3 ms·

I can totally relate to this. While not a mainframe, I had to move and reassemble and put in working order a film telecine recently. It's a huge beast of a mach

I can totally relate to this. While not a mainframe, I had to move and reassemble and put in working order a film telecine recently. It's a huge beast of a machine that consumes 5kW's and weighs a ton or more and comes with several computers and consoles. Fun part was there's no support for it. Company went dead a few years back. It was a ton of fun though, figuring all out from ye olde pdfs and hooking up a computer with putty to various RS-232 terminal outputs to see what's going on. I got it in proper and working condition in the end and it works amazingly well and is now in production: http://i.imgur.com/Euv3vrr.jpg http://i.imgur.com/Euv3vrr.jpg I even got to learn about HIPPI while at it. I wish I had more adventures like that.

jamesfmilne 11y ago
Cool, years ago I spent many months going back & forth to Weiterstadt, working on Spirit DataCines and Spirit 2K/4K machines, adding support for controlling them via Baselight. There's some considerable engineering in those machines. Though you could replace almost all the boards with one or two FPGAs these days What are you using it with? BONES?
- Keyframe 11y ago
  When I first opened up the racks in the machine and all of those industrial electronics boards... Initially I thought I was way over my head. It took a bit of time, but now it's all clear and now I see the ingenuity of it. It's a very elegant machine and works like a charm. I had to replace a few of the things, installed new lamps, cleaned up everything and it's as good as new! I have two signals coming out. I have a HD 1080p link coming from its HD serializers (actually four outputs via two serializers) which I laid out to several inputs (Tricaster, custom built PC with 10-bit input, monitors, etc..). For when I need full 2K/10-bit, machine works at 6fps, not realtime. Currently, machine has a HIPPI output and with that I have limited options. Well, one option to be specific. An SGI machine with HIPPI card and Phantom Transfer Engine on it which then transfers DPX files to a SAN. I would like BONES, or anything else for that matter, but that would require me to get a GSN instead of HIPPI and BONES, of course. I'm still looking for options out there to see if there are any. Preferably if there's an option for PC based solution and HIPPI. If not, GSN/BONES is what I'm considering. Price of that is a bit steep though (around $30k I think), but it's still an option that is considered.
  - OverlordXenu 11y ago
    Is it… just for you? Can you just digitize your own 35mm film?
    - Keyframe 11y ago
      It's not for me only, of course! It's now in a fleet of telecines.
  - mrpippy 11y ago
    Yay an SGI in production! Octane?
    - Keyframe 11y ago
      Indeed, an Octane 2!
- lcrs 11y ago
  I was always curious how much use that Spirit support saw - it must have been a ton of work, but it seemed like it was added just at the precise moment when everyone switched from running the film in real time during a session to scanning to DPXs beforehand!
  - jamesfmilne 11y ago
    We sold quite a few machines on the back of it, although those customers probably only got a couple of years use of it before their clients stopped shooting film. Then most folk in London got rid of their Spirits. Now this year half the big tent-pole movies are shooting 35mm film again!
lcrs 11y ago
I occasionally see Spirit 2k's destined for the dump and wonder what would be entailed in running one. Since they were a little notorious for poor frame-to-frame registration I wonder if that will get worse as the mechanics age. It's a strange time for telecines, with so many companies having disappeared but newer, much more compact designs appearing, for archival scanning presumably. If you haven't discovered it already the archives of the TiG mailing list are a great resource for TK stuff - e.g. this thread about the new Blackmagic/Digital Vision/MWA/Kinetta scanners... http://tig.colorist.org/pipermail/tig/2016-February/thread.html http://tig.colorist.org/pipermail/tig/2016-February/thread.h...
- Keyframe 11y ago
  Most of the Spirits I've seen that are out there on the market are either for the parts or their business went bust. You could get one "relatively" cheap these days though. Pin registration is not what telecine is about. That's where you get scanners and their area sensors vs telecine's linear array. We operate a few telecines (Cintel, MWA, Spirit) and a scanner (Arri), and tbh I've seen that "wobble" only on older telecines like FDL series, also from Philips/Thomson/Grasva.. they've changed quite a few companies in the past :) This particular telecine has a sprocket for film and is rock solid. Telecines are extremely useful, even to these days. There's a difference between scanners and telecine, of course. Telecine's strength is that it's fast. It's realtime and, in case of this machine, it can work all day in shifts and not break a sweat. This is extremely useful if you have a lot of material. Not all of material on film is feature film. There is a ton of material out there on 16mm and 35mm, most from TV stations. This machine can do 35mm, 16mm, optical audio, magnetic audio. All in realtime and gives you 1080p/10bit with sound. Sensor isn't all there in 1080p as it could be, but for most material it's more than fine. 2K is important if you're doing 4:3 material from film since you get 1556 pixels of vertical resolution which is more than 1080. So, in a sense, you get a machine, for relatively cheap, that can be operated all day for all kinds of archival work. There are better machines now, of course. Newer Spirits, Scanity, and you can even retrofit some of the older machines with Xena: http://digitalcinemasystems.net/?page_id=348 http://digitalcinemasystems.net/?page_id=348 There was a lot of talk about Blackmagic's buying of Cintel and their mini telecine. Personally, considering it's Blackmagic and experience I have with their products, I would avoid their stuff in a wide arc. Especially if I would to run it all day long or, god forbid, run a business that relied on their stuff. They are just not reliable, both on product basis and as a company. MWA (https://mwa-nova.com/ https://mwa-nova.com/) has interesting small scanners for 16mm, something which we also have. It's a nice machine, but Datacine/Spirit is on another level hardware-wise/reliability. Kinetta is an interesting approach, and something I've had my eyes on. I would consider that for fragile/sensitive material considering that's what it's all about anyways. Cool thing about modern workflow with film is that hardware is more or less the same. Telecine, 16mm/35mm optical blocks, light filters, scanners, (re)winders, wet gate system, audio heads, Lipsner smith film cleaners.. it's all the same. New things are new light sources (LED vs Xenon - though there's a debate which one is better), camera/sensors, and software. Software replaced a lot of "boxes" around the hardware. If you have a reliable machinery that outputs a good image base then it's all about software. Especially in restoration area. It got a bit competitive in that area over the recent years. Everybody seems to have some sort of restoration software as an offering now. Heck, even I have some of my own software that I wrote a few years back for automating most of the tasks cleaning up images that come through from film.

