October 4, 2021

What is Duplex Roll Film Scanning?

Duplex roll film is 16mm microfilm that has been created with two images per frame. The front and backside of a document page was filmed at the same time as the front or they are simply two separate images side-by-side. There are around 5,000 frames on a 100-foot roll of 16mm duplex film, however once the pages get split it would be 10,000 separate images if split. Of course these are just estimates and longer film could contain a whopping 15,000+ frames (30,000+ images). Some documents were small to begin with, such as envelopes, checks, birth, death, and marriage certificates, driver’s licenses, fingerprints, and traffic tickets. In such cases rolls may contain double the expected amount (30,000-60,000 images)!

There are a handful of ways to scan duplex microfilm. Depending on how it was filmed, Generation Imaging can save both frames in one image, or save out two images separately. Advanced options include deleting out black backsides and making multi-page pdfs or tiffs based on blips or indexing fields.

Generation Imaging has a price discount for digitizing duplex rolls. This is because there are so many images on a roll, in some cases one roll has the same number of images of 2-4 common rolls. Keep in mind, the turnaround time for converting duplex microfilm will indeed be longer than standard 16mm rolls.

The bottom line is regardless of how duplex rolls were filmed, Generation Imaging will scan them so you won’t even know that a different technique was used; the end result is the same as other reels.

Feel free to contact us with any questions about your film.

July 29, 2011

Convert Microfiche vs Convert Microfilm

A mistake that occurs from clients or organizations who are not familiar with micrographics is mixing up microfiche and microfilm. Every industry or niche has its own lexicon, and in the micrographics industry there are major differences between microfiche and microfilm. The purpose of this article is to describe the differences between microfilm and microfiche.

Microfilm- It’s rolled.

In the most simplest terms, microfilm is rolled and microfiche is flat. Microfilm is also called roll film, and microfilm reels, microfilm rolls. Sometimes the width of the film is used to describe the types, such as 16mm roll film or 35mm microfilm.

Microfilm is usually stored in plastic or metal spools. Some old microfilm is stored in metal pans. Yes, microfilm generally looks like small versions of movie reel film, except without the classic sprockets.

Microfilm cartridges look different that the standard reel spools- but only on the outside. The film is enclosed in a hard metal square casing to protect it. Kodak and 3M were innovators in producing microfilm cartridges.

There is no such thing as a 35mm roll film cartridge; there are only 16mm microfilm cartridges.

The actual microfilm frame placement and types vary, such as duplex film, positive, negative, duo, fixed, blipped, variable, etc, however that is a different topic and is unrelated to identifying microfilm vs microfiche.

Microfiche- It’s flat.

A jacketed microfiche

Microfiche are flat “cards”, usually 4.13 x 5.83 inches, containing a few frames on them. Whereas a microfilm may hold 500 (35mm) to 20,000 frames (duplex), a microfiche card may hold as many one one frame to a couple of hundred (COM fiche).

Jacketed microfiche are simply roll film cut up into strips and inserted into plastic sleeves. Some people get confused if they don’t see the jacket sleeves, but it could be that the microfiche was duplicated. If it was duplicated, the copy may still have faint lines highlighting the border of the jackets. Since jackets are created from microfilm strips, they can come in the 16mm microfiche or 35mm microfiche varieties. A 16mm jacket has more rows and columns, and thus can hold more frames that a 35mm jacket (1-6 frames).

COM microfiche is computer generated and contain very small frames (usually with a 42x or 48x reduction ratio).

Step-and-repeat microfiche were created with a step-and-repeat camera. Many times they contain manuals or books and can hold hundreds of frames.