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16mm b&w silent film to ProRes (HQ) advice please
Using an old Bolex camera (three lens turret), I shot 16mm b&w silent film in the 70s and 80s. There’s one 10″ reel in particular I’d like to transfer to digital and re-edit from my cutting copy, preferably in ProRes 4:2:2 (HQ) to get good quality. If I remember correctly, this may be 16fps because I seem to recall requiring 24 feet per minute when I was estimating how much film I’d need. My very old 16mm film projector hasn’t worked for years so I can’t verify what I have and it’s hard to remember that far back but I’m thinking it must be silent at 16 fps because I never recorded any sound for these shots! If it was sound film I understand it would be 24 fps.
If it is 16 fps and a film transfer service transferred it to ProRes HQ, would it be transferred as 16 fps or would they bump it to 24 fps? If transferred at 16 fps, can I use FCP X to retime it to 24 fps and get anything decent out of the process?
Or should I just keep it as 16 fps in ProRes HQ so all motion will be true and the image quality of each frame will be best? Thanks for any advice!
Rick Lang
iMac 27” 2.8GHz i7 16GB
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2 Replies
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The telecine op won’t know what frame rate it was likely shot in until he spools it up and takes a look.
Just tell them to xfer @23.98fps and give you a 23.98 ProRes HQ file. That way each frame on film will have it’s own frame in the QT file…and you can play with it on your computer to get what you want later. Make sense?
If they playback at 16fps and record out a 23.98 or 29.97 file for you, there won’t be a 1:1 relationship between frames from the film and frames in the file. This would be bad if you later realize later when you get the file back that it wasn’t 16fps after all. Just ask for “one film frame to each QT frame”. That will get you what you need.
Also request a flat pass, so the colorist does not clip any backs or whites. With a 10bit ProResHQ file, you’ll be able to correct it yourself without inducing any bad looking artifacts.
Nate Weaver
Director/D.P., Los Angeles
https://www.nateweaver.net -
[Nate Weaver] “If they playback at 16fps and record out a 23.98 or 29.97 file for you, there won’t be a 1:1 relationship between frames from the film and frames in the file. This would be bad if you later realize later when you get the file back that it wasn’t 16fps after all. Just ask for “one film frame to each QT frame”. That will get you what you need.
Also request a flat pass, so the colorist does not clip any backs or whites. With a 10bit ProResHQ file, you’ll be able to correct it yourself without inducing any bad looking artifacts.”
This makes sense; I just didn’t know what to say to them but one film frame to each ProRes HQ frame does the trick and thanks for the hint about using a flat film log LUT rather than having them default to Rec.709 etc. I hope it’s appropriate for me to want to use 10-bit ProRes 4:2:2 HQ even though the film is black & white since I want to get a filmic look to the final video.
Should be fun to play with it. Might even try to colour some portions but don’t know how to go about adding colour where none exists. Nate (or anyone) care to point me in the right direction for colouring a b&w video? Thanks for all your help.
Rick Lang
iMac 27” 2.8GHz i7 16GB
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