Thanks for the detailed response, Rick. However, my post was obviously not clear enough. The film, shot at 16fps, was wet-gate transferred frame by frame, at 2.5k, ProsRes 4444, on a filmfabriek HDS+. Scanning costs were about $600. I only wanted the best (thus my pickiness with how I'm going to edit this film for an end result on Blu-ray). Previous scans of other old films were done at Videopro in Denmark on a Lasergraphics Scanstation, but for various reasons that option wasn't suitable this time. Every time I have scans done, the first reel scanned is my test reel. Surprisingly, the filmfabriek (a $50k machine) which a young fellow in Melbourne has recently purchased for his business (and as far as I'm aware after extensive research, is the best scanner available in Australia), gave overall superior results to the $250k Scanstation. So, this time, the film was sent to Melbourne. To be clear: there's no interlacing, no video transfer involved, no degradation so far of any kind, other than a direct frame-by-frame scan. Now I want to find out under what conditions Warp Stabilizing is possible and/or desirable. As for the way I've blended frames, to my eye it gives the best result. Before deciding on this method, I compared three techniques in going from 16fps to 24fps: Frame blending turned off, which simply repeats every second frame. The film will be sharpest, but with jerky motion. Frame blending turned on. Adds frames as above, but blends every frame with the two around it. Every frame is therefore blurred, but the motion should be the smoothest – but blurred. Add frames as per 1, but the added frames are a 50:50 blend of the repeated and the following frame. My idea was that I retain original sharpness for two out of three frames in the final film. I applied the techniques to the same 15-second clip, converted to Blu-ray for viewing on our 3-metre projection screen, invited my partner and three friends for the test, and away we went. Test 1 I simply asked them could they see any difference in sharpness of jerkiness between the three clips. No one could, except that my partner (accustomed to my numerous tests, and with a more critical eye than most), said that number 1 looked "jagged". No one could see any difference in sharpness between all three. Test 2 I explained the difference between the three clips and what to look for. This time they could all see the jerkiness in #1, but no difference in jerkiness between #2 and #3, and no real difference in sharpness between any of them. My conclusion: for a general audience viewing well-photographed home videos, there was no difference between #2 and #3, projected at a viewing distance of 1.5 screen widths. Later, I repeated the test myself, really looking for the differences. It was not a blind test, I knew what was on the screen, but in terms of sharpness and fluid movement, to my eye #3 was the winner. I doubt whether the combination of scan and blend method described above can be bettered. Now I want to experiement with stabilizing. Some of the film was shot on tripod, so it's pretty good for an amateur effort. But other scenes are handheld, or taken on an aircraft or while bushwalking, and it's those that I want to try and improve. Ques To sum up: what is a suitable technique for ending up with 24 fps video from a 16 fps film, scanned at pretty near the highest quality available, with 300 razor points (cuts, scene changes), frame blended as per the script (every second frame repeated and 50:50 blended with the next), and each scene individually colour and contrast corrected, some of which I may want to stabilize? As much as anything, this is a technical exercise. I want to find out the best way to do it, and I want to try it.
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