New Retroscan - scans all formats!

Machine Design
63

As a postscript to my earlier replies, here is a neg scan taken on the Mark 2 machine. The film was neg and learning how to expose correctly in the scanner and finesse it in DaVinci Resolve has been a mission.

There is some vertical jitter in the image which I have not corrected. That is to be expected with 35 year old film which has been less than ideally stored. The lightpin when kept clean and correctly focused upon the film is capable of acceptably steady register with good film.

I have done a mod on the machine whichw as to install a more powerful COB LED as recommended by another user.

One downside with that lamp is that it is a smaller area source and placement of the diffuser took some sorting out. Any falloff of the light towards the edges is massively amplified by a neg scan.

Roger has since also upgraded his machine with a new lamp which has a much more even spread of light and also a new camera.

I have also experimented very recently with a 4K camera. This requires the Spinnaker software to run it and it is nowhere near as simple to operate as the purposed software for the Mark 2.

Whilst it is nice to have that extra resolution from the camera and a little more dynamic range, for practicality and convenience in operating the machine, the reality is that the camera and software as provided is best for the average punter.

My PC is only capable of sustained recording with the 4K camera sensor image cropped to 2880 x 2160. Any more pixels into the bin and the buffer runs out after about 200ft of film.

I imagine that very many of the mom and pop shop users Roger provides to will have PCs incapable of sustained recording of more than 2K and some resistance to upgrading them.

Neg scan with original camera, new lamp, inverted and processed in DaVinci Resolve. No stabilisation.

Positive scan of old film with 4K cropped sensor, new lamp, lightly processed in DaVinci Resolve to recovery slightly faded red and blue channels. No stabilisation. Image shake is due to the camera operator and a small consumer tripod trembling under the weight of the camera and lens. The colour rendition is fairly faithful of the summer lighting conditions, the pastel colours of the vegetation and hard sky. The blue hue indoors is due to the Type 85B daylight correction filter having been removed in the quest for more light into the camera lens.

64

Does anyone own a Moviestuff Mark II 4K machine? I cannot find any review for it so curious if any has been delivered at all. I paid for mine a year ago but have not received it. Roger said supply issues so the long delay.

65

Possibly, Bowling Green State University received one in May of 2023.

However you need to be a student there to get more information.
I have been waiting for order completion, over a year now also.

66

Nice to know he’s actually fulfilling orders. Let’s hope he won’t run away with the money. It’s a huge chunk of change.

67

Not so sure about that. He has NOT returned any of my calls or correspondence in 2 months.

68

I know for a fact that the latest model has shipped to at least some buyers because I’ve talked with people who’ve received them. I also know that the build quality is sub-par even by their usual standards as Moviestuff have been unable to source all their usual parts so a brand new $12,000 Retroscan Universal MkII with the newer 2K camera that they call “4K” can break down in as little as two or three weeks. Build quality being worse than normal has been a problem ever since the very start of the pandemic. I don’t know for sure if the RetroScan 8162K has been delivered to anyone.

There’s a rumour that Moviestuff lost most of their staff during the pandemic and so now it’s basically a one-man operation. If this rumour is true, then coupled with difficulty in acquiring the correct parts it could help explain the very long delays in delivering on orders.

Delays are not that unusual for made-to-order things like this, but waiting over a year is outrageous. Would suggest pushing for a refund.

69

I too suspect it’s a one man operation since he moved to a new location. I will ask for a refund if I don’t get it soon in 2024. Question is will he refund.

70

He will try not to, and as it’s been longer than 6 months you’ll likely have a difficult time getting a bank to reverse it.

Roger has an account here, he should just come and answer these questions directly instead of letting people gossip. Anyway if I am going to hypothesise then I’d say it looks like the end of MovieStuff to me. Every company folds at some point, the RTI collapse was also sudden and unexpected.

71

There are a lot of people (on the Facebook moviestuff owners group) waiting for their orders to ship unfortunately, and plenty of people waiting for the 2.5K (marketed as 4K) upgrade kits to ship.
What size film formats do you want to scan? if it’s just 8mm, I’d be going for the filmfabriek Pictor. it is a price jump, but it’s also a huge jump in quality.

