(Coral Springs, Florida--April 8, 2008) da Vinci Systems, a leading provider of color enhancement and image restoration products used in post-production facilities worldwide, today announced that nine of the company's Revival™ image restoration systems will be used for an enormous, multi-year project that will salvage, repair, clean, and protect some 5,000 films significant to the 102-year history of Chinese cinema.
The project is being directed by the China Film Archive (CFA) in collaboration with Hualong Film Digital Productions Co. Ltd., both in Beijing.
"The main purpose of the restoration project is to maintain the integrity of these culturally significant films by first restoring them then storing them securely in digital format," said Leng Chuansong, managing director of film technology at the China Film Archive. "We selected the Revival system as the project workhorse because its powerful, high-speed processing algorithms will allow us to automatically complete dustbusting, image stabilization, deFlicker, scene splice repair, and vertical scratch removal. Because this is such a large project, it's particularly important that Revival works fast and much of the time independently of operator control."
Jianxiong Wang, director of engineering at Hualong Film Digital added, "Today's audiences are accustomed to viewing films made with the most modern production methods — films with clean, clear, and stable images. Using the Revival system, we expect to be able to restore these vintage films to the point that they meet the expectations of a sophisticated audience."
At CFA, three Revival systems will be mounted on a SAN sharing network. At Hualong, six Revival systems mounted on an ADIC-based SAN will work under the direction of TGV Bones workflow management in conjunction with a da Vinci 2K Plus™ color grading suite and a Spirit 4K telecine.
The project has just gotten under way, and the initial component is identifying the condition of the individual films. As restoration of individual films is completed, some will be shown on screen in provincial towns throughout China, in many cases enabling audiences to appreciate their country's distinguished film heritage for the first time. Many of the films are also slated to be shown in HD on Chinese television. Approximately 90 percent of the restored films will be stored in digital with the remaining 10 percent copied back to film.
"Every film restoration project presents unique challenges," said Dean Lyon, director of marketing for da Vinci. "The sheer size of the Chinese film project is a challenge on its own, even beyond the individual issues that will be present with each film. However, with unique challenges come unique rewards — like being a part of an undertaking that will preserve and make available a significant part of a nation's artistic legacy."
About da Vinci Systems, LLC®
da Vinci Systems, a JDSU company, is the leading provider of color enhancement and image restoration products used in post-production facilities worldwide. Incorporating the company's Emmy® Award-winning technology, da Vinci's products support SDTV, HDTV, data, and digital film. Since the introduction of the company's first color corrector in 1984, da Vinci has been a front-runner in the field of image enhancement, shaping color enhancement into the vital role it holds in post-production today. The company is headquartered in Coral Springs, Fla., with offices in Los Angeles, New York, London, France, Germany, and Singapore.
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