Having assessed the four Tarax Show Christmas Pantomime kine scans, it is time to plan out a restoration roadmap.
Restoration Steps
The steps now required to restore these scans ready for release on DVD are (not necessarily in this order):
- Stabilisation of jitter if possible and practical. Tests have shown jitter can be most accurately measured and corrected at high resolution.
- Downsampling of the scanned frames to PAL SD+ resolution — this means PAL SD resolution (720 x 576 pixels) plus allowance for the overscan.
- Grading of the video levels so that white peaks and shadow detail are not clipped — i.e not too much contrast. At the same time, we don’t want the result to be “flat”. We want want to utilise the full “broadcast safe” tonal range.
- Reduction of film artefacts: dust and scratches if possible and practical.
- Cropping to PAL SD resolution which is required for DVD release.
- Repair and equalisation of the soundtrack.
- Mastering for DVD or release on the web.
In the next post, we’ll try out some commercial film restoration software and see how good a job it does at stabilisation and dust and scratch removal.