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Telecine ( or ) is the process of transferring
film A film also called a movie, motion picture, moving picture, picture, photoplay or (slang) flick is a work of visual art that simulates experiences and otherwise communicates ideas, stories, perceptions, feelings, beauty, or atmospher ...
into
video Video is an electronic medium for the recording, copying, playback, broadcasting, and display of moving visual media. Video was first developed for mechanical television systems, which were quickly replaced by cathode-ray tube (CRT) sy ...
and is performed in a
color suite A color suite (also called a color bay, telecine suite, or color correction bay) is the control room for color grading video in a post-production environment. Technology and specifications The video source could be from: a telecine, a video tape re ...
. The term is also used to refer to the equipment used in the
post-production Post-production is part of the process of filmmaking, video production, audio production, and photography. Post-production includes all stages of production occurring after principal photography or recording individual program segments. Th ...
process. Telecine enables a motion picture, captured originally on
film stock Film stock is an analog medium that is used for recording motion pictures or animation. It is recorded on by a movie camera, developed, edited, and projected onto a screen using a movie projector. It is a strip or sheet of transparent ...
, to be viewed with standard video equipment, such as
television set A television set or television receiver, more commonly called the television, TV, TV set, telly, tele, or tube, is a device that combines a tuner, display, and loudspeakers, for the purpose of viewing and hearing television broadcasts, or using ...
s, video cassette recorders (VCR), DVD,
Blu-ray Disc The Blu-ray Disc (BD), often known simply as Blu-ray, is a digital optical disc data storage format. It was invented and developed in 2005 and released on June 20, 2006 worldwide. It is designed to supersede the DVD format, and capable of sto ...
or
computer A computer is a machine that can be programmed to carry out sequences of arithmetic or logical operations ( computation) automatically. Modern digital electronic computers can perform generic sets of operations known as programs. These prog ...
s. Initially, this allowed television broadcasters to produce programs using film, usually 16mm stock, but transmit them in the same format, and quality, as other forms of television production. Furthermore, telecine allows
film producer A film producer is a person who oversees film production. Either employed by a production company or working independently, producers plan and coordinate various aspects of film production, such as selecting the script, coordinating writing, di ...
s,
television producer A television producer is a person who oversees one or more aspects of video production on a television program. Some producers take more of an executive role, in that they conceive new programs and pitch them to the television networks, but upon ...
s and
film distributor A film distributor is responsible for the marketing of a film. The distribution company may be the same with, or different from, the production company. Distribution deals are an important part of financing a film. The distributor may set the ...
s working in the
film industry The film industry or motion picture industry comprises the technological and commercial institutions of filmmaking, i.e., film production companies, film studios, cinematography, animation, film production, screenwriting, pre-production, ...
to release their productions on video and allows producers to use
video production Video production is the process of producing video content for video. It is the equivalent of filmmaking, but with video recorded either as analog signals on videotape, digitally in video tape or as computer files stored on optical discs, hard dri ...
equipment to complete their
filmmaking Filmmaking (film production) is the process by which a motion picture is produced. Filmmaking involves a number of complex and discrete stages, starting with an initial story, idea, or commission. It then continues through screenwriting, cast ...
projects. Within the
film industry The film industry or motion picture industry comprises the technological and commercial institutions of filmmaking, i.e., film production companies, film studios, cinematography, animation, film production, screenwriting, pre-production, ...
, it is also referred to as a TK, because TC is already used to designate timecode. Motion picture film scanners are similar to telecines.


