Transfer of film images to video.

The traditional transfer of film to broadcast or lower quality tape is a relatively straightforward process, once the film is cleaned and repaired, just as it needs to be for film restoration. Modern telecine machinery is continuous motion capstan friction drive and can handle more severely shrunken film than any unmodified printer. In practice, telecine operators are generally unused to correcting archive film and need retraining, otherwise they use whatever technology on their desk to create an image as close to a modern view of image technology as they can. This is not serious in black and white film but is ethically unsound, and certainly not wanted for early colour and coloured film. Telecine operations need new set-up procedures for these films and especially for tinted and toned material. A telecine operator meeting a combined tinted and toned print for the first time is quite unable to proceed without strict guidance and training.

The very flexibility of the telecine system, with it’s extreme range of contrast, masking, programmable scratch and defect elimination, and colour balance controls, does enable broadcast quality restorations to be made of film that cannot be restored by film methods, to film quality, without huge effort, skill and cost. This is particularly true of faded colour prints and early unmasked colour negatives. It is unfortunate that many films remain in archives unrestored, even unseen, because restoration to film is too costly or not practical, when a broadcast quality tape could be made with all the general quality restored except the resolution.