Movette
FILM TRANSFER
Formerly Video Transfer Center

1407 Valencia St., San Francisco, CA, 94110
Lat, Long: 37.75025, -122.42045

Emerging from COVID:
By APPOINTMENT ONLY
Tuesday - Saturday
Closed: Sundays & Mondays
Tel.: 415-558-8815 • eMail: buck@movettefilm.com

Services for 8mm, Super-8, 16mm and Super-16 film

Movette Film Transfer is focused on making quality small gauge film digitization accessible to individuals and institutions. Please note that we rely on our client to provide storage devices (typically USB 3.0 or Thunderbolt external hard drives or SSDs) to load the output files onto. The sizes of output file packages range from roughly 17GB per 50 feet of 8mm film for our Scanstation's 1080p ProRes422HQ files to over 120GB per 100 feet of 16mm film going to ProRes 4444 at UHD resolution. We will load up to 2 storage devices with no additional data handling charges.

Pricing for our most common output: ProRes 422 HQ QuickTime files.

1080p (1920x1080), 2k (2048x1556) and UHD (3840x2160) scans on our Lasergraphics Scanstation 5k can be output to ProRes 4444 at no additional cost. Pricing for other options such as DPX available on request.

8mm & Super-8 Services Scanner: Resolution Cost per Foot
Standard-Silent Scanstation 5k: 1080p $0.67
  Scanstation 5k: 2k $0.78
Standard-Sound Scanstation 5k: 1080p $0.80
  Scanstation 5k: 2k $0.91
 
16mm & Super-16 Services Scanner: Resolution Cost per Foot
Standard-Silent Scanstation 5k: 1080p $0.53
  Scanstation 5k: 2k $0.64
  Scanstation 5k: UHD $0.76
Standard-Sound Scanstation 5k: 1080p $0.63
  Scanstation 5k: 2k $0.71
  Scanstation 5k: UHD $0.83
Sound-Only Scanstation 5k: 720p* $0.18
*Sound-Only scans apply to sound-only elements such as Track Negs or Full-Coat magnetic film and include a 720p reference image to show sync punches/marks for easy syncing in your NLE of choice.
Note: Footage is counted in 50-foot increments per element and we will not transfer only sections of reels, i.e.: we will not accept a request to transfer "only the last 50 feet of a reel."
*Minimum charge for any film transfer project is $44.00

Standard Transfer (Silent or Sound)

This service utilizes our years of film expertise to ensure the safe handling of your precious film.

All film transferred under our Standard service is first inspected during which time broken or suspect splices are repaired and the film is assessed on the bench with notes taken that are relevant to the cleaning and scanning steps to follow. The film is then hand cleaned with Solvon film cleaning solvent prior to transfer.

Your film then goes from our film benches to one of our scanners for digitization. The film paths of all of our scanners include PTRs for final dust removal just before the frames enter the imaging gate. Unless a one-light transfer is specifically requested we adjust lights on our scanners to optimize exposure and perform pick-up takes to accommodate the wide ranges of exposures we find on the primarily amateur-shot films we work with.

Our Scanners

We operate 2 archival film scanners that safely handle film without sprockets or pull-down claws. Both scanners provide the following features:

Lasergraphics Scanstation 5k

We have been operating this 8mm, Super-8, 16mm and Super-16 scanner since 2015 and have outfitted it with the optional composite magnetic sound readers for 8mm/Super-8 and 16mm magnetic sound formats. We can also reproduce 16mm composite optical soundtracks and audio from separate-system 16mm full-coat mag film. The Scanstation performs perforation-based image stabilization providing frame stability beyond what was experienced using even the highest quality projectors.

The standard output packages from our Scanstation include overscan files in addition to your target resolution. These overscan files are at the same optical magnification as your target resolution, but have extended digital frame dimensions to show portions of the preceding and following frames and extend horizontally to show the full physical width of 8mm and Super-8 films and into the perforation and soundtrack area of 16mm films. These overscan files are great to show the younger generations how physical film is very different from video formats and can be used for serious digital restoration workflows, digital stabilization, fine-tuning framing, and other specialized tasks.

Kinetta Archival Film Scanner

We have been operating various incarnations of this scanner since 2009. Our current Kinetta was delivered in 2018 and is outfitted with the optional high resolution 4864 x 3232 sensor. The Kinetta is our specialty scanner as it is capable of scanning 8mm, Super-8, 9.5mm, 16mm, Super-16, 17.5mm (e.g. Pathe Rural and Movette!), 28mm and 35mm silent and composite optical films. We primarily use the Kinetta for the formats not supported by our other scanners, but it is also used for 8mm and 16mm films that are too shrunken or otherwise degraded to run on the others.

The Kinetta has no limit to shrinkage that can be scanned and nearly any piece of film that retains enough pliability to bend in both directions around a 1.5 inch radius can be scanned on it. Few of the projects that we run on our Kinetta are of the type that can be accurately priced by the foot, so we produce estimates for Kinetta scans only after physically inspecting the films to be scanned.

More Info

Write to us anytime for more information about our services: buck@movettefilm.com. Return to this site or follow @movettefilm on Twitter for updates and announcements