jamesfmilne 11y ago

Cool, years ago I spent many months going back & forth to Weiterstadt, working on Spirit DataCines and Spirit 2K/4K machines, adding support for controlling them via Baselight. There's some considerable engineering in those machines. Though you could replace almost all the boards with one or two FPGAs these days What are you using it with? BONES?

Keyframe 11y ago
When I first opened up the racks in the machine and all of those industrial electronics boards... Initially I thought I was way over my head. It took a bit of time, but now it's all clear and now I see the ingenuity of it. It's a very elegant machine and works like a charm. I had to replace a few of the things, installed new lamps, cleaned up everything and it's as good as new! I have two signals coming out. I have a HD 1080p link coming from its HD serializers (actually four outputs via two serializers) which I laid out to several inputs (Tricaster, custom built PC with 10-bit input, monitors, etc..). For when I need full 2K/10-bit, machine works at 6fps, not realtime. Currently, machine has a HIPPI output and with that I have limited options. Well, one option to be specific. An SGI machine with HIPPI card and Phantom Transfer Engine on it which then transfers DPX files to a SAN. I would like BONES, or anything else for that matter, but that would require me to get a GSN instead of HIPPI and BONES, of course. I'm still looking for options out there to see if there are any. Preferably if there's an option for PC based solution and HIPPI. If not, GSN/BONES is what I'm considering. Price of that is a bit steep though (around $30k I think), but it's still an option that is considered.
- OverlordXenu 11y ago
  Is it… just for you? Can you just digitize your own 35mm film?
  - Keyframe 11y ago
    It's not for me only, of course! It's now in a fleet of telecines.
- mrpippy 11y ago
  Yay an SGI in production! Octane?
  - Keyframe 11y ago
    Indeed, an Octane 2!
lcrs 11y ago
I was always curious how much use that Spirit support saw - it must have been a ton of work, but it seemed like it was added just at the precise moment when everyone switched from running the film in real time during a session to scanning to DPXs beforehand!
- jamesfmilne 11y ago
  We sold quite a few machines on the back of it, although those customers probably only got a couple of years use of it before their clients stopped shooting film. Then most folk in London got rid of their Spirits. Now this year half the big tent-pole movies are shooting 35mm film again!