History

With the advent of popular broadcast television, producers realized they needed more than
live television Live television is a television production broadcast in real-time, as events happen, in the present. In a secondary meaning, it may refer to streaming television over the Internet when content or programming is played continuously (not on deman ...
programming. By turning to film-originated material, they would have access to the wealth of films made for the cinema in addition to recorded
television program Television, sometimes shortened to TV, is a telecommunication Media (communication), medium for transmitting moving images and sound. The term can refer to a television set, or the medium of Transmission (telecommunications), television tra ...
ming on film that could be aired at different times. However, the difference in
frame rate Frame rate (expressed in or FPS) is the frequency (rate) at which consecutive images ( frames) are captured or displayed. The term applies equally to film and video cameras, computer graphics, and motion capture systems. Frame rate may also be ...
s between film (generally 24 frames/s) and television (30 or 25 frames/s,
interlaced Interlaced video (also known as interlaced scan) is a technique for doubling the perceived frame rate of a video display without consuming extra bandwidth. The interlaced signal contains two fields of a video frame captured consecutively. This ...
) meant that simply playing a film into a television camera would result in flickering. Originally the
kinescope Kinescope , shortened to kine , also known as telerecording in Britain, is a recording of a television program on motion picture film, directly through a lens focused on the screen of a video monitor. The process was pioneered during the 194 ...
was used to record the image from a television display to film, synchronized to the TV scan rate. This could then be re-played directly into a video camera for re-display. Non-live programming could also be filmed using the same cameras, edited mechanically as normal, and then played back for TV. As the film was run at the same speed as the television, the flickering was eliminated. Various displays, including projectors for these "video rate films",
slide projector A slide projector is an opto-mechanical device for showing photographic slides. 35 mm slide projectors, direct descendants of the larger-format magic lantern, first came into widespread use during the 1950s as a form of occasional hom ...
s and film cameras were often combined into a " film chain", allowing the broadcaster to cue up various forms of media and switch between them by moving a mirror or prism. Color was supported by using a multi-tube video camera, prisms, and filters to separate the original color signal and feed the red, green and blue to individual tubes. However, this still left film shot at cinema
frame rate Frame rate (expressed in or FPS) is the frequency (rate) at which consecutive images ( frames) are captured or displayed. The term applies equally to film and video cameras, computer graphics, and motion capture systems. Frame rate may also be ...
s as a problem. The obvious solution is to simply speed up the film to match the television frame rates, but this, at least in the case of
NTSC The first American standard for analog television broadcast was developed by National Television System Committee (NTSC)National Television System Committee (1951–1953), Report and Reports of Panel No. 11, 11-A, 12–19, with Some supplement ...
, is rather obvious to the eye and ear. This problem is not difficult to fix, however; the solution being to periodically play a selected frame twice. For NTSC, the difference in frame rates can be corrected by showing every fourth frame of film twice, although this does require the sound to be handled separately to avoid "skipping" effects. A more advanced technique is to use "2:3 pulldown", discussed below, which turns every second frame of the film into three '' fields'' of video, which results in a slightly smoother display. PAL uses a similar system, "2:2 pulldown". However, during the analog broadcasting period, the 24 frame per second film was shown at a slightly faster 25 frames per second rate, to match the PAL video signal. This resulted in a fractionally higher pitched audio soundtrack, and resulted in feature films having a slightly shorter duration, by being shown 1 frame per second faster. In recent decades, telecine has primarily been a film-to-storage process, as opposed to film-to-air. Changes since the 1950s have primarily been in terms of equipment and physical formats; the basic concept remains the same.
Home movies A home movie is a short amateur film or video typically made just to preserve a visual record of family activities, a vacation, or a special event, and intended for viewing at home by family and friends. Originally, home movies were made on p ...
originally on film may be transferred to video tape using this technique, and it is not uncommon to find telecined DVDs where the source was originally recorded on videotape or shot on film and then edited on tape. Movies and TV shows that were originally shot and edited on film, or digitally, are more commonly put on DVD at their native frame rate with flags that tell the DVD player to perform pulldown on-the-fly.


Frame rate differences

The most complex part of telecine is the
synchronization Synchronization is the coordination of events to operate a system in unison. For example, the conductor of an orchestra keeps the orchestra synchronized or ''in time''. Systems that operate with all parts in synchrony are said to be synchronou ...
of the mechanical film motion and the electronic video signal. Every time the video (tele) part of the telecine samples the light electronically, the film (cine) part of the telecine must have a frame in perfect registration and ready to photograph. This is relatively easy when the film is photographed at the same
frame rate Frame rate (expressed in or FPS) is the frequency (rate) at which consecutive images ( frames) are captured or displayed. The term applies equally to film and video cameras, computer graphics, and motion capture systems. Frame rate may also be ...
as the video camera will sample, but when this is not true, a sophisticated procedure is required to change frame rate. To avoid the synchronization issues, higher-end establishments now use a scanning system rather than just a telecine system. This allows them to scan a distinct frame of digital video for each frame of film, providing higher quality than a telecine system would be able to achieve. Similar issues occur when using vertical synchronization to prevent screen tearing, which is a different problem encountered when frame rates mismatch.


