ZOO looks to bring film classics back to the future

MEDIA and software specialist ZOO Digital said today it has won Government support for a new project it is pioneering to restore and enhance feature films to high definition formats such as Blu-ray.

The Sheffield-based group said that it has received a £350,000 grant from the Technology Strategy Board (TSB) to fund its commercialisation of motion picture archive (COMPA) project.

The project, which will be led by ZOO and includes the British Film Institute (BFI) as a partner, will aim to create software systems that enable the highly automated restoration and enhancement of film and video material onto high definition platforms.

Traditionally, restoration of film material has been a costly and painstaking process carried out through manual or semi-automated systems, which are used by skilled operators to clean up any imperfections in the moving picture sequences.

While the process is used for classic studio movies, it has proved too expensive for less mainstream films and the BFI looks after the UK’s National Film Archive and is responsible for maintaining, preserving and restoring collections of more than 50,000 fiction films, over 100,000 non-fiction titles and around 625,000 television programmes.

Stuart Green, chief executive of ZOO, commented:  “We are delighted to be working on such an exciting project and collaborating with the BFI. ZOO has a strong track record in designing software and services which reduce the needs for extensive manpower and related costs in the film industry.

“We are confident that we can create software systems that will enable studios and organizations such as the BFI to restore commercial content as well as  important cultural and heritage material.”