Telecine - a brief guide.

[@sheldonspock5566]

Thank you for sharing this. We live in a time in which so much information and knowledge is made available, and for that I'm grateful. Crazy to see how electronics have developped so much since then

[@primozanton6264]

It got worse

[@Valleedbrume]

Also known as a flying spot scanner.Worked on many Ranks.Still have some CRT’s as memorabilia

[@unlokia]

_"Blink your eyes if you're being held against your will, and forced to record this video..."_

[@cemsengul16]

This is why moves were bad all the way till the DVD format. Blu Ray is when they started to scan the negatives. You could say that you have been watching cam rips.

[@SO_DIGITAL]

God, I would love to work on these machines.

[@symonenry7442]

I always wondered what telecine was and now I still have no idea.

[@johnr6168]

+Symon Enry A telecine is used to transfer anything from film into a TV type signal which can then be used for broadcast or just storage. It's the equivalent to having a TV camera watching a film projector, but a telecine will do the job much better.

[@IllusionSector]

Good! Let's bury it and never have to deal with it again.

[@wmbrown6]

The other terminology, used generally in the U.S., was "film chain."

[@shessometimesdoublechocola2454]

Not necessarily, WMBrown. The term "film chain" is typically reserved for the old machines that played film directly to air using a basic lensed-in video camera system that always played the film reel in real time (I'm not sure if these only do real-time capturing or capture more slowly in order to be more precise), and didn't concentrate on high quality, and almost certainly didn't have nearly as many fine-tuning controls as these do. These appear to use a good bit more adjustment technology.

[@ChristopherSobieniak]

Film Chain was a standard in broadcasting for decades. NTSC in particular had to develop a special shutter blade that would stay in sync with it's 30fps in order to run a 24fps film. Unlike PAL territories, the film didn't have to be sped up to match this way,.

[@GeoNeilUK]

I'm sure this man refused me an overdraft in 1998. I wonder if TV stations still use telecine nowadays or if everything if all films shown on TV nowadays have long since been transferred digitally and are played out thus. I would imagine long founded TV stations woud still need all the equipment to play out their own archive. Because it's a BBC Training video, they can't go mention the brand of cleaning detergent. I like how the green afterglow corrector has a white peg and a green sticky label stuck after the fact, I'm assuming this particular telecine machine predates the BBC's adaptation of colour (I think the very earliest colour TV cameras had three sensors one colour sensor for red, one colour sensor for blue, and an old monochrome sensor for both green and luminance)

[@HighlandCall]

Everything will be Digital now: most of the archive will be on something digital (starting in the nineties they began to digitise their archive on DigiBeta and similar formats, while Digital Videotape wouldn't be used for play now its still the most reliable way of archiving something) so if they schedule a repeat of something odd that isn't in their playout systems it'd be as simple as fetching the digital archived source and computerising that. I don't know exactly when telecine would have died out: I'm guessing the early 90s would have been when the cost of broadcast quality tape fell to a point where it was cheaper for the film companies to send everyone videotapes rather than film prints. They still keep the old tapes and films though and if they are restoring something for release they'll tend to go back to the original medium though and that's why they'll keep telecine and old VT equipment handy. At least they did for Doctor Who - the reason was that in the early 2000s they developed a better way of digitising PAL signals from videotape so when they were restoring all of the old Doctor Whos for DVD release they went to the effort to start from the original tape (sometimes even earlier edits if they weren't junked since analogue editing requires a loss of generation for most edits, while digital recreation of those edits doesn't so starting from earlier versions if available is better) and if they had surviving copies of random film inserts they'd restore it from those rather than the worse copies on the original tape. They'll then dub all that back onto Digital Videotape I guess for the archive and then that'd be the source that they'd use if they wanted to broadcast a random episode of Doctor Who for some reason.

[@blackwingvisuals5017]

Its a crying shame NASA didn't keep all their gear so they had the original telemetry data at hand lol Its not like they are short of money! I am presuming that all the latest stuff shot on film is now just wet scanned from the first copy. Its funny how digital is still trying to outdo film all these ears on. Just can't reproduce that look yet. Just been shooting some Kodak 5219 500T in a still camera. Beats the shit outta digital but its an arse pain. This guy not only refused my loan, he also repossessed my house during the last crash!! Good film very enjoyable :)

[@BryanBortz]

I could watch this guy explain anything.

[@iannickCZ]

Whoa, there are so many motherboards like a Quantel had. It may be interesting work as a telecine "operator" or how is this position called.

[@attackdog6824]

Is this a transmission from mars?

[@sheldonspock5566]

So at this time what format was the film transferred to? Quad? Type C? Betacam?

[@mbvideoselection]

Most often? Live straight to air.

[@garethonthetube]

Whatever the current VT format happened to be. By the time this telecine came into operation Quad was obsolescent in the BBC so almost all of the transfers would be to 1" C-format.

[@Deluxeta]

That bloke looks just like C-3PO.

[@IllusionSector]

Well, he's a compatriot of the actor playing it. :-)

[@shessometimesdoublechocola2454]

HD is "just around the corner" in 2014? Hmm, I guess this is really from like... 1998 or so.

[@gctechs]

It's quite obvious that the video was already 10 or 15 years old when uploaded.

[@derrickforeal]

Nope this was released in 1993

[@johneygd]

Interesting process but am against 4K remastering that way as it simply just stretches the image, what they should do is smmothing out all jaggyness caused by upscaling the sd definition signal.

[@moow950]

Can it scan to 4K/8K ?

[@Saprophitic]

SD only

[@moow950]

Phil S I suppose they have now replaced them with new 4K/8K scanners then? SD is not acceptable anymore.

[@Saprophitic]

@@moow950 35mm film has at least the resolution of HD or 2K video, but probably not as much as a static 4K image. Blackmagic are keen to sell you their Cintel / Blackmagic film scanner by telling you that all your archive 35mm film has 4K resolution, but although it's probably greater than 2K, expecting a pristine 4K image is maybe a bit optimistic. I very much doubt 8K scanning would yield any benefits at all.

[@JTtheNinja]

Is there any more of this? What's it from? []

[@GeoNeilUK]

Looks like it's taken from a collection of BBC Training videos, I'm assuming this is the channel of someone once employed (and most certainly trained) by the BBC. I have to say, it's pretty awesome of them to share these videos!

[@greenman1411]

Goodness! I didn't think they still used flying-spot at the BBC.

[@SuperJasonGold]

holly shit it's my dad!

[@abrucephotography]

Fantastic,

[@codebeat4192]

He is a good employee, i suppose.

[@ernestschultz5065]

Very interesting

[@DUST35]

WOW!

[@gerryroberts662]

i wish ichad these type of machines i know how toread film, my films are crumbleing to dust, they are so precious, but $244. is a bit much,,

[@gabydemirjian]

muy bueno =)

[@evergriven7402]

wow Looks expensive !

[@JohnnyMotel99]

It was! A full set up with control panel would have been £250k and that was s/h in 2000.