lcrs 11y ago

I occasionally see Spirit 2k's destined for the dump and wonder what would be entailed in running one. Since they were a little notorious for poor frame-to-frame registration I wonder if that will get worse as the mechanics age. It's a strange time for telecines, with so many companies having disappeared but newer, much more compact designs appearing, for archival scanning presumably. If you haven't discovered it already the archives of the TiG mailing list are a great resource for TK stuff - e.g. this thread about the new Blackmagic/Digital Vision/MWA/Kinetta scanners... http://tig.colorist.org/pipermail/tig/2016-February/thread.html http://tig.colorist.org/pipermail/tig/2016-February/thread.h...

Keyframe 11y ago
Most of the Spirits I've seen that are out there on the market are either for the parts or their business went bust. You could get one "relatively" cheap these days though. Pin registration is not what telecine is about. That's where you get scanners and their area sensors vs telecine's linear array. We operate a few telecines (Cintel, MWA, Spirit) and a scanner (Arri), and tbh I've seen that "wobble" only on older telecines like FDL series, also from Philips/Thomson/Grasva.. they've changed quite a few companies in the past :) This particular telecine has a sprocket for film and is rock solid. Telecines are extremely useful, even to these days. There's a difference between scanners and telecine, of course. Telecine's strength is that it's fast. It's realtime and, in case of this machine, it can work all day in shifts and not break a sweat. This is extremely useful if you have a lot of material. Not all of material on film is feature film. There is a ton of material out there on 16mm and 35mm, most from TV stations. This machine can do 35mm, 16mm, optical audio, magnetic audio. All in realtime and gives you 1080p/10bit with sound. Sensor isn't all there in 1080p as it could be, but for most material it's more than fine. 2K is important if you're doing 4:3 material from film since you get 1556 pixels of vertical resolution which is more than 1080. So, in a sense, you get a machine, for relatively cheap, that can be operated all day for all kinds of archival work. There are better machines now, of course. Newer Spirits, Scanity, and you can even retrofit some of the older machines with Xena: http://digitalcinemasystems.net/?page_id=348 http://digitalcinemasystems.net/?page_id=348 There was a lot of talk about Blackmagic's buying of Cintel and their mini telecine. Personally, considering it's Blackmagic and experience I have with their products, I would avoid their stuff in a wide arc. Especially if I would to run it all day long or, god forbid, run a business that relied on their stuff. They are just not reliable, both on product basis and as a company. MWA (https://mwa-nova.com/ https://mwa-nova.com/) has interesting small scanners for 16mm, something which we also have. It's a nice machine, but Datacine/Spirit is on another level hardware-wise/reliability. Kinetta is an interesting approach, and something I've had my eyes on. I would consider that for fragile/sensitive material considering that's what it's all about anyways. Cool thing about modern workflow with film is that hardware is more or less the same. Telecine, 16mm/35mm optical blocks, light filters, scanners, (re)winders, wet gate system, audio heads, Lipsner smith film cleaners.. it's all the same. New things are new light sources (LED vs Xenon - though there's a debate which one is better), camera/sensors, and software. Software replaced a lot of "boxes" around the hardware. If you have a reliable machinery that outputs a good image base then it's all about software. Especially in restoration area. It got a bit competitive in that area over the recent years. Everybody seems to have some sort of restoration software as an offering now. Heck, even I have some of my own software that I wrote a few years back for automating most of the tasks cleaning up images that come through from film.