2:2 pulldown

In countries that use the PAL or
SECAM SECAM, also written SÉCAM (, ''Séquentiel de couleur à mémoire'', French for ''color sequential with memory''), is an analog color television system that was used in France, some parts of Europe and Africa, and Russia. It was one of th ...
video standards, film destined for television is photographed at 25 frames per second. The PAL video standard broadcasts at 25 frames per second, so the transfer from film to video is simple; for every film frame, one video frame is captured. : Theatrical features originally photographed at 24 frame/s are shown at 25 frame/s. While this is usually not noticed in the picture (but may be more noticeable during action speed, especially if footage was filmed undercranked), the 4% increase in playback speed causes a slightly noticeable increase in audio pitch by about 0.707 semitones. With the use of
digital audio workstation A digital audio workstation (DAW) is an electronic device or application software used for recording, editing and producing audio files. DAWs come in a wide variety of configurations from a single software program on a laptop, to an integr ...
s, this can be avoided using time stretching algorithms, which speed up audio while preserving pitch, although this method may introduce audible artifacts, especially on complex materials. To mitigate the audio artifacts, time stretching can be applied separately to each production
stem Stem or STEM may refer to: Plant structures * Plant stem, a plant's aboveground axis, made of vascular tissue, off which leaves and flowers hang * Stipe (botany), a stalk to support some other structure * Stipe (mycology), the stem of a mushro ...
(dialog, effects, background, and music), if available. 2:2 pulldown is also used to transfer shows and films, photographed at 30 frames per second, like ''
Friends ''Friends'' is an American television sitcom created by David Crane and Marta Kauffman, which aired on NBC from September 22, 1994, to May 6, 2004, lasting ten seasons. With an ensemble cast starring Jennifer Aniston, Courteney Cox, Li ...
'' and '' Oklahoma!'' (1955), to
NTSC The first American standard for analog television broadcast was developed by National Television System Committee (NTSC)National Television System Committee (1951–1953), Report and Reports of Panel No. 11, 11-A, 12–19, with Some supplement ...
video, which has ~59.94 Hz scanning rate. This requires playback speed to be slowed by a tenth of a percent. Although the 4% speed increase has been standard since the early days of PAL and SECAM television, recently a new technique has gained popularity, and the resulting speed and pitch of the telecined presentation are identical to that of the original film. This pulldown method is sometimes used in order to convert 24 frame/s material to 25 frame/s. Usually, this involves a film to PAL transfer without the aforementioned 4% speedup. For film at 24 frame/s, there are 24 frames of film for every 25 frames of PAL video. In order to accommodate this mismatch in frame rate, 24 frames of film have to be distributed over 50 PAL fields. This can be accomplished by inserting a pulldown field every 12 frames, thus effectively spreading 12 frames of film over 25 fields (or "12.5 frames") of PAL video. The method used is 2:2:2:2:2:2:2:2:2:2:2:3 (Euro) pulldown (see below). This method was born out of a frustration with the faster, higher pitched soundtracks that traditionally accompanied films transferred for PAL and SECAM audiences. A few motion pictures are beginning to be telecined this way. It is particularly suited for films where the soundtrack is of special importance. When a TV station in an NTSC region airs a film or show that uses a PAL printing/version, but is being broadcast in the NTSC format, sometimes they do not perform the proper PAL to NTSC pulldown conversion or it is done improperly. This causes the program to be sped-up slightly and/or sound higher-pitched, due to the faster rate of the PAL 576 lines/50 Hz vs the NTSC 480 lines/~59.94 Hz format. Mainframe Entertainment used a novel process for its TV shows. They are rendered at exactly 25.000 frames per second; then, for PAL/SECAM distribution, ordinary 2:2 pulldown is applied, but for NTSC distribution, 199 fields out of every 1001 are repeated. This brings the refresh rate from 25 frames to exactly 60,000/1001, or ~59.94, fields per second, with no change whatsoever in speed, duration, or audio pitch.


2:3 pulldown

In the United States and other countries where television uses the 59.94 Hz vertical scanning frequency, video is broadcast at ~29.97 frame/s. For the film's motion to be accurately rendered on the video signal, a telecine must use a technique called the 2:3 pulldown, also known as 3:2 pulldown, to convert from 24 to ~29.97 frame/s. The term "pulldown" comes from the mechanical process of "pulling" (physically moving) the film downward within the film portion of the transport mechanism, to advance it from one frame to the next at a repetitive rate (nominally 24 frames/s). This is accomplished in two steps. The first step is to slow down the film motion by 1/1000 to 24,000/1001 (~23.976) frames/s. The difference in speed is imperceptible to the viewer. For a two-hour film, play time is extended by 7.2 seconds. If the total playback time must be kept exact, a single frame can be dropped every 1000 frames. The second step of the 2:3 pulldown is distributing cinema frames into video fields. At 23.976 frame/s, there are four frames of film for every five frames of 29.97 frame/s video: : \frac = \frac These four frames are "stretched" into five by exploiting the interlaced nature of 60 Hz video. For every frame, there are actually two incomplete images or ''fields'', one for the odd-numbered lines of the image, and one for the even-numbered lines. There are, therefore, ten fields for every four film frames, which are called ''A'', ''B'', ''C'', and ''D''. The telecine alternately places A frame across two fields, B frame across three fields, C frame across two fields and D frame across three fields. This can be written as A-A-B-B-B-C-C-D-D-D or 2-3-2-3 or simply 2–3. The cycle repeats itself completely after four film frames have been exposed: : A 3:2 pattern is identical to the one shown above except that it is shifted by one frame. For instance, a cycle that starts with film frame B yields a 3:2 pattern: B-B-B-C-C-D-D-D-A-A or 3-2-3-2 or simply 3–2. In other words, there is no difference between the 2-3 and 3-2 patterns. In fact, the "3-2" notation is misleading because according to SMPTE standards for every four-frame film sequence the first frame is scanned twice, not three times. The above method is a "classic" 2:3, which was used before frame buffers allowed for holding more than one frame. The preferred method for doing a 2:3 creates only one dirty frame in every five (i.e. 3:3:2:2 or 2:3:3:2 or 2:2:3:3); while this method has slightly more judder, it allows for easier upconversion (the dirty frame can be dropped without losing information) and a better overall compression when encoding. The 2:3:3:2 pattern is supported by the Panasonic DVX-100B video camera under the name "Advanced Pulldown". Note that just fields are displayed—no frames hence no dirty frames—in interlaced display such as on a CRT. Dirty frames may appear in other methods of displaying the interlaced video.


