The Pixel PERCEPTION FILM RESTORATION & PRESERVATION SCANNER:

GENERAL INFORMATION:

This custom designed Film Scanner was created specifically with the Archival & Restoration Community in mind. Unlike typical scanners, all design constraints were weighted toward quality and safety, rather than the speed of image captures or film transport. The Pixel PERCEPTION FILM RESTORATION SCANNER has a unique set of features and capabilities that set it apart from virtually all other commercially available Motion Picture Film Scanners, including those that offer so-called ‘Archival Packages’. This system combines the ‘Best Of Both Worlds’, drawing upon time proven analogue Optical Bench and Optical Printer technologies, which are then digitally supplanted and extended to achieve the highest quality digital captures from archival film elements.

SCANNER OPTO-MECHANICAL CONFIGURATION:

The CCD camera is permanently mounted at one end of the optical positioning track for maximum stability, and isolation from mechanical vibration. The lens table is used to control image sizing and position. The projector system table is then used for critical focus and final image sizing. Optical, rather than Digital Enlargements and Reductions, including extremes of these two options are easily accomplished with this system. Further film safety is engineered into the film transport system via the implementation of a horizontal film transport, as opposed to the traditional OXBERRY vertical orientation. This configuration greatly reduces a variety of load forces on the film, which results in greater film element safety.

STEPPER MOTOR MOTION-CONTROL SYSTEM:

All imaging components of the system are positioned using microstepper motion control. The software's open design enables the rapid creation of custom commands and integration with external DOS machine control programs, which greatly extends the command set. This allows virtually unlimited customization of the machine control software to meet changing, or evolving, client and operator needs. Combined with the precision mechanical apparatus, this system offers exceptionally fine micro positioning of the main imaging components, offering extremely flexible solutions for adding additional features or procedural processes. The integral Motion Control Positioning software allows the operator to save, and recall, a precise ‘snapshot’ of all component positions. This allows for rapid reconfiguration of the lens-board and projection systems. This also allows for the creation of position presets to move the components to the proper coordinates for a given format. This feature adds greatly to the speed of reconfiguration of various scanning formats.

THE PIN REGISTERED FILM PROJECTION SYSTEM: The Pixel PERCEPTION Scanner features an OXBERRY based Film Projection system. Although highly modified and modernized, the heart of the projector system is based on the industry standard, and century proven, OXBERRY pin-registration film movement and shuttle technologies. A wide variety of pin-registered film movements, and transport sprockets, augment the capabilities of this machine. A small sampling is shown above. Included are specially manufactured movements that are configured with shrunken and/or offset pins used in conjunction with modified interchangeable transport sprockets. These are used to safely transport shrunken film that has variations in perf to perf pitch, and/or irregular ‘shrunken’ perforation dimensions. VISTAVISION 8 PERFORATION 35mm SCANNING: This system is very well suited to scanning any format that fits into the 8- perforation aperture and a wide variety of both 2 and 3 pin movements are available, in Positive and Negative Pin configurations.

(8-perforation Liquid gate scanning is also available).

FILM TAKEUP AND TENSION CONTROL SYSTEM: The traditional OXBERRY Film Takeup and Tensioning system has been replaced by a significantly more sophisticated design. An innovative combination of viscous damped rollers and ‘tunable’ spring balanced tension transport roller assemblies, shuttles film with a minimum of axial tension, or ‘Poisson effect’, which eliminates the usual film

strains encountered during the startup and stopping of film transport. This takes place during slewing as well as during frame-by-frame advancing during the course of actual scanning. The film Take-up Motor System uses an improved version of the traditional OXBERRY pulley and shock-absorbing drive band technology that allows for precisely tuning the torque cushioning during film startup and completely eliminates the need for clutching or braking mechanisms common with servo/stepper takeup designs.. FILM PLATTER CAPACITY: Film platter capacity has also been increased, to handle oversized rolls up to 2500 feet in length (3000 feet on Estar polyester based stocks).

The Take-up tension and Back-tension intensities are individually set, and are reversed gently when the film transport is reversed; insuring that minimal film stresses, smooth winding, and appropriate roll wrapping tensions are always maintained.