1 Like
72

8mm and 16mm. I need both. 35mm is nice plus for moviestuff scanner.

73

What Andy said above. Buy a Pictor and live without 16mm for a while until the next FF scanner comes out or until they make a 16mm Pictor. If you can’t afford a Pictor then purchase a refurbished Tobin, they only cost $3.5K. Yes they are not frame-by-frame, but really the stock standard you get off the Retroscan isn’t all that much better anyway.

To make the Retroscan actually work correctly and produce professional quality you’ll end up spending USD $20K+ not including the cost of the host computer.

I hope you don’t take this the wrong way, but I can confidently say that at least 90% of MovieStuff customers have never heard of their main competitors and don’t do their research before purchasing one. But that being said, MOST people that buy the Retroscans are happy with them, which leads you to getting people talking about how great their scanners are rather than a critical pros-and-cons comparing to other hobbyist-budget scanners.

74

If you are considering professional and paid for this job, I think it is crucial to carefully calculate your business plan.
The purchase price of the scanner remains very high for the equipment received. You also need to add accessories sold at a high price, the computer, and plan for future updates of paid software, even considering the replacement of the camera. Add up the total and calculate how many films you will need to digitize to repay your purchase.
And at this point, we are not even talking about your salary or any potential store expenses.
Unless you are working for subsidized institutions, it is not commercially feasible.
I am always skeptical when I see these companies offering this equipment at such prices.
How many entrepreneurs have lost money?
Unless you are working for subsidized institutions, this is not easy feasible.
And at this price, people doing it for pleasure alone must not allow these companies to make enough sales.
Self-manufacturing is the only way forward in my opinion… long live this forum!

1 Like
75

You’d be surprised. Some people do buy them just for their own hobby use. Though going from the previous sub-$5K price-point to what they cost now does narrow that.

Well the equipment cost shouldn’t be the main barrier if you’re delivering a service. There are commercial scanning companies that still use 10+ year-old scanners that produce difficult to grade scans which they then spend hours colour grading, when they could invest in a new scanner and cut down on the post-scan workload for delivery.

That being said, most entrepreneurs think the quality is fantastic, and they would think the same about any other scanner as they’ll always be able to point to something else that’s worse or at the very least give a reason why (“for me the quality is fantastic because the alternative is …”).

76

Now there’s a strange commercial notion.
For me, on the contrary, it’s the place to start.

77

I’m surprised no other manufacturer is producing an all-in-one machine like moviestuff. I don’t think it’s a patent or design/engineerinng issue. Maybe costs or market issue.

78

Okay allow me to illustrate and you may understand where I’m coming from. Alice owns a Lasergraphics ScanStation and has spent USD $200,000 to date on the cost of the scanner. Bob owns a Blackmagic Cintel C-Drive scanner and has spent USD $40,000 to date on the cost of his scanner. Bob says to Alice that she wasted her money because his scanner produces scans that are just as good quality. Alice disagrees, but says that even if quality were the same her scanner produces a deliverable format directly most of the time whereas the Blackmagic scanner only produces .CRI and requires additional workload to produce the same deliverable format for the client, and she says that alone would justify the increased cost for her even if quality were the same.

Charlie chimes in and says that he just gives all his clients the .CRIs and they don’t complain.

Dave gets quotes for a scanning job from Alice, Bob and Charlie and out of the three Alice has the most competitive rate so he goes with Alice.

79

I understand your detailed example. Your analysis is based on a few elements that seem possible to you, but :

  • How many kilometers of 16mm or 35mm film will Alice need to find to digitize to amortize her expenses? Let’s assume 250km (in fact it’s more).
  • Knowing that she has an ultra-fast scanner enabling her to scan around 700m. of 16mm film per day (Alive works very fast and and still has plenty of work to do ).
    That this scanner makes post-processing totally unnecessary (it’s a wonderful scanner).
    She will have to devote more than 13 months to working from Monday to Saturday, without taking vacations or falling ill, before she can pay herself.
    Let’s not forget that if she doesn’t want to hire other employees, she’ll have to answer the phone, do the invoicing, manage compatibility, manage her website and clean her premises.
  • Let’s say Alice plans to amortize her purchase over 5 years. Each year, she’ll have to work 2.5 months for this. You also have to bear in mind that for a machine of this price, which has to run without breakdowns if you don’t want to lose money, the cost of maintenance and any repairs is related to the purchase price.
  • Alice has other expenses: taxes, rent, etc…
  • With this machine, can Alice digitize other, more common film formats, such as 8 or super8, so as to be sure of always having work? Or does she have to buy yet another $40,000 machine?

