One of the services we offer is to convert video tapes to computer files. We can support a wide variety of file types, but about 80% of demand is for Windows compatible files, the balance Mac. I’m pleased to say clients have been very happy with what we’ve been doing over the last four years.
Mac clients have been supplied with Quicktime files, based on the MP4 codec. I’ll try to explain that, Quicktime isn’t strictly speaking a file type it is more like a wrapper inside of which is a file with your film. The structure of that file is determined by the codec selected, as I said, in the majority of cases we’ve used the MP4 codec. Then last week I got a call from a client who couldn’t open our files in the video editing program they wanted to use - Apple’s own Final Cut.
As a consequence over the last few days I’ve been reading, checking, testing to try to get to the bottom of this, finally arriving at this point. For reasons I cannot understand if a Quicktime file is created using MP4 it can be opened and edited using Apple’s iMovie product but the same file cannot be opened in Final Cut.
I think the file type / codec Final Cut is looking for is DV format. Now, we can produce DV files, but there’s a big but attached. Mainly - but, they’re gigantic. A movie converted into Quicktime / MP4 ay just over 1Gb landed at a whopping 66Gb when processed as a DV file. And the conversion took about four times longer. For that reason we’ve made it clear that we aren’t offering DV format files.
What’s the solution if you would like to use DV files in Final Cut? Well, you can open these in iMovie and use that program to convert them to DV format.
Sunday, October 16, 2011
Thursday, October 6, 2011
Scanner Smashing - the movie
Many people have taken advantage of our Slide Scanner Amnesty under which we credit the value of your old, knackered, broken scanner against the cost of our scanning service. But what do we do with the old scanners? Well, I just dump them at our local recycling centre.
I think some people have been a little suspicious, maybe thinking this is a clever ruse to make a fortune selling old scanners on eBay. They have maybe thought there’s a catch. So I thought I’d shoot a quick Flip camera video showing one scanner meeting its end. A simple, five minute job, or so I thought.
No, you can’t film this at the dump, very camera shy, and anyway there’s nothing to see. Electronic goods are sent away to be stripped down so there’s really nothing to see. Plan B, destroy it myself at home. Place Minolta scanner on lawn, set up camera, grab large hammer. Roll film.
Hit scanner. Nothing. Repeat, still nothing. The force of the blows were just being soaked up by the grass and no damage was being done to the slide scanner. So I dug out an old paving slab and placed the scanner on that. Roll film, hit scanner.
I must have hit that thing ten times before it showed any sign of damage. Eventually the plastic on the casing showed a small crack and a few blows began to break the unit. To be honest I was disappointed, I didn’t get the great drama I’d hoped for. Finally, more than a little frustrated, I just threw the hammer at it. Not a great contribution to modern cinema but at least you can now see what we do with old scanners, and it doesn’t involve ebay.
I think some people have been a little suspicious, maybe thinking this is a clever ruse to make a fortune selling old scanners on eBay. They have maybe thought there’s a catch. So I thought I’d shoot a quick Flip camera video showing one scanner meeting its end. A simple, five minute job, or so I thought.
No, you can’t film this at the dump, very camera shy, and anyway there’s nothing to see. Electronic goods are sent away to be stripped down so there’s really nothing to see. Plan B, destroy it myself at home. Place Minolta scanner on lawn, set up camera, grab large hammer. Roll film.
Hit scanner. Nothing. Repeat, still nothing. The force of the blows were just being soaked up by the grass and no damage was being done to the slide scanner. So I dug out an old paving slab and placed the scanner on that. Roll film, hit scanner.
I must have hit that thing ten times before it showed any sign of damage. Eventually the plastic on the casing showed a small crack and a few blows began to break the unit. To be honest I was disappointed, I didn’t get the great drama I’d hoped for. Finally, more than a little frustrated, I just threw the hammer at it. Not a great contribution to modern cinema but at least you can now see what we do with old scanners, and it doesn’t involve ebay.
