Digital restoration.
In early 1997 when this publication was finished almost all film was restored by creating a new film image of the original. The established principle of preserving both the film image and the film format has been a guiding principle for many years and has been successful in many archives. This has occasionally lead to some unfortunate situations where some archives transferred nitrate film to safety film and then destroyed the original film regardless of it’s actual condition, and regardless of whether the restoration was the best that could be done.
Few archives transferred everything they could and are now left with just the really difficult but invaluable material that could not reasonably be restored by known photographic methods. Those in that happy position now have to wait for technology to provide a new approach to their problems, nearly all of which are either cases of serious physical damage, or [and mostly] colour films so faded that they cannot be restored photographically.
The rest of the archive world are in much deeper trouble; they simply cannot copy their existing collection quickly enough, and even if money were no object some film archives are so large that there are no laboratories capable of transferring the film, nitrate or acetate, onto modern film stocks before nitrate decay or acetate vinegar syndrome overtakes it. In addition, of course, money is the major problem, forcing archives to consider these other options.
Departing from film, if only for some of an archive’s collection, means an increasing dependence on equipment, as video records and digital masters need equipment to translate them to images. In television the life of a video record is only as long as the life of the playing equipment, and considerable less than any film system.
On a practical level, a digital master at video resolution [720 pixels/line by 625 lines] is a small box with three hours of programme, but at 35mm resolution [4000 pixels/line by 3000 lines] is a full store-room of many black boxes costing £0.5M and holding only 40 mins!