BBC new colour restoration technique using chroma dots

How the BBC have pioneered new software to allow colour extraction from black and white telerecordings using miniscule chroma information dots unwittingly embedded in the film.

Category:

Education

Tags:

• BBC
• restoration
• 16mm
• 35mm
• dad's
• army
• television
• archive

[baffledboy]

@mattyCox: this was from BBC2's Newsnight.

[vk3ase]

I was working in the telecine department at ABC

TV in melbourne in the 1980's. Black and white film telerecordings were still being made into the start of the colour age. I noticed that when a recording taken off a colour signal was replayed the wave form monitor came alive with hf information just like a colour film and the pix monitor was crawling with dots. I fiddled a bit and got some colour reproduction, when i mentioned this to the powers that be no one was the least bit interested.

[ReelChange]

An amazing achievement by James Insell and his team. Hopefully this process will go on to be applied to all the candidate material in the BBC archive.

[johnxgin1]

@Marshalsify like Timeslip and Tightrope (both starring spencer banks)

[Marshalsify]

Don't forget ITV color programmes and others have been wiped and yet to be restored in color to full glory!

[borgduck]

Part 2 of Planet Of The Daleks or Part 1 of Invasion Of The Dinosaurs? WHICH was he talking about?!!!

[MegaWayneD]

@wx4newengland Doesn't work with NTSC I'm afraid, it only works with programs that were originally in PAL colour.

[masterstarfox]

@ReelChange and hopefully ATV shows that are on 16mm black and white film like timeslip(1970/71)

[wx4newengland]

I wonder if america could do this to my moms fave soap, all my children whos 1970-71 season in color was wiped at abc in america.

[masterstarfox]

@OofusTwillip it also goes for she(1935)mervin.c.cooper wanted to shoot the film in colour but r.k.o pulled the budget at the last minute and it had to be made in black and white.

[AbuAvital]

You can only restore colour if you have a tape, too bad that so much was permanantly errased.

[ksteiger]

Damn. It "sees" the individual phosphor dots in the shadow mask of the color tube. It's like they used a combination of color separation and digital encoding without even knowing it. AMAZING!!!