Scanning and Restoring The Witness — Part 3

“The Witness” is a short, black and white film drama made at GTV9 circa 1960 by Denzil Howson and Mike Browning. The third in a set of posts completes the scanning and restorating this film.

The Film: “Yoga And The Individual” from 1966

In 1966, Melbourne film maker John Murray undertook to make a documentary film about the subject of Yoga. The film is called “Yoga and the Individual” and it won a Silver Award at the 1966 Australian Film Institute awards. This post discusses some of the film’s history and the recent scanning and restoration of an original copy.

Scanning and Restoring The Witness — Part 2

“The Witness” is a short, black and white film drama made at GTV9 circa 1960 by Denzil Howson and Mike Browning. The second in a set of posts about scanning and restorating this film.

Scanning and Restoring The Witness — Part 1

“The Witness” is a short, black and white film drama made at GTV9 circa 1960 by Denzil Howson and Mike Browning. The first in a set of posts about scanning and restorating this film.

Approaching the Soundtrack

With the video file of Marianne stabilised, dust-busted and awaiting only level adjustments, it’s time to turn attention to the soundtrack and the improvements which can be made there.

Dust-Busting with Loki

The Digital Vision Loki software at CameraQuip in Melbourne proved to be an inexpensive way to reduce dust marks on the Marianne video.

A Closer Look at the Golden Eye Scanner

We take a closer look at the Golden Eye scanner at Cameraquip and learn about the Loki processing and restoration software.

An Introduction to Cameraquip and the Golden Eye Scanner

How a chance contact with a former Tarax Show viewer led to discovering a new film scanning option in Melbourne.

Investigating Another Dust & Scratches Repair System

Digital Vision make a suite of film restoration software under the name “Phoenix”. I began a practical investigation of this sophisticated and mature software.

Situation Review After Two Years of Silence

This blog has been silent for two years, but progress on film restoration has been on-going, albeit with some significant pauses due to other demands on my time.

Home-Grown Jitter Stabilisation — Part 7 — The Stabilisation Works!

Having spent the previous six posts explaining the jitter stabilisation process for the 1963 kine of Marianne, let’s take a look at how well it works.

Home-Grown Jitter Stabilisation — Part 6 — A Stabilisation Workflow

For those of you not completely bamboozled by this excursion into the very-technical, here is a summary of the whole stabilisation process developed for the Marianne kine scan.

Home-Grown Jitter Stabilisation — Part 5 — Odds and Ends

In this post we look at a few odds and ends that arose during the stabilisation exercise: Dealing with frame defects and splice bumps, adding frame numbers, and re-combining frames into a video file.

Home-Grown Jitter Stabilisation — Part 4 — A Bit of Geometry and Maths

The last post described using image correlation to measure the motion of the white dots in each of the four frame corners. These white dots move together with the video raster. Stabilising the white dots will stabilise the unwanted movement or jitter of the video raster.

Home-Grown Jitter Stabilisation — Part 3 — Image Correlation to Detect Movements

Now we come to the topic of how to measure the frame-to-frame movement of the little white dots in the corners of the frame.

Home-Grown Jitter Stabilisation — Part 2 — Three Kinds of Motion

In this post we put some visuals to this idea of stabilising the jitter in the kine scans.

Home-Grown Jitter Stabilisation — Part 1 — Could it be Done?

An examination of the jitter and how it is reflected in the movement of little white dots in the corner of each frame. These could be used as the basis of a stabilisation algorithm.

More Digital Restoration Tests with Promoscape in Melbourne

Promoscape in Melbourne offered to do a short restoration test using the Diamant restoration software from Europe.

Adjusting Framing and Levels in Final Cut Pro

Now begins the somewhat tedious work of reviewing the scan shot-by-shot and scene-by-scene. From this I compiled a log of the scenes, giving each scene a name and noting timecodes.

Finding the Smallest Video Raster Crop Size for Downsampling Calculations

Finding the smallest video raster crop size for downsampling required scrubbing through the 2K scan and measuring the video raster dimensions at the locations where the raster seems to have a noticeably smaller size.

Where Have We Been and What’s Next?

Wow, we’re up to the 23rd post in this blog series on restoring the Tarax Show Christmas Pantomime kines. Let’s take a breather and review where we’ve been so far and then map out the next steps.

The Relevance of Pixel Aspect Ratio

How does this Pixel Aspect Ratio business affect the process of preparing these kine scans for DVD release?

