Few people have heard of it, yet many consider John Blankenbaker's KENBAK-1 to be the first commercial personal computer.
Digitizing Movie Film: Video Workprinter
By James Grahame
Super 8 movie-making is fun and the end result can be spectacular. As an added bonus, you're guaranteed to turn heads wherever you shoot.
There is a dark side, though. After getting your film processed, you're faced with the choice of cutting and splicing film by hand (ugh) or transferring it to digital video so you can edit it on a computer. Professional quality film-to-video conversion is expensive, though -- expect to pay a few hundred dollars for each hour of film you transfer.
Moviestuff in Houston, Texas has a solution -- the Video Workprinter. The Workprinter is a film projector that has been modified to offer frame-by-frame digital capture. Unlike companies who recommend 'projecting film on the wall and videotaping the result,' Moviestuff's equipment digitizes each movie frame sequentially using a digital camcorder connected to a Windows or Macintosh computer.
Over 1000 units have been shipped, with prices starting at $1295 for a "Jr" model (capable of processing one frame per second) or $1395 for a faster XP model (6 frames per second).
Video Workprinter (Moviestuff)
