Some filmmakers and archivists have successfully built homemade, frame-by-frame telecine machines. These units combine a CCD chip for digital video capture with a film projector capable of advancing film frame-by-frame.
Because true telecine transfers film on a meticulous, frame-by-frame basis, real-time telecine is a misnomer. Nevertheless, many tinkerers have made non-archival "telecine" machines that capture footage as it runs through a film projector in real time. Real-time telecine is merely a variation on a traditional film chain transfer and involves a film projector aimed at a miniature rear-projection screen or the lens of an analog or digital video camera.
Richard Kinch developed the Flatbed Scanner Digital Telecine (FSDT) method. The home user scans short strips of film frames at high resolution and then crops and reassembles them using a non-linear editor (NLE). Though time-consuming, FSDT qualifies as a true form of telecine because the user captures each film frame individually.