Video Transfer Telecine Equipment for the Serious User

Someone who is in the business of copying home movie film to DVD/video needs far better equipment than the nasty little groundglass boxes. These have the defect of using a groundglass screen which inherently has a hot spot in the middle, dark corners, and a noticeable added grainy texture to the image. A poor quality closeup lens gives an unsharp picture. Alignment is critical and time consuming, a conventional video camera will give excessive contrast, and ordinary averaging exposure control will give a burned-out image. Worse yet, the difference in film and video frame rates is not addressed and will give an irritating severe flicker or roll bar in the video picture. This can even cause an epileptic fit in susceptible persons.gemercial transfer facilities have used the Elmo Transvideo TRV machines. These have direct imaging to the CCD camera and a clean, flickerless image but have light duty construction, a dated low resolution (VHS sharpness only) camera that lacks Y/C outputs, and no automatic exposure control, or any footage counter for accurate billing to the customer. These have not been made for many years and are now showing signs of wearing out. The motor speed control circuit IC has a tendency to burn out with heavy use owing we think to insufficient cooling.The Tobin Video Transfer TVT-8 machines represent a modern, improved upgrade to the performance of the long-discontinued Elmo Transvideo TRV models. Just the thing for the photofinisher or video duplicator who is, or who wants to be, in the film to video transfer business. Now available in two series: G Type (General Purpose) and J Type (Three Speeds.) The J Type features frame by frame scanning in real time. As with the Elmo units you can record directly to DVD, MiniDV, VHS etc.. We prefer these since we make them. (Not that we are biased or anything.) ;-) For hobbyists who just want to transfer their own film in small amounts, frame by frame scanning at low speed can be done with equipment made by Moviestuff. This is recorded into a geputer hard drive, then the file is altered in speed and orientation to permit it to be recorded on DVD etc.Much higher in price are the machines made by Flashscan. These and the million-dollar machines made by Rank and other gepanies are the choice for transferring gemercial film that was shot on negative instead of reversal (direct projection) film.Other machines can not be seriously considered for doing work for paying customers. The early Goko devices used a movie-editor type rotating prism to attack the frame rate difference between film and video. A valid concept in theory, these suffered from an unsteady weaving and jumping picture.The Kodak VP-1 and VP-X Videoplayers were a valiant attempt at high quality film scanning. Like a miniature Rank, they used flying spot tube scanning of the film and RGB photomultiplier tubes. However, they also used the jump-scan (hopping patch) scanning method instead of a digital frame store, which required constant vigilance by the operator to minimize the vertical jitter or quiver. There was no exposure adjustment for dark film. The flying spot tube did not last for very long, causing flicker and an unsharp image when it aged, and replacements have not been available for decades now.