March 2011: BBC Studios and Post Production is expanding its digital restoration and archive services by investing in Scanity from Digital Film Technology, the state-of-the-art 2K film to file scanner.

Part of a total investment of nearly three quarters of a million pounds and complementing BBC Studios and Post Production’s existing Spirit and Shadow technologies, it will enable the team to offer high quality film scanning services and high resolution capture to file. Handling 16mm and 35mm film it will deliver a full range of files from the highest quality DPX standard to compressed formats including H264, IMX, ProRes and Mpeg.

BBC Studios and Post Production’s Scanity services are ideal for content or library owners who want to preserve or restore their footage. Equipped with a full range of options including IR Dirt Detection, Scanity can handle AB roll negatives at up to 18 frames a second, over four times as fast as alternative digital scanners to deliver highly cost effective restoration workflows.

As well as acquiring Scanity, BBC Studios and Post Production is investing in PF Clean, a suite of restoration tools to rectify severe film damage including tears, warps and other complex film defects. It is also installing Dark Energy, the latest in grain and noise management software.

The new digital archive and restoration services will be available from April and integrate fully with BBC Studios and Post Production’s existing film and tape restoration products.

BBC Studios and Post Production has extensive experience in all forms of small and large volume digitising and restoration. Over the last 20 years it has built up a successful track record in handling large and valuable film and tape collections for customers including BBC Information & Archives (BBC I&A) and The National Library of Scotland and in restoring some of the UK’s favourite TV programmes for broadcast, DVD or Blu-ray release for amongst others Network DVD, BBC Worldwide and 2Entertain.

Clive Hodge, Head of Digital Media Services says: “This investment enables us to offer new cost effective restoration services to customers at the highest quality.  The Scanity adds speed and flexibility to our current systems with the ability to add additional capacity with ease and provides us with an upgrade path to 4K scanning when our customers request this.”

For further information, please contact:
Georgie Hollett, Head of Communications, BBC Studios and Post Production
Tel: +44 (0)20 8624 9495
Mobile : +44 (0) 783484 5612
Email : georgie.hollett@bbc.co.uk

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