Scanning Workflow

In our case, after we created the excel sheets for the 35mm film we emailed them to our scanning house - Modern Video Film in LA. On the excel sheet I had everything sorted by reel number so I was able to send them only the 35mm stuff. They input all the data into the machine and starting loading the reels. There were thousands of scans, but to walk you through the process for a given shot:

The scanner asks for a certain camera roll - say 101. The scanner then reads the start KN and rolls to that number by reading the edgecode on the film. The scanning begins and lasts for the appropriate duration based on the end KN. After the scan is complete, the Cineon file is stamped with the metadata we've been discussing: Camera Roll, Tape Name, Source TC24 Start/End, Keynumber Start/End and Master Start TC24 Start/End. After all the scanning is complete, a hard drive will all the files is sent to the conforming facility, in our case Digital Jungle in Burbank. The conforming house uses the .EDL from the Avid to line up all the scans - all of which popped right into place. To learn about how to make the .EDL properly read the next post.

In terms of scanning the 65mm, 15 perf it was not so automated or easy. There are only a few machines that scan negative that large, and those that do can't embed metadata or read edgecodes. So, long story short, for the smaller amount of 65mm film that needed to be scanned, all the edgecodes needed to be translated to feet/frames and all the metadata needed to be entered manually. With all the human intervention we ended up needing to re-scan certain shots. Luckily scanning 65mm is not something that is very common, but the good news is that the Avid will keep accurate track of all the edgecodes for this format.