Tuesday, September 6, 2011
Best Results?
If you had a choice, we sometimes asked, which would give the best results?
OK, you’ve got photo prints, negatives and slides. In practice we can quickly rule out a choice between photo scanning and slide scanning. It’s exceptionally rare that anyone would have any volumes of slides from which prints had been made, so the slide would be your only source material and you’ll have to go with that.
Photos started out as negatives, so you should have a negative to go with each of the prints. Technically its undoubted that negative scanning yields a better image than photo scanning. Don’t blame us for that, it’s down to a thing called dynamic range. That’s a measure of the spread of colour information a photo or negative can handle. negatives normally have great range, commercial prints much less. So all your colours, particularly the details in the shadows and highlights, get compressed and lost in the printing process. Negative scanning catches that, photos have lost it already.
But .... we can scan photos at a much lower cost than negatives, so most people opt to have their photos scannned.
OK, you’ve got photo prints, negatives and slides. In practice we can quickly rule out a choice between photo scanning and slide scanning. It’s exceptionally rare that anyone would have any volumes of slides from which prints had been made, so the slide would be your only source material and you’ll have to go with that.
Photos started out as negatives, so you should have a negative to go with each of the prints. Technically its undoubted that negative scanning yields a better image than photo scanning. Don’t blame us for that, it’s down to a thing called dynamic range. That’s a measure of the spread of colour information a photo or negative can handle. negatives normally have great range, commercial prints much less. So all your colours, particularly the details in the shadows and highlights, get compressed and lost in the printing process. Negative scanning catches that, photos have lost it already.
But .... we can scan photos at a much lower cost than negatives, so most people opt to have their photos scannned.
Saturday, September 3, 2011
Saturday, August 27, 2011
If It's Not Us ...
Sure, we’d love to scan every photo, slide and negative you care to send our way but you have to be realistic. For many people it’s just too risky putting precious photos in the post. 1Scan is a local scanning service for Essex, north London, Kent and other parts of Greater London.
What if you live elsewhere? What if you just can’t trust the mail? Well you can try Google or maybe a dedicated scanning service directory. Find-a-Scanservice is a directory of scanning services, searchable by type of photo originals to be scanned and location. It covers the UK, Europe and pretty much the rest of the world. Great site and service.
If you want you photos, negatives or slides scanned try us, but if you can’t, now you know where to look.
What if you live elsewhere? What if you just can’t trust the mail? Well you can try Google or maybe a dedicated scanning service directory. Find-a-Scanservice is a directory of scanning services, searchable by type of photo originals to be scanned and location. It covers the UK, Europe and pretty much the rest of the world. Great site and service.
If you want you photos, negatives or slides scanned try us, but if you can’t, now you know where to look.
Wednesday, August 17, 2011
Photo scanning - tiff or jpg?
We’re often asked by photo scanning clients, which file format should I opt for - tiff or jpg?
Sometimes clients think that one format offers a better quality image than the other. That isn’t the case, scanning quality is determined by the dpi setting. In essence the higher the dpi the better the quality of the scan. So a 4,000 dpi tiff file is the same image quality as a 4,000 dpi jpg.
A tiff file is uncompressed, while a jpg is compressed. The maths behind image file compression is brilliant so for the vast majority of applications the fact that the file is compressed isn’t an issue. In fact jpg files are smaller, easier to email, quicker to open, making life a lot easier for most of us.
If you intend to do a lot of serious image editing a tiff file may be better. You can save without compression until you get to a final image, which you might save as a jpg for distribution. You can edit and save a tiff file many, many times without loss of quality, that’s the advantage.
Professional photographers typically want tiff files although many serious amateurs also opt for tiffs. If you’ve bitten the bullet on the price of Photoshop the extra cost and processing overheads of tiffs are hardly likely to be a barrier.
