Vintage Cloud

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audio-visual heritage Let’s unite to safeguard our

And how do we preserve the efforts in a longer time perspective? By breaking down the task into several steps, it is possible to turn mass digitization of films into realistic projects aided by workflow optimization and a certain level of process automation. And it is necessary to embrace a production-oriented mindset to be able to complete such a task within a reasonable timeframe. We can offer expertise, solution designs and workflow management across the entire processing eco-system from treatment of the analogue originals to securing accessibility to the enriched content for decades to come. Not all processes may be relevant for all digitization tasks - the archiving specialists can choose what are the most important steps for their specific projects.

The story told on film is just as important today as when it was captured. It is in our mutual interest to preserve the history caught on film, make it accessible and enable its sharing with all generations to come. It is truly a huge undertaking to initiate a mass-digitization project across all institutions. Where do we start? And how do we end?

Contact your local Piql partner for a complimentary, no-obligation consultation or go to piql.com/contact

Mass digitization at full quality and in real time becomes a reality.

Several factors make digitizing a motion picture film a real challenge: Fragility: Film reels can be delicate and prone to damage. They easily deteriorate over time and become brittle which leads to scratches, tears, or even breaking apart. Resolution: Film offers a very high resolution, and capturing all the detail and depth of a film image requires a high-quality scanner that can capture every tiny detail without losing any information. Color accuracy: Color films have multiple layers of emulsion that capture different color spectrums, making it difficult to capture the exact colors and hues of the original film image. The color grading process applied to transfer the film to digital format can be time-consuming and require a skilled professional. Frame rates: Film is typically shot at 24 frames per second, and capturing every frame accura tely is essential. However, some older movies were shot at different frame rates, and transferring them to digital format requires careful calibration. File size: Digitizing film at high resolution results in large file sizes and that can be challenging to store and manipulate. Large files require powerful computers and storage systems, which may increase the costs and complexity of the digitization process. By utilizing a modern AI-assisted processing box and optimized parameter settings to streamline each step of the work process, mass digitization at a professional level can now be achieved while ensuring quality and accuracy of the final digital product.

Application of advanced automation now enables completion of 97% of a task with satisfactory results at only 3% of the cost. However, achieving the outstanding 3% of perfection requires using up to remaining 97% of the required cost and time. For successful completion of a digitization project, it is crucial to begin with proper planning while having the right tools at hand.

Color timing/color calibration is also performed while scanning with the proprietary WRGB high intensity LED, diffuse light source. The machines are equipped with separate drive units for 16mm and 35mm and designed for easy operation, ensuring that they remain calibrated and optimized for their respective formats.

Every step is crucial to obtain the desired results.

PHYSICAL RESTORATION

Digitization of analogue media can take many forms. One of the most demanding, both time- and cost-wise, is capturing motion picture films.

All film and sound reels selected for digiti zation are checked, repaired, and rewound consistently to match. We offer analog viewers and rewinding machines for the purpose of preparing the reels for uninterrupted analog-to-digital transfer.

PHYSICAL DIGITIZATION

The Vintage Cloud Digitizers are designed as robust and reliable machines, capable of performing non-stop mass digitization tasks during the entire day. These high-end 4K scanners are sensitive machines with four plates, specifically designed to digitize various types of 16mm and 35mm film with all kinds of sound being digitized synchronously.

Contact your local Piql partner for a complimentary, no-obligation consultation or go to piql.com/contact

Contact your local Piql partner for a complimentary, no-obligation consultation or go to piql.com/contact

Multi lingual subtitles in a few hours. Smarter, Faster. Online.

DIGITAL RESTORATION

META-DATA EXTRACTION AND FILM INDEXING

Indexing is a crucial step to enable online search and retrieval of digitized media, however, it traditionally represents a time consuming and tedious task. With new AI-assisted tools, these processes can be highly automated, just like any successful mass-digitization project requires. Intelligent processing techniques such as object and face recognition, keyword extraction, transcription, and translation are utilized to describe the content of footage, allowing for fast retrieval of spe cific clips or elements with data pointers. Additionally, these processes can be corrected with ease and speed by way of human interaction.

With the help of AI-powered processing box algorithms , decayed films that have been digitized can be restored to a level that is comparable to the original viewing experience. These professional enhancements are non destructive with regards to the original capture and are applied to a full-resolution restoration clone. A wide range of filters can be easily configured to handle content seamlessly, even at resolutions exceeding 4K. The restoration tool is unique across the entire industry, offering advanced color grading, scratch and dust removal, image stabilization etc.

This makes mass restoration feasible to an unprecedented extent never seen before. The results are remarkable, delivered much faster, and at a fraction of the cost typically expected. You no longer have to be an expert to reap the benefits of advanced restoration tools – the expertise is programmed into the product features. To scale the processing capacity, more nodes can be inserted in parallel, to achieve, if desired, more than 1,000 hours of restoration per month.

