MOTION PICTURE FILM RESTORATION & PRESERVATION HDR WORKFLOW

with XML METADATA

Your film is acclimatized for 24-hours in an STP static-free, temperature and humidity-controlled, positive-pressure clean room with no access to direct sunlight. Your film and its canisters are then photographed and logged using Structured XML Metadata, documenting its journey toward restoration, digitization, and preservation.

MANUAL FILM INSPECTION & REPAIR

Your film undergoes an end-to-end, manual inspection of all existing splices and sprocket holes, using Moviola and Neumade hand-cranked rewinds. Poor-quality splices are repaired and restored using Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS), Scientific Award-Winning, Pressa CIR-Catozzo self-perforating, adhesive-tape film splicers, then repacked by hand winding to metal film reels or film cores with fresh, head and tail film leader.

LARGE-FORMAT, AREA IMAGER SCANNER

As magnetic tapes age, the binders holding the oxide particles deteriorate causing Sticky-Shed Syndrome. As oxide flakes off, signals can become unrecoverable. Our engineers can scientifically reverse the effects of Sticky-Shed Syndrome through Reverse Hydrolysis. This involves slowly heating your tapes in a Laboratory Vacuum Furnace, while controlling the temperature to within 1° degree. Humidity is carefully monitored, as is the Curie Point of your media’s particular magnetic particle formulation. After many hours or days of such treatments, your media regains many of its youthful properties and successful digitization can occur.

PTR DUST & PARTICLE REMOVAL SYSTEM

Both sides of your physically-restored film are fed through nearly 30 linear inches of low-tack, particle transfer rollers, removing microscopic dust immediately prior to your film entering the 20-megapixel, large-format HDR area imager.

ALL-CHROME, SPROCKETLESS FILM PATH

with 3-AXIS OPTICAL PIN REGISTRATION

Damaged sprockets & splices are ignored as the all-chrome film path gently transports your film through the scanner. A proprietary optical pin registration system perfectly stabilizes damaged, warped, or shrunken film on X, Y, and Z axes, requiring no edge guides or post-scan adjustments.

ALL MOTION PICTURE FILM FORMATS

From 8 mm to 70 mm and everything in between, we support more film formats than any other company. Click below for a complete list of supported film formats.

8 mm to 28 mm Formats
8 mm
Super 8 mm Commag
Single-8 Cartridge
Double 8 mm
Double Super 8 mm
UltraPan 8 mm
8 mm fullcoat SEPMAG
Max 8 mm
Super 8B
8 mm Panoramic
8 mm Polaroid Polavision
8 mm Technicolor Magi-Cartridge
9.5 mm Pathescope
9.5 mm Bingoscope
9.5 mm Duplex
16 mm 110
16 mm commag
16 mm double perf
16 mm magnetic
16 mm negative
16 mm optical ComOpt
16 mm positive
16 mm Fullcoat sepmag
16 mm super
17.5 mm Biotac
17.5 mm Biokam
17.5 mm Hughes
17.5 mm Gaumont
17.5 mm Clou
17.5 mm Duoscope
17.5 mm Movette
17.5 mm Pathé Rural
17.5 mm Fullcoat sepmag
19 mm Kinetoscope
21 mm Mirograph
24 mm APS
28 mm Pathé Kok

 

35 mm
35 mm 126
35 mm 135
35 mm 828
35 mm commag
35 mm Full coatSEPMAG
35 mm positive
35 mm negative
35 mm magnetic
35 mm optical
35 mm ComOpt
35 mm Mini-Max
35 mm Vistascope
35 mm Vario-35
35 mm Vario-35A
35 mm Single Cinerama
35 mm Hexiplex
35 mm Row-film
35 mm Ultra Toruscope
35 mm Imagination FX 7012
35 mm Univisium
35 mm Maxivision
35 mm Maxivision 48
35 mm sepmag
35 mm CinameScope
35 mm Dynamic Frame
35 mm VistaVision
35 mm Technirama
35 mm Anamorphic
35 mm Techniscope
35 mm super
35 mm Cinerama
35 mm Kinopanorama
35 mm Super VistaVision
35 mm Cinemiracle
35 mm Thrillarama
35 mm Magirama
35 mm Super Technirama
35 mm Kinopanorama
35 mm Circlorama
35 mm Circle Vision 200
35 mm Circle Vision 360
40 mm to 70 mm
40 mm 127
60 mm 120 220 620
65 mm 5-perf
65 mm Cinerama 360
65 mm Ultra Panavision
65 mm Varioscope
65 mm Dimension 150
65 mm Astrovision
65 mm Dynavision
65 mm Super Dimension 70
65 mm FuturVision 360
65 mm Showscan
65 mm Cinema 180
65 mm Swissorama 360
65 mm Iwerksphere
65 mm MotionMaster
65 mm Soviet 10
65 mm Vario-70
65 mm Imagine 360
70 mm 5-perf
70 mm Todd-AO
70 mm Ultra Panavision
70 mm Super Panavision
70 mm IMAX
70 mm OMNIMAX
70 mm Grandeur
70 mm IMAX Magic Carpet
70 mm IMAX HD
FMC Quadravision
Septorama
Wonderama

DIRECT OUTPUT TO FORMATS & CODECS

We directly output high-end formats and codecs, avoiding lossy concatenation errors caused by transcoding. Click HERE for a list of direct output formats and codecs.

ULBRICHT INTEGRATING SPHERE DIFFUSE, COOL-LED LIGHT SOURCE

A revolutionary Ulbricht Integrating Sphere creates a cool, diffuse, pure-white light source reducing the appearance of scratches on the emulsion side of the film base without softening, blurring, or altering the image. Unlike collimated light sources of telecines and line imagers, there is no risk of damage to the dye layers due to excessive heat. Further, off-axis photons from the Ulbricht Sphere pass through film scratches without deflection, resulting in a brighter, more complete image than all other types of scanners.

MULTI-FLASH HDR IMAGING

Single-pass, multi-flash High Dynamic Range imaging captures unparalleled detail with extremely low noise. ITU-R BT.2020, Rec. 2020, and ATSC 3.0 are already HDR. Release your film’s full potential for higher resolution, higher brightness, and wider color gamut as the world migrates to HDR10 and the dynamic metadata of HDR10+.

SCENE BY SCENE COLOR CORRECTION

While other telecine facilities just set a one light color adjustment, we take the time to perform scene-to-scene, best light correction. The result is a highly-gradable, 10-bit output. Without this critical first step, future shot-by-shot color grading is limited or simply not possible, as important gamma metadata and tristimulus color values are lost.

CHROMOGENIC DYE SHIFT CORRECTION

The onset of acetate film base degradation — commonly known as Vinegar Syndrome — often signals the inevitable start of irreversible chromogenic yellow and cyan dye shift, commonly referred to as red dye shift or magenta dye shift. Our Industry Leading color cast removal process, corrects most common decay, restoring dye layer density loss.

STRUCTURED XML METADATA LOGGING

For every project, we create metadata following DCMI, Dublin Core. We also use LMER & PREMIS Data Models as well as NIEM and Library of Congress ANSI/NISO Z39.8 standards for descriptive, structural, administrative, rights management, and preservation metadata.

LONG-TERM ARCHIVAL STORAGE

After scanning your film, it is low-tension slow-wound back to your reel or core. We also offer archival-grade, vented film canisters, film cores, and plastic or steel reels. Ask about our human and machine-readable barcodes, onsite NAS and cloud backup featuring checksum data integrity verification, and long-term cold storage.