[AV Media Matters] Tape to Film

[Jim Lindner <jim@vidipax.com>]

I wanted to get to this earlier but have been a bit swamped. There are
several companies that provide tape to film transfer services. All of
them concentrate on providing this service for theatrical distribution
purposes. Several films have recently been shot on DV and transferred to
film with good results. Two companies come to mind - one is Swiss
Effects (In Switzerland) and the other is 4MC which is in LA. 4MC is a
media conglomerate these days, but one of the companies that they
swallowed a long time ago was Image Transform which was known for this
type of work. They used to use an old 3m beam recorder that they had
heavily modified, and the results were better then the norm. I was very
impressed with some work I saw of Swiss Effects and I know some of the
people there and I believe that they are doing some good work.There are
other companies too that do different levels of work - here is a list of
names and telephone numbers in no particular order. I know people in
virtually all of these companies, so I am not making a particular
recommendation - and of course the results vary very considerably
depending on the original. With the original on VHS - I think that in
general one would say that you are starting with the lowest possible
quality and the end result on film will probably not be nearly as good
as if you had a good master.

Tape House Digital Film 212-319-5084
Cineric 212-586-4822
Colorlab 301-770-2128
DuArt 212-757-4580
4 Media 818-840-7000
Magno 212-302-2505
Sony Pictures High Definition Ctr. 310-280-7311
Swiss Effects (nyc number) 212-727-3695

Having given you all this information though - I think that I have to
seriously question whether film is the way to preserve video. This is a
very old arguement and I sort of thought it had been put to rest, but
the answer is that video is video and film is film - they are very
different media types in virtually EVERY way. IF you record video on
film - do NOT think that you are preserving it. You are changing it into
something else quite different - sort of something between film and
video, and the look is totally different then the video was. The whole
idea behind many of these processes is to try to get the video to NOT
look like video, but look like it was shot on film in the first place.
In any event, I think that it is fair to say that even the most ardent
supporter of tape to film will (maybe in a quiet corner) tell you that
while pictures can look very good, they do not look as good as if you
shot film in the first place, and they no longer look like the video
does either.

In the tape to film process - virtually everything that makes video look
like video is changed.  You can start at the frame rate which goes from
30 to 24 - color space is radically different - and the whole color
system is really different - not to mention grain structure and MANY
other aspects that will dramatically change the look.  So while you most
certainly CAN record video to film, please do not confuse that process
with preserving video because you most certainly are not preserving it.

And finally - it is VERY expensive.

Jim Lindner - President
VidiPax - The Magnetic Media and Information Migration Full Services
Company
Telephone 212-563-1999
www.vidipax.com
Moderator of A/V Media Matters@topica.com