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Post #1516887

Author
RU.08
Parent topic
Lord of the Rings 35mm (FOTR/TTT/ROTK/FOTREXT released)
Link to post in topic
https://originaltrilogy.com/post/id/1516887/action/topic#1516887
Date created
26-Dec-2022, 7:09 PM

When a film is professionally scanned in 16-bit color as DPX image files, every single frame weighs in at 100 MB. With upwards of 175,000 frames in each film, a complete scan requires about 21 TB of storage (42 TB if you want a backup copy! And then you need at least another 21 TB of space to work on it – over $1000 just in hard drives is therefore required for every film). Having the film cleaned prior to scanning costs another $870 (plus about $75 shipping each way) and then the scanning costs between $2000 and $15,000, depending on where you send it.

Now, I would very much like some information for the scanning process of these films and whether or not they where cleaned up. Cheers!

I don’t know where you’re pulling all those prices from and numbers from, but they’re not accurate anymore (or they at least are not representative of competitive commercial rates and storage options). The price of cleaning varies wildly depending on where you go, and your weirdly specific price of $870 would equate to .054/ft if we’re talking 178 minutes of 35mm 4-perf. I know where to go for a much better rate than that.

Yes if you’re scanning 6K DPX 16-bit it’s over 100 MB per frame (around 125MB per frame I think), but that should not be necessary unless you’re dealing with very badly faded film. Backups should go on LTO-7 or LTO-8 tape (or even LTO-9 now) not on Hard Drives.

Feel free to join my Discord friend.