Uncompressed Workflow Retro-Universal

[Tscan]

There have been a lot of debates lately over what you get from a scan vs what you apply to it afterward, or during, depending on your tools. Here's a sample I scanned with the Retro Universal, 1 roll of 50D and 200T super 8 (cut down for the video) scanned in uncompressed mode, with an uncompressed TIFF export. I took the TIFF into Resolve and did a quick color grade (could be better) and rendered an QT MP4 under best. No Neat Video or grain reduction of any kind, Comes out to 2.7GB, so uploaded as is to my Vimeo Plus https://vimeo.com/181114658

[dadu007]

Nice work!
This is the type of workflow I am hopefully working towards.
I'm no expert, but I don't see any compression blocking artifacts from the .mp4 render, except MAYBE at the 54 sec mark (the band of lake water near the top).
Really nice, and a great goal for this beginner to aspire to!

[dadu007]

Two follow-up questions:
- Was it shot at 18 fps?
- What was the render fps specified in Resolve? (I'm more familiar with Sony Vegas)

[Will2]

Looks very good. I agree that little more time in Resolve could be warranted on color, but it looks great.

Next time bring a tripod though!

It's a little hard to determine what is camera shake vs. instability in the camera path or scanner.

It is also really gratifying to see such a good scan comes from the Retro-universal which is at a great price point for regular people.

Do you have an uncompressed/ungraded excerpt that I could ask my colorist to tweak and see what he gets? Just like 30 seconds...PM me if possible.

[RyanH]

Thanks very much for this. The difference between the original 1080 and the Vimeo 1080 version is really shocking. But for 50x the file size it better be!

I'm looking at the uncompressed version and it looks like there is an awful lot of colour noise in the image. Is that just me, or do you notice it too? Is that typical of the sensor?

[milesandjules]

Looks great- love the shot of those underwater logs

[Tscan]

Looks very good. I agree that little more time in Resolve could be warranted on color, but it looks great.

Next time bring a tripod though!

It's a little hard to determine what is camera shake vs. instability in the camera path or scanner.

It is also really gratifying to see such a good scan comes from the Retro-universal which is at a great price point for regular people.

Do you have an uncompressed/ungraded excerpt that I could ask my colorist to tweak and see what he gets? Just like 30 seconds...PM me if possible.

Thanks- All the footage is hand held. Personally i'm not concerned with the scanners registration because i've put it to the test a few times with S16 footage and it does not budge. Skin tones are coming out on the green side, but like I said, the grade can be better if I have the time. Right now, the base inverted scan is pretty red bias, which turns into a tussle between a red or green hue on the finished scan which then needs to be corrected. The only complaint I would have is the RGB software could be a little more effective (un-ganged) and the base color balance on the inverted negative could be a bit cooler. But nothing you can't work with and get sweet results.

[ncollingwood]

I think the uncompressed looks great! I think it's sharper than your previous scan of this you posted on your vimeo. Not sure what all the differences were in your scan/CC methods for that one. For instance, just that main canoe shot looks a lot sharper. I feel like the Retro scans well but that the software overcompensates a bit with the sharpening. And ya gotta get a little more of that green out of the color correction but looks great.

[Tscan]

I think the uncompressed looks great! I think it's sharper than your previous scan of this you posted on your vimeo. Not sure what all the differences were in your scan/CC methods for that one. For instance, just that main canoe shot looks a lot sharper. I feel like the Retro scans well but that the software overcompensates a bit with the sharpening. And ya gotta get a little more of that green out of the color correction but looks great.

Yes, this is a roll from a co-worker camp out last year, I grabbed it out of my tin box at random for an uncompressed test. The old video with the same shots were compressed Jpegs, this is an uncompressed TIFF. I definitely see a difference in sharpness as well. The pipeline was a little different too, the old scan went through Sony Vegas rendered as a Sony MXF Mpeg4, the new scan is a Quiktime Mpeg4 straight from DaVinci. As for sharpening, the Universal has 2 levels of grain reduction to choose from. But according to Roger, the grain reduction only disables the cameras sharpening to a degree. One option is to choose grain reduction and use your own sharpening tools in post, which Roger admits can be better than the camera sharpening tools in most cases.