Coolscan 8000 + Vuescan -> low resolution preview extremely slow

[albireo]

I just got a Coolscan 8000 and have a question for those using their 8000 with Vuescan.

I should start by saying I am very familiar with Vuescan - I have been using it for the past 10 years or so to drive an Epson flatbed as well as a number of dedicated 35mm film scanners (Minolta, Plustek..). So far, my workflow could be summarised as follows:

-insert film holder and launch a batch 'preview' within Vuescan where I'll have set the lowest available resolution to minimise preview scanning time and get an overview of the whole 6 frame (35mm) or 3 frame (120) strip;
-adjust cropping and focus on the previewed image. Importantly, decide whether to scan or skip the image for an actual full res scan
-scan the chosen candidates at the desired final resolution

The above workflow worked well because with both my old scanners a low resolution preview took literally seconds. Something in the region of 5 seconds for a 35mm frame using my dedicated film scanners; something in the region of 15 seconds for 3 6x6 frames using my Epson flatbed.

Now back to my question: it would appear, using the latest Vuescan version on Win10, that generating a low resolution preview of a 120 frame using the Coolscan 8000 takes ages. The lowest resolution available for a preview in Vuescan is 667dpi. If I try that, for a 6x7 frame the times are as follows

-low res 667dpi preview of 6x7 frame: 1 minute 25 seconds
-full res 4000dpi scan of above frame: 2 minutes 50 seconds.

Are the above ballpark figures what people are experiencing with their Coolscan 8000? Else, might I have a problem? Might it be the scanner - or how about Vuescan itself? Are perhaps its Nikon drivers poorly optimised for the device, as compared to its Minolta and Epson scanner, for instance?

Wondering if I should try installing Nikon's own drivers or Silverfast.

 

[brbo]

I got rid of CS8000 a while ago so I can't check the preview times myself anymore, but I don't remember Vuescan taking nearly that long to make a preview...

I'd backup and then delete Vuescan settings and setup Vuescan settings from scratch. Disable Fine mode, disable multisampling, lock RGB exposure to 1. Enable display of raw scan during the scan and look at the progress and _listen_ to the scanner during the low res prescan...

 

[albireo]

Thanks - tried that. No change. My next attempts will be

- try a different firewire cable
- try a different firewire PCI-e card
- try Nikonscan instead of Vuescan.

Will report back. Pity the preview is so slow - the actual scans are absolutely incredible.

 

[MattKing]

Have you reached out to Ed Hamrick and his son (the owners of Vuescan)?
It may be a problem with Vuescan's implementation of drivers.

 

[albireo]

Have you reached out to Ed Hamrick and his son (the owners of Vuescan)?
It may be a problem with Vuescan's implementation of drivers.

Thanks - I did and got a very terse reply asking me to do as poster #2 above suggests. But I suspect you're onto something. I wonder if there are varying degrees of success when reverse engineering old scanner drivers from multiple brands.

 

[brbo]

I wonder if there are varying degrees of success when reverse engineering old scanner drivers from multiple brands.

Definitely.

I've had a number of scanners that work quite differently with Vuescan compared to original software (Microtek 120tf and Canon fs400us come to mind). That being said, I don't remember any Vuescan problems or oddities with CS8000.

How are scan times (not preview times!) at lower resolutions compared to 4000dpi? Also worth trying is selecting a custom resolution. Scanners normally have a few "native" resolutions. If you select one that is not native the scanner (or scanner software) will request a scan at the next native resolution and then downsample to the user selected resolution. Selecting something very low should for the scanner to scan at it lowest native resolution...

I would still suggest _listening_ to the preview sequence and see what you can deduce from that. As stepper motor needs to make bigger steps during low resolution scans or previews those tend to be noisier (choppier?). If preview sounds as "smooth" as 4000dpi then that would suggest the scanner is actually previewing at much higher stepper motor resolution than 667dpi. I'd definitely download Silverfast demo to see if Vuescan is in fact the culprit.

Although I don't think that firewire drivers are your problem but you did install the legacy firewire win10 drivers, right?

 

[albireo]

Definitely.

I've had a number of scanners that work quite differently with Vuescan compared to original software (Microtek 120tf and Canon fs400us come to mind). That being said, I don't remember any Vuescan problems or oddities with CS8000.

How are scan times (not preview times!) at lower resolutions compared to 4000dpi? Also worth trying is selecting a custom resolution. Scanners normally have a few "native" resolutions. If you select one that is not native the scanner (or scanner software) will request a scan at the next native resolution and then downsample to the user selected resolution. Selecting something very low should for the scanner to scan at it lowest native resolution...