Other pulldown patterns

Similar techniques must be used for films shot at "silent speeds" of less than 24 frame/s, which includes home movie formats (the standard for
Standard 8 mm film Standard 8 mm film, also known as Regular 8 mm film, Double 8 mm film, Double Regular 8 mm film, or simply as Standard-8 or Regular-8, is an 8 mm film format originally developed by the Eastman Kodak company and released onto ...
was 16 fps, and 18 fps for Super 8 mm film) as well as
silent film A silent film is a film with no synchronized recorded sound (or more generally, no audible dialogue). Though silent films convey narrative and emotion visually, various plot elements (such as a setting or era) or key lines of dialogue may, w ...
(which in 35 mm format usually was 16 fps, 12 fps, or even lower). *16 frame/s (actually 15.985) to NTSC 30 frame/s (actually 29.97): pulldown should be 3:4:4:4 or the film may be run at 15 frame/s (actually 14.985) then pulldown should be 4:4. As motion pictures shot at this framerate are silent, there is no audio that is affected. *16 frame/s to PAL 25: pulldown should be 3:3:3:3:3:3:3:4 (if the film playback rate is increased to 16⅔ frame/s (1,000 frames per minute), pulldown is simplified to 3:3) *18 frame/s (slowed to 17.982) to NTSC 30: pulldown should be 3:3:4 *20 frame/s (slowed to 19.980) to NTSC 30: pulldown should be 3:3 *20 frame/s to PAL 25: pulldown should be 3:2 *27.5 frame/s to NTSC 30: pulldown should be 3:2:2:2:2 *27.5 frame/s to PAL 25: pulldown should be 1:2:2:2:2 Also, other patterns have been described that refer to the progressive frame rate conversion required to display 24 frame/s video (e.g., from a DVD player) on a progressive display (e.g., LCD or plasma): *24 frame/s to 96 frame/s (4x frame repetition): pulldown is 4:4 *24 frame/s to 120 frame/s (5x frame repetition): pulldown is 5:5 *24 frame/s to 120 frame/s (3:2 pulldown followed by 2x deinterlacing): pulldown is 6:4


Telecine judder

The "2:3 pulldown" telecine process creates a slight error in the video signal compared to the original film frames that can be seen in the above image. This is one reason why films viewed on typical NTSC home equipment may not appear as smooth as when viewed in a cinema and PAL home equipment. The effect is particularly apparent in scenes that feature slow, steady camera movements. These appear slightly jerky when viewed in material that has been through the telecine process. The phenomenon is commonly referred to as ''telecine judder''. Reversing the 2:3 pulldown telecine is discussed below. PAL material in which 2:3 (Euro) pulldown has been applied suffers from a similar lack of smoothness, though this effect is not usually called "telecine judder". Effectively, every 12th film frame is displayed for the duration of three PAL fields (60 milliseconds), whereas the other 11 frames are each displayed for the duration of two PAL fields (40 milliseconds). This causes a slight "hiccup" in the video about twice a second. It is increasingly being referred to as Euro pulldown as it largely affects European territories.