MULTI FILM WIND FUNCTIONALITY: Special switching circuitry allows the operator to set the direction for each platter allowing for any ‘A’ or ‘B’ wind orientations and transport direction of film scan elements. This is especially useful when scanning 16mm single perf stocks, and for reversed or inverted image elements made with specialty lenses or footage from cameras such as high-speed prism or reverse wind animation cameras. PROJECTOR FILM TRANSPORT SYSTEM: The Projector transport is stepper motor driven. This allows for extremely smooth acceleration and deceleration of the film, and insures that the film is absolutely stationary on the registration pins, prior to initiating the exposure cycle. This Scanner shuttles fragile and damaged archival elements at a relatively slower speed than traditional scanners to further minimize any strain due to sudden tension or direction changes. These accelerations and velocities are also easily tuned to match the characteristics of specific film elements. This insures that all film is gently treated, perforations are unstressed, and that vintage splices are not subjected to the high stresses associated with most other machines used for motion picture scanning. INTEGER ‘SKIP’ AND ‘STEP’ FRAME RATIO SCANNING: Integer ‘skip’ and ‘step’ frame ratio imaging is included in the software features. This allows for VistaVision scanning, and also offers the option to scan sections using skip-frame (Scan every nth frame only) and step-frame (scan whatever frame nth number of times).

LIQUID GATE and SOFTWARE DIRT REMOVAL TECHNOLOGIES: The Oxberry liquid gate is an Academy Award-winning pin-registered film movement that submerses the film frame in an optically clear liquid during the imaging process. The liquid, contained between optically flat, clear water-white glass windows, is constantly circulated with a pump and vacuum system. This liquid has the unique characteristic of a comparable index of refraction to that of the film base. Film immersed in the liquid has its base scratches, ‘digs’ and other substrate imperfections filled in during the period of imaging, making the imperfections invisible to the camera. All base scratches and certain types of emulsion side scratches are thereby eliminated as the film image is being scanned.

This system uses OXBERRY liquid gate technology. A modified vacuum and fluid pumping system is used to properly support this process with the projector in the horizontal orientation. At normal operating speeds the higher vacuum capacity, in conjunction with the projector airflow system, insures that film emerges virtually dry from the movement. Film is never ‘wound wet’ at the take-up platter.

LIQUID GATE PROCESS TECHNICAL DESCRIPTION: Liquid Gate technology hides scratches and defects that have not intruded into the color layers from being reproduced when the film original is scanned. Scratched film causes the light rays to scatter creating variations in image density under specular illumination (Fig. 1). The scattering effect of a scratch due to the difference in refractive index of air and film is shown in the drawing. If one fills the scratch with a material that has the same refractive index as the film, then the scratch will not show.

In liquid gate scanning, the film moves through a liquid-filled glass envelope mounted in the film registration movement (Fig. 2) at time of exposure, filling in any scratches and preventing refracted light from reproducing them in the digitally captured image. This provides universal density transmission across the entire scanned image area. POSITIVE PRESSURE IONIZED AIR SYSTEM: Another special feature of this system is the sealed film projector. This system incorporates a Positive Air Flow system that fills the film chamber with electrostatically ionized air as part of a triad of dirt, dust and particle removal processes. The high voltage negative ion generator and air pump provide both air purification and particle removal from the film by changing the electrical charge of dust particles. This causes particles to lose their static charge and eliminates their ability to adhere to the surface of the film, prior to reaching the scanning aperture. A HEPA filter at the air intake port keeps dust from being introduced into the system and a foam filter at the exit port eliminates reintroduction of accumulated dust into the scanning environment. No Ozone is generated by the ionization system. This insures that no chemical changes or degradations are added to the film emulsion or its substrate, which might otherwise lead to film discoloration, fading or damage to the film base itself.

PARTICLE TRANSFER ROLLERS: The dirt removal process is enhanced with numerous Particle Transfer Rollers and a proprietary integrated software based DRS system. When these systems are used in conjunction with the Liquid Gate technology, the result is extensive dust and scratch removal at the point of scanning. The software also allows for the creation and retention of an additional alpha channel dirt & scratch map that can be used by external DRS technologies such as MTI, etc. for even greater image correction flexibility. IMAGE REPRODUCTION OPTICS:

The Imaging Lens is one of the finest lenses ever manufactured by Nikon. This The Copy Lens is a 14 element, 6 group, multicoated 150mm f/2.8 Printing-Nikkor lens that was specifically designed for 1:1 copying of motion picture film stocks. The lens has a legendary reputation. it has the highest resolution and contrast of any lens in its class. This model of Printing-Nikkor lens fully maintains original image fidelity of motion picture film.