If you have slides or negatives as a source material tiff files are a viable option. If you’re sending photos (prints) then its unlikely that you’ll get any real advantage from tiffs, which is why we scan prints to jpg files.
Sometimes clients think that one format offers a better quality image than the other. That isn’t the case, scanning quality is determined by the dpi setting. In essence the higher the dpi the better the quality of the scan. So a 4,000 dpi tiff file is the same image quality as a 4,000 dpi jpg.
A tiff file is uncompressed, while a jpg is compressed. The maths behind image file compression is brilliant so for the vast majority of applications the fact that the file is compressed isn’t an issue. In fact jpg files are smaller, easier to email, quicker to open, making life a lot easier for most of us.
If you intend to do a lot of serious image editing a tiff file may be better. You can save without compression until you get to a final image, which you might save as a jpg for distribution. You can edit and save a tiff file many, many times without loss of quality, that’s the advantage.
Professional photographers typically want tiff files although many serious amateurs also opt for tiffs. If you’ve bitten the bullet on the price of Photoshop the extra cost and processing overheads of tiffs are hardly likely to be a barrier.
If you have slides or negatives as a source material tiff files are a viable option. If you’re sending photos (prints) then its unlikely that you’ll get any real advantage from tiffs, which is why we scan prints to jpg files.
Tuesday, August 9, 2011
Photo Backup
Yesterday I had a surreal experience. I had to drive to three locations in London, returning work to one and collecting from the others. When I got home I saw TV images of damage to police cars at a junction I’d driven past a couple of hours ago. Then substantial fire damage in a block in Clapham where another of our clients work.
I just don’t think I live and work in areas at the mercy of fire raisers and looters, this is London in the 21st century. But it’s clear how people have suffered, and how much distress people suffer when they lose precious possessions. I have ben struck how high up the list the loss of family photos has been for people in Hackney and Tottenham. What we we do to protect our own memories?
First, it helps to get your photos into a digital format. In physical form 4,000 photos fills a good sized box, once scanned these photos (scanned in high quality) would fit onto a DVD. That disc is easier to store and copy, so a duplicate can be held off-site.
If you have a large number of scanned photos you’d be thinking of storing them on a hard drive. As we’ve seen all too vividly, you need to have your digital image files copied onto a backup of that hard drive, and here’s the point, stored safely off-site. Certainly you could make an arrangement with a friend or relative to store your backup and it’s an improvement. You should also give thought to a professional off-site file backup service. We’ve used Apple’s MobileMe service (soon to be replaced) and Dropbox, both have worked well for us. A couple of weeks ago I signed up for a remote version of Apple’s Timemachine called DollyDrive. This gives me a complete backup of my machine which is stored “in the cloud” so if I should lose my hard drive, or even my MacBook, there’s a complete copy of my system held out of harms way.
I just don’t think I live and work in areas at the mercy of fire raisers and looters, this is London in the 21st century. But it’s clear how people have suffered, and how much distress people suffer when they lose precious possessions. I have ben struck how high up the list the loss of family photos has been for people in Hackney and Tottenham. What we we do to protect our own memories?
First, it helps to get your photos into a digital format. In physical form 4,000 photos fills a good sized box, once scanned these photos (scanned in high quality) would fit onto a DVD. That disc is easier to store and copy, so a duplicate can be held off-site.
If you have a large number of scanned photos you’d be thinking of storing them on a hard drive. As we’ve seen all too vividly, you need to have your digital image files copied onto a backup of that hard drive, and here’s the point, stored safely off-site. Certainly you could make an arrangement with a friend or relative to store your backup and it’s an improvement. You should also give thought to a professional off-site file backup service. We’ve used Apple’s MobileMe service (soon to be replaced) and Dropbox, both have worked well for us. A couple of weeks ago I signed up for a remote version of Apple’s Timemachine called DollyDrive. This gives me a complete backup of my machine which is stored “in the cloud” so if I should lose my hard drive, or even my MacBook, there’s a complete copy of my system held out of harms way.
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