3 ms·

They “hold up” just fine to higher-res scans. Perhaps won’t reveal more detail, but there is no real issue in general with scanning them at higher resolution.

dylan604 4y ago
Except the grain becomes the size of your face, but yeah, other than that, nothing wrong with it =) Seriously, it depends on the method of scanning. There's so many people that do 8mm projection to a camera rather than scanning. It is the most affordable in transfer prices, but affords the least flexibility. Maybe projecting to a camera recording in a RAW format might up that flexibility, but who's going to do that? Film chains like a Spirit would have a limit on how much it could blow up the image before becoming a digital scale. Some of the larger archival scanners that offer features like triple flash scans have a scanner that also has a certain resolution where the small size of the 8mm frame would again need digital scaling to fill frame. 16mm gates allow for compensation of that frame size, but I've never even heard of an 8mm gate for the higher end scanning equipment. This has always been the limitations as I've understood them. Plus, the grain does get much more pronounced with the higher res scanning, so I was only partially joking at the start. Granted, it has been about 10 years since I was personally heavy into handling film, so maybe something has been released? What are you familiar with that allows "no real issue" with higher res scanning?
- vanderZwan 4y ago
  Starting with a higher-res scan and then resizing to a smaller resolution might still result in better quality. I'm not sure if this is a fair comparison, but years ago a DVD review site took the Blu-Ray release of Lord of the Rings, ripped and processed it to DVD size, and compared the output to the original DVDs (which used to be considered one of the best quality DVD releases when they came out). The quality difference was huge.
  - dylan604 4y ago
    Starting larger than the target delivery has always been a known thing. Hell, they used to shoot 35mm for SD. Down scaling in and of itself is a way of reducing noise, as the noise averages out in the scaling process. Of course an HD image scaled down to an SD will look better than a DVD compressed from an SD source. Even if the SD was from a DigiBeta master, an HD captured from a HDCamSR or straight from a digital file format will just have so much more detail and information. The bit depths alone in HD sources can make a difference. The HD format allows for so much more information. Why this is surprising is the real surprise to me. Not from you as much as the people attempting the actual test. Sounds like something the readers of doom9 might have done for the clout.
    - vanderZwan 4y ago
      We don't necessarily know what the original digital transfer method + processing pipeline was for the DVDs. Comparing them to the Blu-Ray releases lets us make better informed guesses.

dylan604 4y ago

Except the grain becomes the size of your face, but yeah, other than that, nothing wrong with it =) Seriously, it depends on the method of scanning. There's so many people that do 8mm projection to a camera rather than scanning. It is the most affordable in transfer prices, but affords the least flexibility. Maybe projecting to a camera recording in a RAW format might up that flexibility, but who's going to do that? Film chains like a Spirit would have a limit on how much it could blow up the image before becoming a digital scale. Some of the larger archival scanners that offer features like triple flash scans have a scanner that also has a certain resolution where the small size of the 8mm frame would again need digital scaling to fill frame. 16mm gates allow for compensation of that frame size, but I've never even heard of an 8mm gate for the higher end scanning equipment. This has always been the limitations as I've understood them. Plus, the grain does get much more pronounced with the higher res scanning, so I was only partially joking at the start. Granted, it has been about 10 years since I was personally heavy into handling film, so maybe something has been released? What are you familiar with that allows "no real issue" with higher res scanning?

vanderZwan 4y ago
Starting with a higher-res scan and then resizing to a smaller resolution might still result in better quality. I'm not sure if this is a fair comparison, but years ago a DVD review site took the Blu-Ray release of Lord of the Rings, ripped and processed it to DVD size, and compared the output to the original DVDs (which used to be considered one of the best quality DVD releases when they came out). The quality difference was huge.
- dylan604 4y ago
  Starting larger than the target delivery has always been a known thing. Hell, they used to shoot 35mm for SD. Down scaling in and of itself is a way of reducing noise, as the noise averages out in the scaling process. Of course an HD image scaled down to an SD will look better than a DVD compressed from an SD source. Even if the SD was from a DigiBeta master, an HD captured from a HDCamSR or straight from a digital file format will just have so much more detail and information. The bit depths alone in HD sources can make a difference. The HD format allows for so much more information. Why this is surprising is the real surprise to me. Not from you as much as the people attempting the actual test. Sounds like something the readers of doom9 might have done for the clout.
  - vanderZwan 4y ago
    We don't necessarily know what the original digital transfer method + processing pipeline was for the DVDs. Comparing them to the Blu-Ray releases lets us make better informed guesses.