Reverse telecine (a.k.a. inverse telecine (IVTC), reverse pulldown)

Some
DVD player A DVD player is a device that plays DVDs produced under both the DVD-Video and DVD-Audio technical standards, two different and incompatible standards. Some DVD players will also play audio CDs. DVD players are connected to a television to ...
s, line doublers, and personal video recorders are designed to detect and remove 2:3 pulldown from telecined video sources, thereby reconstructing the original 24 frame/s film frames. Many video editing programs such as AVIsynth also have this ability. This technique is known as "reverse" or "inverse" telecine. Benefits of reverse telecine include high-quality non-interlaced display on compatible display devices and the elimination of redundant data for compression purposes. Reverse telecine is crucial when acquiring film material into a digital non-linear editing system such as Lightworks, Sony Vegas Pro, Avid, or Final Cut Pro, since these machines produce negative cut lists which refer to specific frames in the original film material. When video from a telecine is ingested into these systems, the operator usually has available a "telecine trace", in the form of a text file, which gives the correspondence between the video material and film original. Alternatively, the video transfer may include telecine sequence markers "burned in" to the video image along with other identifying information such as time code. It is also possible, but more difficult, to perform reverse telecine without prior knowledge of where each field of video lies in the 2:3 pulldown pattern. This is the task faced by most consumer equipment such as line doublers and personal video recorders. Ideally, only a single field needs to be identified, the rest following the pattern in lock-step. However, the 2:3 pulldown pattern does not necessarily remain consistent throughout an entire program. Edits performed on film material after it undergoes 2:3 pulldown can introduce "jumps" in the pattern if care is not taken to preserve the original frame sequence (this often happens during the editing of television shows and commercials in NTSC format). Most reverse telecine algorithms attempt to follow the 2:3 pattern using image analysis techniques, e.g. by searching for repeated fields. Algorithms that perform 2:3 pulldown removal also usually perform the task of deinterlacing. It is possible to algorithmically determine whether video contains a 2:3 pulldown pattern or not, and selectively do either reverse telecine (in the case of film-sourced video) or bob-deinterlacing (in the case of native video sources).


Telecine hardware


Flying spot scanner

In the
United Kingdom The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, commonly known as the United Kingdom (UK) or Britain, is a country in Europe, off the north-western coast of the continental mainland. It comprises England, Scotland, Wales and ...
, Rank Precision Industries was experimenting with the flying-spot scanner (FSS), which inverted the
cathode ray tube A cathode-ray tube (CRT) is a vacuum tube containing one or more electron guns, which emit electron beams that are manipulated to display images on a phosphorescent screen. The images may represent electrical waveforms ( oscilloscope), ...
(CRT) concept of scanning using a television screen. The CRT emits a pixel-sized electron beam which is converted to a photon beam through the phosphors coating the envelope. This dot of light is then focused by a lens onto the film's emulsion, and finally collected by a pickup device. In 1950 the first Rank flying spot monochrome telecine was installed at the BBC's
Lime Grove Studios Lime Grove Studios was a film, and later television, studio complex in Shepherd's Bush, West London, England. The complex was built by the Gaumont Film Company in 1915. It was situated in Lime Grove, a residential street in Shepherd's Bush, a ...
. The advantage of the FSS is that color analysis is done after scanning, so there can be no registration errors as can be produced by vidicon tubes where scanning is done after color separation—it also allows simpler dichroics to be used. In a flying spot scanner (FSS) or
cathode-ray tube A cathode-ray tube (CRT) is a vacuum tube containing one or more electron guns, which emit electron beams that are manipulated to display images on a Phosphorescence, phosphorescent screen. The images may represent electrical waveforms (osci ...
(CRT) telecine, a pixel-sized light beam is projected through exposed and developed motion picture film (either negative or positive) and collected by a special type of photo-electric cell known as a photomultiplier which converts the light into an electrical signal. The beam of light "scans" across the film image from left to right to record the horizontal frame information. Vertical scanning of the frame is then accomplished by moving the film past the CRT beam. In a color telecine the light from the CRT passes through the film and is separated by dichroic mirrors and filters into red, green and blue bands. Photomultiplier tubes or avalanche photodiodes convert the light into separate red, green and blue electrical signals for further electronic processing. This can be accomplished in ''real time'', 24 frames per second (or in some cases faster). Rank Precision- Cintel introduced the "Mark" series of FSS telecines. During this time advances were also made in CRTs, with increased light output producing a better signal-to-noise ratio and so allowing negative film to be used. The problem with flying-spot scanners was the difference in frequencies between television field rates and film frame rates. This was solved first by the Mk. I Polygonal Prism system, which was optically synchronised to the television frame rate by the rotating prism and could be run at any frame rate. This was replaced by the Mk. II Twin Lens, and then around 1975, by the Mk. III Hopping Patch (jump scan). The Mk. III series progressed from the original "jump scan" interlace scan to the Mk. IIIB which used a progressive scan and included a digital scan converter (Digiscan) to output interlaced video. The Mk. IIIC was the most popular of the series and used a next-generation Digiscan plus other improvements. The "Mark" series was then replaced by the Ursa (1989), the first in their line of telecines capable of producing digital data in 4:2:2 color space. The Ursa Gold (1993) stepped this up to 4:4:4 and then the Ursa Diamond (1997), which incorporated many third-party improvements on the Ursa system.Holben, Jay (May 1999). "From Film to Tape" ''American Cinematographer Magazine'', pp. 108–122. Cintel's C-Reality and ITK's Millennium flying-spot scanner are able to do both HD and Data.