If you build your own scanner, you’ll be using the same cameras and optics as expensive machines. Paying a lot of money may give you the certainty of better quality, and that may be true, but you’d really have to be able to compare with the same films to be sure.

Only large labs working with TV stations or media libraries can claim to have a genuine business. In this case, the customer can’t be too fussy about the price charged.

80

No offense but if you’re going to bring up the issue of how to make an expensive purchase work for a business, and this is how you’re calculating that, well, this is just 100% the wrong way to do it. For once I agree with Filmkeeper on something. Imagine that.

An expensive scanner is most likely financed, which means your monthly payment on a ScanStation is a few thousand USD per month, depending on interest rates and how much you put down up front. Or it could be leased through a third party over several years, which is often cheaper (month to month) than a straight loan. The equipment also depreciates rapidly, so depending on where you are this may factor in as well as far as your taxes go. The point is, you don’t pay off the scanner before you pay yourself. Nobody would be able to run any kind of business that involves expensive equipment if that’s how they did it.

And I’m speaking from experience, as the owner of a Lasergraphics Scanstation that cost us about $240k over the past 10 years, including various upgrades, etc. I’ve been paid since day 1 and have two employees who always get paid. Our scanner doesn’t need to run 6 days per week, all day long and we’re doing just fine. In fact, I’d say we’re actually scanning on it maybe 1/2 to 2/3 of our time in the office. The rest is doing other stuff like color correction, restoration, film prep and cleaning, etc.

Also, we don’t ever run the ScanStation at 60fps. Most of what we do is at 7.5fps because it’s two-flash HDR at high res, and that runs fairly slowly. Ours scans 8mm, 9.5mm, 16mm, S16, 17.5mm, 28mm, 2/3/4perf 35mm, with sound heads for 8/S8/16/35 Optical and 8/S8/16mm magnetic. So it’s all done on one machine. We pay annual support fees, and this more expensive machine is built like you’d expect - in 10 years we’ve had one hardware failure and it was relatively minor, fixed within a week, and didn’t stop us from working (it was a problem with one of the audio track readers which we don’t use all the time anyway). It’s a tank.

81

Don’t worry, I’m not offended by your comments, we’re simply exchanging our points of view.
On the other hand, I’m very surprised that you’ve taken what I’ve said so literally.
only confirms point by point what I said, which is 100% true.

My examples showed what a buyer, you in fact, would have to spend in terms of working time to to pay for his equipment. It doesn’t matter whether you’re repaying a bank loan or leasing over a long period, the problem is the same.

At the end of the month, you’ll be paying a few thousand dollars a month for your scanner, plus interest owed to your bank. I could summarize this by saying that you have to scan “X” kilometers of film per month, just to pay back your bank.

Of course, you couldn’t work for a year without a salary… is more than obvious.

For me, it’s essential to amortize equipment, firstly because in my country, no bank would agree to lend money for an industrial machine over 10 years.

Secondly, bank interest is always higher than the possible tax deductions, and the tax amortization period for machinery is 5 years (again in my case).

Now, the financial health of a company depends above all on the volume of work and what your customers are willing to pay for your services.

You talk about your experience in running your business, I could also tell you about mine in financial management.

Best regards.

82

There’s certainly a place, even in professional settings, for a DIY scanner. But it’s not only about quality. 80-90% of the cost to service delivery is: rent + labour/wages/employee time. One $70,000 Lasergraphics Archivist will do the work of six Retroscans, which will save you $150,000 or more in labour over two years.

Same thing with a DCS Xena. It costs less than half what a full LaerGraphics costs and you can buy the same 6.5K Sony Emergent camera for it, but there’s more work involved to use it to make the same deliverable scans.

An existing film buisness will amortize it over 2-3 years.