The actual lens used in this system is the last generation of the 150mm Printing-Nikkor. This versions resolution was increased from 200 line pair per mm to 240 in the center (1/1X) of the image, and from 150 line pair per mm to 180 at the edges.

The ‘Image Circle’ of this lens is 88mm, roughly 3.45 inches, in diameter allowing optimum reproduction of all 35mm formats, including 8-perforation VistaVision, and is also sufficient for scanning 65/70mm elements without edge vignetting.

Nikon specifications for this lens are 0.0000000000% Vignetting, and Distortion of 0.0000% when focused at 1:1, at f/4.0 aperture. This lens was selected from a dozen of the same batch. All were tested on an optical bench to determine the optimum lens for this machine.

This lens is truly apochromatic. This Lens virtually eliminates chromatic aberration, which is specified at 0.0% in the ‘visual’ range of 400 to 800 nanometers. It has also been designed to virtually eliminate all optical aberrations, such as spherical aberration, which for this lens is specified at 0.00001 %.

IMAGE SIZING and POSITIONING FLEXIBILITY: Image Sizing and Positioning are highly accurate, and accomplished entirely through optics, without any digital manipulation, or transformations, which could add averaging or other digital artifacts. A Motion Control OXBERRY Lens-board offers precise control of the lens X-axis and Y-axis positions for exact image positioning. ‘AAAO’, or ‘Academy Aperture Area Only’, scanned images can easily be created, via optical repositioning, and exported at full 2k, 3k or 4k widths for maximum image resolution. This is especially useful when correcting misregistered colour records or for post scanning software mesh corrections of intra frame distortions of individual colour layers.

Additionally, this system allows for extreme enlargements, reductions and precision, customizable extractions from any format supported. This feature allows for very high accuracy 1:1 capture of frames. After adequate testing, this feature offers the ability to correct for some degree of Colour Separation master X, Y and Z dimensional shrinkage or misregistration during initial scanning, although this process is best accomplished as a post-scanning process. The focus system uses a 10:1 combined gear ratio, achieved by a combination of gear reduction pulley and belt drive with a 5:1 transmission at the stepper motor. This results in extremely precise image focusing. The scanner application tools digitally output visual and graphical focus data in conjunction with the operator visually verifying grain focus while rapidly firing the camera and illumination system for near-realtime focusing at an extreme magnification display size. Scaling software is also included to allow for a variety of 1:1 native, upsample and downsample scaled images using rapid and intelligent software kernels and algorithms. EXTRACTIONS, 3K 1:1, OVERSAMPLED TO 2K, OR SCALED TO 4K: The most common operation of the scanner involves scanning a full-aperture 35mm 4 perforation frame to machine-native raw images at SMPTE spec 3k (3072 x 2304) and then internally scaling the final output image up to of 4k (4096 x 3072), or down to 2k (2048 x 1536). 2.35:1 or 2.40:1 anamorphic extractions, ‘Common-Top’ or ‘Common-Centre’, can easily be made from 3 or 4 perforation 35mm elements and from Super-16mm elements of sufficient image quality. These optical extractions can be exported as spherical (Flat) 2048 x 872, etc. or digitally non-proportionally scaled anamorphically (Squeezed) at the point of scanning.

THE ‘TUNED-PULSE’ LED ILLUMINATION SYSTEM:

The Pixel PERCEPTION proprietary ‘Tuned-Pulse’ LED Lamphouse allows for greater exposure consistency over incandescent illumination devices, without the need for a feedback loop and circuitry to attenuate the lamp. The Light Emitting Diodes were custom manufactured for this device. They were designed to match the narrow band characteristics, and specific wavelengths, of traditional optical systems using Wratten Gel or Corning Glass colour separation filters. This creates scans with less colour crossover, greater colour purity and greater ease in restoration of original colour values. The Integrating Sphere LED Lamp system covers formats from 8mm to 65/70mm, using an extremely flat field of illumination from a specially textured target designed to slightly diffuse light rays to help de-emphasize film grain in the final scanned images. The Lamphouse can also be rotated 90 degrees to cover VistaVision, 65mm / 70mm or IMAX formats. The LED illumination system also creates no heat at the scanning aperture which makes it ideal for scanning heat sensitive elements, including Nitrate based vintage stocks. The main advantage of this cold illumination technology is that it virtually eliminates film ‘popping’ in the aperture - intra-frame distortions including minute changes in focus and size that are often present in incandescent illumination systems. This is extremely important when scanning colour separation masters for re-registration during digital recombining. This feature also eliminates the risk of increasing fading on marginal, or already faded, scanning elements. MULTI EXPOSURE MODE FOR HIGH DYNAMIC RANGE ELEMENTS: This exposure mode captures separate low and high density passes by exposing the film multiple times, at multiple offset LED exposures for each colour channel exposed. This software feature combines the successive exposures to capture the full, or extended, dynamic range and to maximize the signal-to-noise ratio in the final output image. This system is currently under development and variations using as many as four separate exposures are being investigated. Trials using a wide variety of data merging algorithms are also currently in progress.

THE CCD ARRAY CAPTURE CAMERA SYSTEM:

The overall system was mechanically designed with an easily interchangeable camera mount which allows for adding virtually any CCD array capture camera to be mounted for experimental testing and/or use. The current image capture camera is an Atmel-Thompson Camelia High Dynamic Range 12-bit Linear Monochrome CCD Array Camera. This CCD camera has an Image Format of 35.0 mm (V) x 23.0 mm (H) and Pixel Geometry of 10 µm x 10 µm, with an aperture ratio of 100%. This High Sensitivity Full Frame CCD Sensor very closely approximates a 1:1 size ratio with 35mm motion picture film, to maximize the efficiencies of the Optical system characteristics.

This camera features a 63 dB Signal to Noise Ratio that produces images with very low digital noise. Combined CCD Defect mapping, Darkfield Balance Mapping and Flatfield Correction Mapping, insures a pristine and non-artifacted image capture. A 12-bit to 12-bit LUT (Look Up Table) applied at the output of the digital frame grabber provides excellent colour fidelity in either Linear or Logarithmic Colourspaces. This camera has precise R.O.I. (‘Region of Interest’) settings, which allow exact sizing of exported optical extractions. Tri-colour (successive individual RED, GREEN and BLUE) exposures are made of each colour layer and are then combined in software as full colour images for export. This mimics the colour separation process digitally, and also allows for correct wavelength exposures of existing Colour Separation Masters. In 3 shot the LUT and exposure times can be programmed separately for the red, green and blue color. Scan elements that are monochromatic can be imaged in single colour illumination mode, using any of the three colours desired. Green is most often used due to its greater luminosity. The final image is always monochromatic, but the choice of illumination colour can be used to alter or enhance the contrast range of certain film stocks.

CAMERA CHILLING FOR MAXIMUM STABILITY and CONSISTANTCY: The CCD Camera is further controlled by external solid state Peltier Junction Thermoelectric Cooler, which greatly increases the stability and consistency of image deviation parameters. CUSTOM LUT CREATION TOOLS: Proprietary LUT creation and modification tools insure that all information from the original scan element is captured and stored digitally. These tools allow for capture of the maximum colour information from all elements and specialized colour corrections for restoration of lost or faded colour information. ADDITIONAL POST SCAN IMAGE PROCESING SOLUTIONS: When combined with the post-scan image processing software, innovative colour reconstructions, as well as hybrid or synthetic colour layers can be created.

INTEGRAL SOFTWARE APPLICATION and OPERATOR INTERFACE:

The scanner machine control, image acquisition and processing software are all proprietary. The software package offers a myriad of feature combinations and flexibilities not found in other systems. The software application, which is constantly evolving, continues to bring greater speed, flexibility and functionality to the system. The current version of the software allows many previously ‘post-scan’ processes to be performed at the point of scanning, to greatly reduce post scanning workflow and downstream processing costs. Scanned images can be directly created in the following formats: 12-bit .J12, 10-bit log .CIN, 10-bit log .DPX, and 8-bit or 16-bit linear .TIF files. During post scan image-processing, images can be converted to virtually any formats including, but not limited to; 10-bit log or linear .SGI, 8-bit or 16-bit .PSD, 8-bit .JPG, 8-bit .TGA, JPEG 2000, and many more.

(Copyright 2001 – 2011) Pixel PERCEPTION / C. Dusendschon All Rights Reserved