Snell & Wilcox Archangel Provides Real-Time, Low Cost Restoration for Sunset Digital Studios
Sunset Digital Studios, a renowned post production facility in Glendale, Calif., has been employing its Snell & Wilcox, Inc. Archangel Ph.C real-time image restoration system since its January 2001 install to fix image defects on feature films and television programs. The December 2000 purchase marks the first U.S. sale of Archangel, which uses Ph.C Phase Correlation, the multi-award winning motion estimation technology unique to Snell & Wilcox, to achieve its transparent results.
Since Archangel has been in commission at Sunset Digital Studios, the facility has used the system for a variety of purposes, including motion compensation, luminance flicker correction and dirt removal for the film "Condorman;" motion stabilization for the films "Enemy Of The State," "The Best Man" and "Gone in 60 Seconds"; and dirt and scratch removal for features "Bon Voyage" and "The Accused." Archangel has also been used to reduce the appearance of grain in many feature films.
According to Godfrey Pye, President, Sunset Digital Studios, the facility selected Archangel for its low-cost restoration service, allowing Sunset to keep prices lower so archivists can more easily afford to restore films and programs that have been stagnating in storage. Pye attributes the low-cost service to Archangel's real-time capabilities, which allows the material to be repaired instantaneously.
"Archangel has provided a successful hook for the sales of our entire restoration service," said Pye. "While we have used it on many film projects, it also enhances some of other equipment and helps to pull in work for our digital audio department. If you make the picture look good, you might as well turn that scratchy, monaural soundtrack into stereo or 5.1. With its automatic and semi-automatic restoration features, Archangel allows us to offer a more complete, soup-to-nuts picture restoration service to our clients."
Pye added that Archangel's ability to stabilize shots is a critical benefit. "Long lens shots of moving animals, for instance, or older film that appears shaky thanks to enlarged sprocket holes are difficult impairments that Archangel can easily clean. It stabilizes shots so that they're rock steady, and does it quickly," he added.
Archangel comprises two principal processing elements: an unsteadiness correction processor and a noise reduction processor. A third-party time line controller and disk storage array for control and operation complete the restoration system.
Other Snell & Wilcox equipment at Sunset Digital Studios includes: an HD 1012 high definition switcher, Alchemist PhC standards converter, Golden Gate MD2000 decoder, and a Prefix CPP 100 compression pre-processor. Sunset Digital recently produced a CD-Rom disc that demonstrates the benefits of Archangel as before-and-after restoration, using the Hitchcock film classic "The Man Who Knew Too Much." To obtain a copy, contact Tom Jones at Sunset Digital Studios via email: tomjones@sunsetpost.com or by phone at: 818-291-6946.
SNELL & WILCOX is a world-leading electronics design, manufacture and engineering group with an international reputation for the development of advanced image communications technologies for the world's broadcast television, video, satellite, cable, film and image communications industries. The company is dedicated to preserving the true content of the moving video image. Snell & Wilcox Inc. has offices throughout the United States and is headquartered in Santa Clara, California. Snell & Wilcox Ltd. is based in Twickenham, England with offices all over the world.