The Vintage Cloud meta-data interface allows for smooth interaction yet advanced transcription correction and translation tools. This can be used for subtitling and translation into more than 100 languages. All is done on-line and more than 50 people can work simultaneously to solve a task within days or even hours – tasks that traditionally would take more months to complete.

Contact your local Piql partner for a complimentary, no-obligation consultation or go to piql.com/contact

Contact your local Piql partner for a complimentary, no-obligation consultation or go to piql.com/contact

The AI-processing of the digitized films runs deeper. It also identifies all the grey nuances and combined with object identification, automated re-colorization of footage originally captured on black and white film has now become a real and affordable possibility. The required GPU-processing (graphical processing unit) is massive – however it is all a matter of scaling. The results are impressive.

PRESERVATION ECOSYSTEM

AI makes us take it a step further.

Preservation platform piqlCONNECT

The output from the Vintage Cloud Ecosystem gives you all the requested metadata and a Digital Cinema Package (DCP) which is a collection of digital files to be processed in the piql Ecosystem. They consist of digital cinema audio, video, and data streams.

STRUCTURED METADATA PACKAGE

AIP PACKAGE

Preservation on piqlFilm

(IMF or DCP plus metadata.json)

TV broadcasters are increasingly utilizing this new technology to enhance clips used in documentaries and appeal to a wider audience. The recent movie blockbuster, They Shall Not Grow Old , directed by Peter Jackson , was the result of bringing real, 100-year-old footage of World War 1 back to life. The film’s restoration artists colorized and corrected old silent footage, creating a natural and immersive viewing experience that puts viewers in the shoes of wartime fighters. This was an impressive undertaking and experience.

“Our history is mainly documented in paper and film. Media that is under decay – especially film. The last 150 years of film documentation is deteriorating seriously fast. We need to accelerate our efforts to be able to preserve it and the stories it tells for all future generations. Our actions now will determine much of was posterity will know of this age. The scale of the heritage at risk is enormous. The task of digitizing all the obsolescent film and videotape formats in the world’s collection have already passed

the tipping point where there are not enough workable machines to do the job. We need a paradigm shift in our approach to digitization to rescue the remaining endan gered originals*. Instead of displaying paralysis and helplessness, we need to take action in a broader perspective and engage large-scale mass-digitization projects.”

Excerpts from “Audiovisual Archiving, UNESCO Memory of the World, 2016”

*UNESCO estimates that the World’s volume of audio-visual heritage material worth preserving is exceeding 200 million hours of footage.

Contact your local Piql partner for a complimentary, no-obligation consultation or go to piql.com/contact

Contact your local Piql partner for a complimentary, no-obligation consultation or go to piql.com/contact

The independent modules of audiovisual services are designed to allow clients to select services based on their particular requirements. The modules include restoration, colorization, intelligent metadata extraction, transcription, translation, transcoding and digital preservation. Using AI and automation accelerates com pletion of the tasks at least by the factor of 10 when compared to traditional methods. Additionally, working online and in parallel further enhances the speed factor of the process, thereby enabling mass-digitization to become a realistic possibility.

A recent example of using the complex process Christ Stopped at Eboli, 1979

Our comprehensive process was used to digitize a ‘forgotten’ 16mm short film about the famous Italian film director Francesco Rosi (1922-2015) , which has been recently discovered in the archives of Swedish Television. The short film showcases the recording process and behind-the-scenes thoughts during the making of “Christ Stopped at Eboli” from 1979, starring Gian Maria Volonté. In honor of Francesco Rosi’s 100th birthday, the film was screened in widescreen 4K across Italy in 2022 and is currently touring Europe. Thanks to our one-of-a-kind solution , a hidden treasure was brought to life in a process, which would normally have taken years and was now completed in a few months at a fraction of the regular costs.

The process starts when the user uploads a file and is completed when the data is stored on our piqlFilm. As part of the ingestion process, metadata is captured, organized, and indexed at each stage. The preservation engine converts files into sustainable preservation formats, creating Archival Information Packages that are securely stored on piqlFilm. Digital preservation ensures that audiovisual material is securely and permanently preserved in a format that will remain accessible for centuries , despite future changes in software and hardware.

The platform offers a feature that processes files and archives them to piqlFilm.

Through our involvement in mass-digitization initiatives across the globe, including collabora tions with the Norwegian State, the Vatican Library, and various governmental institutions and national archives, we have acquired a wealth of experience. For updated list of our references check Piql Book of References online.

Solutions shown here were developed under the Eurostars’ AV-TREASURE Project E! 113804.

Contact your local Piql partner for a complimentary, no-obligation consultation or go to piql.com/contact

Contact your local Piql partner for a complimentary, no-obligation consultation or go to piql.com/contact