Restoration
At Advanced Media we see a real value in not only transferring and preserving our customer’s media and content, but also in improving it.
Video and digital restoration is a critical factor in enhancing the viewing experience,especially in today’ s media rich environment with large HD screens as a universal standard.
We bring a wealth of knowledge and experience in servicing the motion picture & TV broadcast industry to the restoration table. While restoration can be an extremely slow and extensive, frame-by-frame process, we have created a solution that improves almost any type of film and video in a relatively short period of time.
We are capable of addressing a myriad of film and video issues and defects, such as excessive grain, flickering, jittering, scratches, sound glitches, stability, color, contrast,and sound clarity to name but a few.
Main problems in restoring film:
* Dirt, dust* Scratches, tears* Color fade, color change* Excessive film grain – A copy of an existing film has all of the film grain from the original as well as the film grain in the copy.* Missing scenes and sound; censored or edited out for re-release* Shrinkage: linear and “across the web” (width), as well as localized puckering around large 1 to 2 perforation film cement splices, this is most common in silent and very early sound films. Highly shrunken film, 1.5% or higher, must be copied on modified equipment or the film will very likely be damaged.
Modern, digital film restoration utilizes the following steps:
1. Expertly clean the film of dirt and dust
2. Repair all film tears with clear polyester tape or splicing cement
3. Scan each frame into a digital file
4. Restore the film frame by frame by comparing each frame to adjacent frames- this can be done by utilizing computer algorithms and manual checking the result.
5. Fix frame alignment- fix jitter and weave caused by the misalignment of adjacent film frames due to movement of film within the sprockets…This corrects the issue of
holes developing on either side of the frame. This causes frames to be slightly off center.
6. Fix color and lighting changes – This corrects flickering and slight color changes from one frame to another due to aging of the film
7. Restore areas blocked by dirt and dust by using parts of images in other frames
8. Restore scratches by using parts of images in other frames
9. Enhance frames by reducing film grain noise. Film foreground/background detail about the same size as the film grain or smaller is blurred or lost in making the film.
Comparing a frame with adjacent frames allows detail information to be reconstructed since a given small detail may be split between more film grains from one frame to another.