Line array CCD

The
Robert Bosch GmbH Robert Bosch GmbH (; ), commonly known as Bosch and stylized as BOSCH, is a German multinational engineering and technology company headquartered in Gerlingen, Germany. The company was founded by Robert Bosch in Stuttgart in 1886. Bosc ...
, Fernseh Div., which later became BTS Inc.
Philips Koninklijke Philips N.V. (), commonly shortened to Philips, is a Dutch multinational conglomerate corporation that was founded in Eindhoven in 1891. Since 1997, it has been mostly headquartered in Amsterdam, though the Benelux headquarters is ...
Digital Video Systems, Thomson's Grass Valley and now is DFT Digital Film Technology introduced the world's first CCD telecine (1979), the FDL-60. The FDL-60 designed and made in
Darmstadt Darmstadt () is a city in the state of Hesse in Germany, located in the southern part of the Rhine-Main-Area (Frankfurt Metropolitan Region). Darmstadt has around 160,000 inhabitants, making it the fourth largest city in the state of Hesse ...
West
Germany Germany,, officially the Federal Republic of Germany, is a country in Central Europe. It is the second most populous country in Europe after Russia, and the most populous member state of the European Union. Germany is situated betwee ...
, was the first all solid state telecine. Rank Cintel (ADS telecine 1982) and
Marconi Company The Marconi Company was a British telecommunications and engineering company that did business under that name from 1963 to 1987. Its roots were in the Wireless Telegraph & Signal Company founded by Italian inventor Guglielmo Marconi in 189 ...
(1985) both made CCD Telecines for a short time. The Marconi model B3410 telecine sold 84 units over a three-year period, and a former Marconi technician still maintains them. In a charge-coupled device Line Array CCD telecine, a "white" light is shone through the exposed film image into a prism, which separates out the image into the three primary colors, red, green and blue. Each beam of colored light is then projected at a different CCD, one for each color. The CCD converts the light into electrical impulses which the telecine electronics modulate into a video signal which can then be recorded onto video tape or broadcast. Philips-BTS eventually evolved the FDL 60 into the FDL 90 (1989) / Quadra (1993). In 1996 Philips, working with
Kodak The Eastman Kodak Company (referred to simply as Kodak ) is an American public company that produces various products related to its historic basis in analogue photography. The company is headquartered in Rochester, New York, and is incorpor ...
, introduced the Spirit DataCine (SDC 2000), which was capable of scanning the film image at
HDTV High-definition television (HD or HDTV) describes a television system which provides a substantially higher image resolution than the previous generation of technologies. The term has been used since 1936; in more recent times, it refers to the g ...
resolutions and approaching 2K (1920 Luminance and 960 Chrominace RGB) × 1556 RGB. With the data option the Spirit DataCine can be used as a motion picture film scanner outputting 2K
DPX Digital Picture Exchange (DPX) is a common file format for digital intermediate and visual effects work and is a SMPTE standard (ST 268-1:2014). The file format is most commonly used to represent the density of each colour channel of a scanned n ...
data files as 2048 × 1556 RGB. In 2000 Philips introduced the Shadow Telecine (STE), a low cost version of the Spirit with no Kodak parts. The Spirit DataCine, Cintel's C-Reality and ITK's Millennium opened the door to the technology of
digital intermediate Digital intermediate (typically abbreviated DI) is a motion picture finishing process which classically involves digitizing a motion picture and manipulating the color and other image characteristics. Definition and overview A digital intermediat ...
s, wherein telecine tools were not just used for video outputs, but could now be used for high-resolution data that would later be recorded back out to film. The DFT Digital Film Technology, formerly Grass Valley Spirit 4K/2K/HD (2004) replaced the Spirit 1 Datacine and uses both 2K and 4K line array CCDs. (Note: the SDC-2000 did not use a color prisms and/or dichroic mirrors.) DFT revealed its new scanner at the 2009 NAB Show, Scanity. The Scanity uses time delay integration (TDI) sensor technology for extremely fast and sensitive film scans. High speed scanning 15 frame/s @ 4K; 25 frame/s @ 2K; 44 frame/s @ 1K.