I would still suggest _listening_ to the preview sequence and see what you can deduce from that. As stepper motor needs to make bigger steps during low resolution scans or previews those tend to be noisier (choppier?). If preview sounds as "smooth" as 4000dpi then that would suggest the scanner is actually previewing at much higher stepper motor resolution than 667dpi. I'd definitely download Silverfast demo to see if Vuescan is in fact the culprit.

Although I don't think that firewire drivers are your problem but you did install the legacy firewire win10 drivers, right?

Thanks for this - a wealth of info. I'm going through your suggestions one by one. My findings so far

1. I installed the demo version of Silverfast. Silverfast seems to call a preview a 'prescan'. The time need to complete a prescan of a 6x8 frame (16bit grayscale) is 1 minute 20seconds. Vuescan does it in 1 minute 27 seconds. However, it appears Silverfast has another function that does a thumbnail scan of all the frames in the strip. This produces poststamp size previews of all frames and it does take very little time, suggesting the hardware is actually able to do a quick preview pass. The movement of the motor is, in this case, smooth: no steps are heard.
2. I wasn't aware I had to install any legacy drivers. My pci-e card was recognised by Windows 10 and is listed in the device manager as 'VIA 1394 OHCI Compliant Host Controller'. Are you hinting at the fact that this driver might be incorrect?
3. Listening to the preview - I definitely hear the motor going through steps. This is surprising, because my other film scanner do no seem to step during the preview: the glide smoothly across the frame in a handful of seconds.
4. I tried setting a very low custom resolution in Vuescan (something like 400dpi). It would appear the scanner still goes through the frame at the lowest 'hardware' resolution (Vuescan suggests it's 667dpi) and, once the preview is done, Vuescan actually _downsamples the visualised preview making it more blurry.

 

[MattKing]

2. I wasn't aware I had to install any legacy drivers. My pci-e card was recognised by Windows 10 and is listed in the device manager as 'VIA 1394 OHCI Compliant Host Controller'. Are you hinting at the fact that this driver might be incorrect?

Vuescan uses one of two options:
1) its own driver for the scanner; or
2) in some cases, the driver that came from the scanner manufacturer.
\the reference to "legacy driver" might refer to #2.

 

[shutterfinger]

Download the free version of Drive Booster https://www.iobit.com/en/driver-booster.php and run it. When the scan has completed you can select which drivers to update or update all it finds. It works fine on my Win 10 Pro but not on my Win 7 Pro.
This will show if there is a newer driver for your card.

 

[brbo]

2. I wasn't aware I had to install any legacy drivers. My pci-e card was recognised by Windows 10 and is listed in the device manager as 'VIA 1394 OHCI Compliant Host Controller'. Are you hinting at the fact that this driver might be incorrect?

I was under impression that MS discontinued firewire support in Win 10. Obviously your card came with OEM drivers? When I installed my PCI firewire card I had to install MS Legacy Firewire drivers (that they released as a separate download) to get my scanner working...

 

[albireo]

Quick update on this -

I've since installed the Nikon Drivers and Software. It took literally 2 minutes on my Win10 64bit machine. I followed the instructions provided by Graeme Hardie https://lincolnscan.co.uk/Coolscan.html. I was surprised at how smooth the whole thing was. The software and drivers both work perfectly with my LS8000 - fully stable.

Long story short: on my setup, the Nikon Coolscan software and drivers seem to drive my scanner better than Vuescan.

Firstly, the Nikon platforms allows to do a quick 'thumbnail' preview. You load a strip of 120 film, select via the interface whether its 6x4.5/6x6/6x7/6x8/6x9 and click a button. 10 seconds later you get thumbnail-sized previews of ALL frames in your strip. You can then rotate to achieve correct orientation, or select frames to scan in a batch scan. Vuescan does not give me this.

Once a thumbnail is selected, we can then proceed with a 'preview' or a 'scan'. A preview of a 6x9 frame takes, in Nikonscan, about 35 seconds, as opposed to circa 1 minute and 40 seconds in Vuescan.

Unless there is something seriously wrong with my Vuescan Professional installation - something that I wasn't able to fix even by removing the tool completely and re-installing - it's quite clear to me that Nikonscan

1. works perfectly well on a modern Win10 machine
2. drives a Coolscan 8000 better than Vuescan

Another important point is that Nikonscan is compatible with my 'flat scan' workflow. It is possible to deactivate all post-processing, obtain a linear positive scan, and then do any adjustment/inversion on the 14bit/channel raw .tif outside of the scanning software. Great!

Hope the above is of use to anyone else struggling with slow speed in Vuescan. I'm still a big fan of this tool and will keep using it with my other scanners of course.