DIGITAL FILM RESTORATION
Most old movie film needs digital restoration. The colors have faded or color shifted, the overall exposure has darkened and you probably have some amount of surface damage. This is normal. Even if you have old Black and white film, it will also color shift (towards the sepia tones) and will get darker and have surface damage.
This is where Video Conversion Experts comes in. We’ve been working with film scanning companies for years to build digital restoration into the scanners. In addition to the digital restoration the scanner can do, an editor will also go through the scanned images and color correct them as much as possible on our Pro HD and Pro 2K process. Check out our post on our digital restoration services.
Digital Restoration is one of those things that is normally reserved for Hollywood movies only. Not anymore. We’ve been working with film scanning manufactures for years to incorporate the latest digital restoration technology. It is always better to try and perform digital restoration at scan time than after the scan.
The goal of any 8mm or Super 8 film restoration is to get a digital image that looks as good as the original film. So, that means a few things. Digital restoration won’t fix original recording problems. If the film was shot over or underexposed, double-exposed, blurry, etc, the restored digital version will be that way too.
What has happened to the 8mm or Super 8 film since it was taken is that it has color shifted (toward blue in most cases) and has gotten darker. Our 8mm film restoration will be able to reverse this color shift in almost all cases and can lighten up the darkening that has been going on for decades.
One other aspect of film restoration is that the film needs to be scanned at or above the resolution of the film if you ever want to get a digital video as good as the 8mm or Super 8 film. Most customers miss this very important point. For example, if you scan 8mm film at 480 lines even though it has 800 to 1000, you will never get a digital video, no matter how much you restore it, to look at good as the 8mm film. So, scanning at 1080 or 1556 lines is the first step in any successful restoration. This is why we only offer 8mm and Super 8 film restoration on our Pro HD and Pro 2K processes.
In addition to color and exposure, our film restoration can hide about 50-80% of the surface defects. Surface defects can include scratches, nicks, dust, or dirt now adhered to the film. There are also defects that have gone past the surface and into the image layer. These cannot be fixed. So, for example, a deep scratch into the image layer cannot be fixed.
So, if you are looking to get the best film restoration when you convert your 8mm film to DVD, go no further than Video Conversion Experts.