The Mysteries of Pixel Aspect Ratio

In this post we’ll talk about the historical background of pixel aspect ratio (PAR).

The Mathematics of Downsampling the High Definition Scans for PAL SD

Continuing with some calculations to derive the optimum downsampling ratio.

Editing Tools, Grading and When to Downsample

So far we’ve covered preparatory work before scanning, various attempts and experiences with scanning the kines, an analysis of the scans and some experiments with digital restoration.

Experiments in Digital Restoration with PFClean

I came across PFClean from The Pixel Farm in the UK. PFClean was less expensive than some of the other options and, especially important, it would run on a Macintosh system. The Pixel Farm offered me a free one week trial, so I took them up.

Mapping out a Restoration Roadmap

Having assessed the four Tarax Show Christmas Pantomime kine scans, it is time to plan out a restoration roadmap.

Re-Scanning The Golden Princess (1962)

The scan of The Golden Princess from the Spirit Datacine suffers rather badly from some of the defects to which “line scanners” like the Spirit are susceptible.

Assessing the Scans Part 4 — Soundtrack

In assessing these kine scans we come finally and briefly to the sound tracks. Each kine has an optical soundtrack, some are variable area, others variable density.

Assessing the Scans Part 3 — Video Levels

This post discusses video levels in the four kine scans. For the purposes of this discussion, we will talk about luminance values only since the Tarax Show scans are black and white and the colour information has been removed from the scans.

Assessing the Scans Part 2 — Jitter

Jitter is unwanted rapid small movements of the video image vertically and horizontally caused by the mechanical processes of recording to and reproducing from film.

Assessing the Scans Part 1 — Anatomy of a Kine Frame

With four scans under our belt, let’s take a look at them in more detail as an aid to planning how best to restore them for DVD release.

Dealing with the Vinegar Syndrome Reel

Vinegar syndrome causes shrinkage of the film base. Shrinkage was the most likely reason the 1959 kine of “Merry Make-Believe” would not play on a 16mm projector without constantly losing registration with the pull-down claw.

Collecting and Inspecting the 2K Scans at Cutting Edge

It was with excited anticipation that I returned again to Cutting Edge to see first hand the high resolution scans of the Tarax Show kines. With high quality, high resolution scans from the film, the project to restore these productions for DVD release could now move forward.

Preparing the Films for Scanning on the Spirit

Having found a Spirit Datacine in Brisbane and tested some of the Tarax Show kines, it was time to prepare the full length 16mm reels for scanning.

Cutting Edge Brisbane to the Rescue with a Spirit Datacine

The discovery of a Spirit Datacine at Cutting Edge in Brisbane was a relief after the negative experience with the Sydney company. This time I could see the equipment for myself, and discuss in person what was needed.

Seeking Telecine Services in a Post-Film Era

When the Sydney telecine company failed to deliver a useable scan, the search was on again for a quality film scanning service.

Troubles in Telecine Land — A Lesson in Not Believing Advertising Hype

By 2012 things had changed drastically in telecine land since the Spirit Datacine test done at The Post Lounge in 2008. It was a reflection of the wider changes sweeping through the film industry.

Exploring the Possibilities of Digital Restoration

I was curious whether digital restoration could be applied to the Tarax Show material to bring the image quality closer to the original video.

Telecine — Initial Experiments and the Spirit Datacine

With some inspiration from the Dr Who Restoration Project, I tracked down a Spirit Datacine at The Post Lounge at the Village Roadshow Studios on the Gold Coast, Queensland.

About the GTV9 Film Recording System Circa 1960

In this post we’re going to get a bit more technical and look into how these film copies (“kines”) were made from the original television productions. We’re going to delve into some technical history of film recordings at GTV9 circa 1960.

Compiling a List of Films and Their Condition

Here we compile a list of the 16mm film copies of the Tarax Show Christmas Pantomimes which are in Denzil Howson’s archive, and their condition.

Preserving and Restoring the Tarax Show Christmas Pantomimes

The year 1957 began the annual tradition of the “Christmas Pantomime” at GTV9. Each year my father wrote and produced a fantasy piece for the festive season. Fortunately they were all preserved on 16mm film.

About this Film Restoration Diary

In 2005 I inherited a collection of films made by my late father, some of which are of historical significance, in particular those dating from his work in the early days of Australian television at GTV9 in Melbourne circa 1956 to 1963.