ABSTRACT
The technical development of film-to-video transfer devices, or telecines, for television proceeded along two parallel paths. The first concentrated on coupling conventional film projectors to video cameras. The second applied the principle of the video flying spot scanner to film transfer. Vidicon camera telecine systems gradually developed a high degree of sophistication, including features such as polarity reversal for broadcasting negative news film, automatic video level control, programmable color correctors, and optical pan and scan systems. The Cintel Mark III telecine has been the most widely used telecine for post-production and video transfer. Therefore, a description of its features and capabilities will be helpful in understanding what can be expected from a typical flying spot scanner telecine system. Although telecines using the flying spot scanning system have been dominant in the film-transfer marketplace, units employing an entirely different type of photosensing device, the solid-state charge-coupled scanner array, have found increasing use and development.
