Restoration Project Filmgalerie Krems

General:

The film "A travel through Austria. The Wachau" represents the oldest colored film about the Wachau. It was produced in the early 1920s.Today it is possible to watch this film in a former unknown quality. Since 2008 historic and cultural important film material from the "Filmarchive Austria" and the "Austrian Filmmuseum" is scanned and digitally restored by the "Filmgalerie" in Krems. Dust busting, stabilisation and deflickering is done with DIAMANT-Film Restoration. After the restoration the images are put to film again. All over the world there are more than 2.2 million meters of heavily damaged film from the years between 1900 and 1960. With former techniques the breakup of these films could be stopped, but already existing defects couldn't be fixed. Right now those defects can be fixed with digital techniques. This is the chance to bring back films witch are part of our legacy onto the screen in former unknown quality.

 

 

 

 

The most complex part of the restoration process is the removal of dust and scratches which are generated during the copy process of the film, because in this case the defects are part of the film frames. Therefore the digital restoration is the only method to fix the lost information within the images. Even if there are large defects in the material the digital method can be used to reconstruct the lost information from the information within the images before and after the current frame. (16 to 20 frames per second) The films are scanned with the "Wet-Gate" technology of the Arri company. After scanning the films are restored with the DIAMANT-Film Restoration Software by HS-ART. After the film is fully restored it is put onto a 35mm film again, because at the moment there is no solution that is more secure than that to store the data on film again.