Professional Media Archival Solutions

Film Transfer and Digitizing

Providing access to motion picture film in your collection presents some unique challenges.  Film is often thought of as an ideal format for long-term storage, because it doesn't require a machine to convert the content into an image that is viewable.  However, viewing the film using projection equipment risks causing severe damage if the film is starting to shrink or if the projector hasn't been maintained properly.  Damage resulting from projecting a film could include everything from scratching the image to tearing the film.    Unless great care is taken, it is not recommended to use projectors to view older film prints.  And if you have negative film prints in your collection, these present even more of a challenge.

Scene Savers can help by providing professional film scanning and transfer services.  These include:

• High quality transfer and scanning to digital files
  
• Inspection and repair of edge damage and tears in the film
• Replacing loose splices with new tape or cement splices
• Accessioning film collections, including descriptive information and metadata about each individual film
• Cleaning to remove dust, dirt, fingerprints and edit marks
• Placing film into new vented archival containers on archival cores
• Digital noise reduction, grain removal/reduction, scratch reduction
• Image stabilization
• Color correction

Scene Savers handles color and Black & White film, both silent and with sound, including both optical and magnetic sound tracks (sound on film).  We offer professional transfer of 8mm, Super 8mm, 16mm and 35mm films, including separate sound systems such as Nagra audio (1/4" audio track on separate reel with pilot tone) and full coat mag sound in mono and stereo.  Our film transfer systems include Lasergraphics Scanstation 5k, and Spirit HD Datacine, which provide very gentle film handling (for shrunken or warped film) and outstanding quality, up to 5k resolution.  These systems work in conjunction with DaVinci Resolve software and DaVinci 2K hardware based digital color correction systems which allow restoration of the color on even severely faded films.

Why is Scene Savers the Preferred Choice for hundreds of film archives?
Scene Savers has more than 30 years of experience working with motion picture film. We understand the unique challenges of working with archival film.  You can rest assured that your films will be properly cared for and handled in the safest manner possible at Scene Savers. 

In addition to general film transfer, our specialty is transferring athletics and news films.  While the basics of film transfer are the same for most all films, these type of films present unique challenges for creating metadata and capturing descriptive information about the films.  News films, for example, usually consist of multiple shorter reels combined together into larger reels.  However, in order to make searching for content easier in the future, the stories must be described individually.  Scene Savers has developed custom tools to allow us to transfer these films in an efficient manner, while still providing individual files and descriptions for each news segment.  Athletics films generally weren't shot by professional camera operators, so lighting levels tend to vary widely, requiring special attention to detail during transfer.

Do not trust your valuable film collections to just anyone.  Call Scene Savers today to discuss how we can help with your collection.