Neat BBC video color recovery research

December 11, 2008 9:02 PM

Unscrambling an army of colours, reports The Guardian on the BBC's forthcoming screening of a colour-restored episode of the WWII sitcom Dad's Army. Not seen for 40 years and lost in its original PAL video colour format, it existed only as an archive on 16mm b&w film. However, the Colour Recovery Working Group found a way to recover the colour information from "chroma dots": pattern artefacts on the b&w representing unfiltered colour signal. Techie details here and here.
posted by raygirvan (7 comments total)

WOW.
posted by delmoi at 9:33 PM on December 11, 2008

My techie Brit boyfriend is HUMMING about this.
posted by The Whelk at 10:04 PM on December 11, 2008

Household of imaging geeks here. Gleefully sharing the post with our signal-processing pals and passing it along to coworkers.

Imaging science is hot.
posted by fairytale of los angeles at 10:42 PM on December 11, 2008

Naturally, Doctor Who figures into this (linked in linked article). There's also a related restoration technique known as VidFIRE that has been used on both programmes as well as potentially applicable to many others in the BBC archives which only exist as telerecordings.

Too bad it isn't something that works with North American NTSC. I assume this process is much less expensive than the usual colorization technology.
posted by dhartung at 10:59 PM on December 11, 2008

I really don't get why The Doctor hasn't just set up a Tivo in the past somewhere already.
posted by Pronoiac at 12:37 AM on December 12, 2008 [1 favorite]

[From the Guardian link] The descrambling process is akin to turning an omelette back into an egg.

Oh, I get it. No need to read further. Thank you Guardian.
posted by le morte de bea arthur at 1:40 AM on December 12, 2008 [1 favorite]

I really don't get why The Doctor hasn't just set up a Tivo in the past somewhere already.

No listings data.
posted by genghis at 10:05 AM on December 13, 2008 [1 favorite]