The large frames are prone to "weave" or "jitter" if not handled by high-precision pin-registered gates during the scan.
A single minute of 8K 15/70 film can result in hundreds of gigabytes, or even terabytes, of raw data. Why Scan Film? IMAX Film Scan vs. Digital Projection
The Ultimate Guide to IMAX Film Scanning: Preserving the Pinnacle of Analog Cinema imax film scan
One of the biggest technical hurdles is . Original camera negatives (OCN) are relatively easy to scan because they have low density. However, if a film is damaged and the missing parts must be scanned from a release print (the film you actually watch in a theater), the density is much higher. A 3-flash scanner like the Lasergraphics Director can capture details at densities beyond 5.0 , whereas standard scanners optimized for negatives fail, producing black holes where shadow detail should be. This ensures that classic films restored from the only surviving prints retain their shadow detail rather than looking washed out or crushed.
Even with wet gates, scans are dirty. Teams of artists use software to manually remove dust, hair, and chemical stains frame by frame. In an IMAX frame, the level of detail is so high that dust particles are magnified significantly, requiring meticulous cleanup. The large frames are prone to "weave" or
to keep file sizes manageable; an uncompressed 16K frame can exceed Time-Intensive Process: It can take up to 14 minutes
The raw output is usually a or EXR sequence. This is a "log" scan—flat, low contrast, preserving the maximum dynamic range of the negative (roughly 14-16 stops of latitude). IMAX Film Scan vs
Here is a step-by-step breakdown of what happens in a professional IMAX film scan session.
Perhaps the most famous example of IMAX scanning and restoration. In 2018, for the film's 50th anniversary, Christopher Nolan supervised the scanning of the original camera negative.