Pulsed LED/triggered three CCD camera system

With the manufacturing of new high-power LEDs, came pulsed LED/triggered three CCD camera systems. Flashing the LED light source for a very short time span gives the full-frame CCD camera a stop action of the film, allowing continuous film motion. With CCD video cameras that have a trigger input, the camera now can be electronically synced up to the film transport framing. There are now a number of retail and home made Pulsed LED/triggered camera systems. An array of high-power multiple red, green and blue LEDs is pulsed just as the film frame is positioned in front of the optical lens. The camera sends the single, non-interlaced image of the film frame to a digital frame store, where the electronic picture is clocked out at the selected TV frame rate for PAL or NTSC or other standards. More advanced systems replace the sprocket wheel with laser or camera-based perf detection and image stabilization system.


Digital intermediate systems and virtual telecines

Telecine technology is increasingly merging with that of motion picture film scanners; high-resolution telecines, such as those mentioned above, can be regarded as film scanners that operate in real time. As
digital intermediate Digital intermediate (typically abbreviated DI) is a motion picture finishing process which classically involves digitizing a motion picture and manipulating the color and other image characteristics. Definition and overview A digital intermediat ...
post-production becomes more common, the need to combine the traditional telecine functions of input devices, standards converters, and
color grading Color grading is a post-production process common to filmmaking and video editing of altering the appearance of an image for presentation in different environments on different devices. Various attributes of an image such as contrast, color, ...
systems is becoming less important as the post-production chain changes to tapeless and filmless operation. However, the parts of the workflow associated with telecines still remain and are being pushed to the end, rather than the beginning, of the post-production chain, in the form of real-time digital grading systems and digital intermediate mastering systems, increasingly running in software on commodity computer systems. These are sometimes called virtual telecine systems.


Video cameras that produce telecined video, and "film look"

Some video cameras and consumer camcorders are able to record in progressive "24 frames/s" or "23.976 frames/s". Such a video has cinema-like motion characteristics and is the major component of the so-called
film look Film look (also known as filmizing or film-look) is a process in which video is altered in overall appearance to appear to have been shot on film stock. The process is usually electronic, although filmizing can sometimes occur as an unintentiona ...
. For most 24 frames/s cameras, the virtual 2:3 pulldown process is happening inside the camera. Although the camera is capturing a progressive frame at the CCD, just like a film camera, it is then imposing an interlacing on the image to record it to tape so that it can be played back on any standard television. Not every camera handles "24 frames/s" this way, but the majority of them do. Cameras that record 25 frames/s (PAL) or 29.97 frames/s (NTSC) do not need to employ 2:3 pulldown, because every progressive frame occupies exactly two video fields. In the video industry, this type of encoding is called progressive segmented frame (PsF). PsF is conceptually identical to 2:2 pulldown, only there is no film original to transfer from.


Digital television and high definition

Digital television Digital television (DTV) is the transmission of television signals using digital encoding, in contrast to the earlier analog television technology which used analog signals. At the time of its development it was considered an innovative adva ...
and high-definition standards provide several methods for encoding film material. Fifty field/s formats such as 576i50 and
1080i50 1080i (also known as Full HD or BT.709) is a combination of frame resolution and scan type. 1080i is used in high-definition television (HDTV) and high-definition video. The number "1080" refers to the number of horizontal lines on the screen. ...
can accommodate film content using a 4% speed-up like PAL. 59.94 field/s interlaced formats such as 480i60 and 1080i60 use the same 2:3 pulldown technique as NTSC. In 59.94 frame/s progressive formats such as 480p60 and
720p60 720p (1280×720 px; also called HD ready, standard HD or just HD) is a progressive HDTV signal format with 720 horizontal lines/1280 columns and an aspect ratio (AR) of 16:9, normally known as widescreen HDTV (1.78:1). All major HDTV broadcast ...
, entire frames (rather than fields) are repeated in a 2:3 pattern, accomplishing the frame rate conversion without interlacing and its associated artifacts. Other formats such as 1080p24 can decode film material at its native rate of 24 or 23.976 frame/s. All of these coding methods are in use to some extent. In PAL countries, 25 frame/s formats remain the norm. In NTSC countries, most digital broadcasts of 24 frame/s progressive material, both standard and high definition, continue to use interlaced formats with 2:3 pulldown, even though ATSC allows native 24 and 23.976 frame/s progressive formats which offer the greatest image quality and coding efficiency, and are widely used in motion picture and high definition video production. Nowadays, most HDTV vendors sell LCD televisions in NTSC/ATSC countries capable of 120 Hz or 240 Hz refresh rates and plasma sets capable of 48, 72, or 96 Hz refresh. When combined with a 1080p24-capable source (such as most Blu-ray Disc players), some of these sets are able to display film-based content using a pulldown scheme of whole multiples of 24, thereby avoiding the problems associated with 2:3 pulldown or the 4% speed-up used in PAL countries. For example, a 1080p 120 Hz set which accepts a 1080p24 input can achieve 5:5 pulldown by simply repeating each frame five times and thus not exhibit picture artifacts associated with telecine judder.


