16mm Film

Process Comparison

• Older 16mm film has around 1500 to 2000 horizontal lines.
• A 480 line SD scan will get about 1/4 of the available details on the film.
• Although an 1080 line HD scan is better, it only gets at most 50% of the details from the film.
• To archive 16mm film a 2k scan (1556 lines) is required (our ProHD or 2K process).

SD Scan

• This SD scan was performed with a SD professional motion picture film scanner. A 480 line SD scan will get about 1/4 of the available details on the film. You can see how blurry the SD scan is compared to the HD or ProHD scan.
• In addition, you can see the red color shift. This is very common on both 16mm and 35mm film.
• Lastly, you can see the scratch and nick defects on the film.

HD Scan

• This HD scan was performed with a HD professional motion picture film scanner. Although an 1080 line HD scan is better, it only gets at most 50% of the details from the film.
• Compared to the SD scan you can see it has more detail in the child's face and in the green leaves in the lower left hand corner.
• In addition, you can see the red color shift was mostly fixed.

ProHD / 2K Scan

• This ProHD/2K scan was performed with a professional 2K/4K Datacine machine. To archive 16mm film a 2K scan is required (our ProHD or 2K process).
• Look at the additional detail on the child's face and in the green leaves on the lower left hand corner compared to the HD Scan.
• In addition, to the sharpness you can clearly see that the ProHD/2K process removes 95% of the defects on the film using the Pro Hollywood restoration.