three color separation exposures, one Red, one Green, and one Blue can give better color results than using a Bayer filter color digital camera in your scanner. Making several exposures in each primary color can lower the noise and digital artifacts if you use my FUSE command option to combine maybe three exposures in each primary, nine exposures total, to average the pixel brightness values.

In some part of the movie film scanner there needs to be a software that "captures" the images from the digital camera and saves the frame images to the storage disk drives etc. If you use a DSLR in your movie film scanner, like a Canon XTi (tm) etc. the CD you get with the camera body has software that will save each frame the camera shoots to a harddrive in a computer, so all you need to do is make a cable that goes from a relay to the "electronic cable release" socket in the DSLR and every time the camera shoots the image will be moved to the computer's harddrive. With my DANCINES.EXE (tm) the signal from my program running on one computer goes to its parallel printer port, that signal closes the shutter release relay, the camera shoots, and then the image of the movie film frame is moved to the harddrive of another computer running the DSLR's download software.

Once you get a set of scanned frames you can use my DANCAD87.EXE (tm) program to FUSE as needed, do color correction on negative images or positive images, and generate the edited color corrected frames for output to film or for conversion to compressed formats. You can also process the scanned frame images in other graphics programs as you like.

One advantage of Digital Images is that they are immortal so long as you keep transferring them to new media unaltered every few years so that you do not have data loss from the harddrives or tapes going bad with time. Motion picture film ages, fades, and cannot be copied without losses to the image quality.

Archival motion picture film scanning will need to continue for many years into the future since it is the "only" way to save high quality digital versions of what has been shot since movie film was invented. When the production of motion picture film stops in due course, then it will not be possible to make new prints for projection and the only way to project at high quality will be electronically from scans of the motion picture film that still is in good enough condition to make saving images of the old film worth the effort.

You can find more information about using my programs for Digital Cinema tasks by looking in the sections that have the text from the program and update documentation files corresponding to the documentation files in the ZIP archive files for the program executables from the Download sections. See SECTION: 3.80.0.0 for information about using DANCINEL.EXE (tm) in a DIY film recorder, see SECTION: 3.85.0.0 for information about using DANCINES.EXE (tm) in a DIY film scanner, and see SECTION: 3.3.7.34 for information about using DANCAD3D.EXE (tm) and DANCAD87.EXE v3.7N+(tm) for motion picture post production and DI (Digital Intermediate) to edit, color correct, and sound mix a feature motion picture. See also any later Update files relating to the programs, and look in the Downloads sub-sections for additional utilities and or programs that may be added that relate to Digital Cinema.