Gate weave

Gate weave, known in this context as "telecine weave" or "telecine wobble", caused by the movement of the film in the telecine machine gate, is a characteristic artifact of real-time telecine scanning. Numerous techniques have been tried to minimize gate weave, using both improvements in mechanical film handling and electronic post-processing. Line-scan telecines are less vulnerable to frame-to-frame judder than machines with conventional film gates, and non-real-time machines are also less vulnerable to gate weave than real-time machines. Some gate weave is inherent in film cinematography, as it was introduced by the film handling within the original film camera: modern digital
image stabilization Image stabilization (IS) is a family of techniques that reduce blurring associated with the motion of a camera or other imaging device during exposure. Generally, it compensates for pan and tilt (angular movement, equivalent to yaw and pit ...
techniques can remove both this and telecine/scanner gate weave.


Soft and hard telecine

On DVDs, telecined material may be either hard telecined, or soft telecined. In the hard-telecined case, video is stored on the DVD at the playback framerate (29.97 frame/s for NTSC, 25 frame/s for PAL), using the telecined frames as shown above. In the soft-telecined case, the material is stored on the DVD at the film rate (24 or 23.976 frames/s) in the original progressive format, with special flags inserted into the
MPEG-2 MPEG-2 (a.k.a. H.222/H.262 as was defined by the ITU) is a standard for "the generic coding of moving pictures and associated audio information". It describes a combination of lossy video compression and lossy audio data compression methods, ...
video stream that instruct the DVD player to repeat certain fields so as to accomplish the required pulldown during playback. Progressive scan DVD players additionally offer output at 480p by using these flags to duplicate frames rather than fields, or if the TV supports it, to play the disc back at the native 24p rate. NTSC DVDs are often soft telecined, although lower-quality hard-telecined DVDs exist. In the case of PAL DVDs using 2:2 pulldown, the difference between soft and hard telecine vanishes, and the two may be regarded as equal. In the case of PAL DVDs using 2:3 pulldown, either soft or hard telecining may be applied. Blu-ray offers native 24 frame/s support, allowing 5:5 cadence on most modern televisions.


Image gallery


See also

* 3D LUT * Cintel, telecine equipment * Color motion picture film *
Color suite A color suite (also called a color bay, telecine suite, or color correction bay) is the control room for color grading video in a post-production environment. Technology and specifications The video source could be from: a telecine, a video tape re ...
* Da Vinci Systems for color grading and video editing systems *
Digital intermediate Digital intermediate (typically abbreviated DI) is a motion picture finishing process which classically involves digitizing a motion picture and manipulating the color and other image characteristics. Definition and overview A digital intermediat ...
* Display motion blur, factors causing motion blur on displays *
Display resolution The display resolution or display modes of a digital television, computer monitor or display device is the number of distinct pixels in each dimension that can be displayed. It can be an ambiguous term especially as the displayed resolution ...
*
Faroudja Faroudja Labs was a San Francisco based IP and research company founded by Yves Faroudja. Faroudja Labs should not be confused with Faroudja Enterprises, Yves Faroudja's latest venture. Faroudja specialized in video processing algorithms and pro ...
, inventors of reverse telecine technologies * Film-out *
Film recorder A film recorder is a graphical output device for transferring images to photographic film from a digital source. In a typical film recorder, an image is passed from a host computer to a mechanism to expose film through a variety of methods, h ...
*
Film restoration Film preservation, or film restoration, describes a series of ongoing efforts among film historians, archivists, museums, cinematheques, and non-profit organizations to rescue decaying film stock and preserve the images they contain. In the w ...
*
Gamma correction Gamma correction or gamma is a nonlinear operation used to encode and decode luminance or tristimulus values in video or still image systems. Gamma correction is, in the simplest cases, defined by the following power-law expression: : V_\tex ...
* Hard disk recorder *
Image scanner An image scanner—often abbreviated to just scanner—is a device that optically scans images, printed text, handwriting or an object and converts it to a digital image. Commonly used in offices are variations of the desktop ''flatbed scanner'' ...
* Keykode * Pandora International * Progressive segmented frame, a scheme designed to acquire, store, modify, and distribute progressive-scan video using interlaced equipment and media * Sound follower * Telecine (piracy), an unauthorized copy of a film created with a telecine * Telerecording (UK) *
Television Television, sometimes shortened to TV, is a telecommunication medium for transmitting moving images and sound. The term can refer to a television set, or the medium of television transmission. Television is a mass medium for advertising, ...
* Test film


References


External links


Discussion of Telecine equipment by former BBC engineers

Demonstration of Telecine process by telecine and archiving expert, Tim Emlem-English

Explanation of telecine methods
{{VideoProcessing Film and video technology Television terminology