Today, with the average age of movie film being about 35-40 years old, simply transferring the film without improvement is unacceptable for most customers. Over 80% of the film we see has significant graininess, scratches, exposure issues, and color shifting from the breakdown of the film. Over time, these problems only get worse. We use dedicated film restoration machines which were used by Hollywood Movie Studios in the 1990's to restore Hollywood Films. Now, you can have similar improvements made to your old movie films.* 

Below are example film frames to illustrate our restoration technology. For more information, please see Hollywood Restoration Details and Restoration Limitations sections.

 

The Hollywood Restoration Difference
Original Film	Restored Film
The Film came in looking like the image on the left. Notice the color, scratches and grain issues. The same film was scanned and restored using the Platinum process and appears on the right. You can see that the colors are much better, the image is sharper and most of the grain and scratches are gone.
Original Film	Restored Film
In this example, the original film has degraded the exposure significantly and the color has shifted to blue. This is very common. When you look at the corrected image you can see that the color and exposure were corrected as much as possible. You can also see that there isn't much detail in the girls face. When you take a dark area and try to correct it, it will be very grainy and will lake detail.
The images above are from amateur film in average condition. Film that is overly dark, light or grainy will not turn out as good. We cannot improve film that is blurry, flickering (strobing on original film), shot out of frame, damaged due to humidity and mildew or double exposed.

Hollywood Restoration Technology - Setting Ourselves Apart

These dedicated film restoration machines were used by Hollywood Movie Studios in the 1990's to restore Hollywood Films. Now, you can have similar improvements made to your old movie films*.  This technology is the only frame by frame correction system today that significantly improves scratch/grain, exposure and color shifting issues.

The restoration doesn't change the look or feel of the film. Some customers are concerned that the video will come back looking like it has been falsely colorized. It is actually just the opposite. The restored film will reverse the color shifting, darkening of the film and can remove many of the scratches and grain. The goal is to get the video to look like the film did originally.

Our frame by frame corrections are done as each frame is read individually. For a typical order, we are able to remove 50-75% of the graininess and scratches, correct any color shifting, and correct or enhance any overly dark (underexposed) areas.

Restoration Capabilities

It is important to keep in mind that our restoration starts with the current quality and condition of the film. The better shape the film is in when we receive it, the more we'll have to work with to improve it. If the film is in good condition, we will most likely be able to restore it to its original condition or better. On the other hand if the film is in poor condition, we will be able to improve it but not to its original condition. For example, if the color is almost totally faded, we will have very little  to work with and would not be able to totally restore the color.

Lets use a scale of 1 to 10 to represent the quality of the film (see illustration below). We'll use a Hollywood film to represent a 10 at any give time.  So, for example, a film that had an initial quality of 9 degraded moderately to a quality rating of 6 today. We might be able to restore the film to a 9, (its initial quality) if not better because we have more to work with. On the other hand, a film which had an initial quality of 7 that degraded significantly to a quality rating of 3 today, might only be restored to a 5 because we had so much less to work with.

      

So, even though our restoration techniques are very good, we are limited by both the initial quality of the film, and the current quality of the film. We might be able to restore an amateur film with a quality of 6 to a 9, but cannot restore an amateur film with a quality of 2 to a 9 because we have so much less to work with. 

*Quality of restoration is dependent upon condition of existing film stock; severely deteriorated original materials may be beyond the reach of even the most sophisticated restoration methods. Click here for more information.