Featured DEFINITY Installation: Gosfilmofond
Photographic film might be an extraordinary stable medium, but those cinematographic documents now nearly a century old, oftentimes captured on highly flammable nitrate films, will nonetheless have to be transfered onto modern film stock in time before they might be lost for future generations. Gosfilmofond, the world's third-largest film archive headquartered in Moscow, faced exactly this challenge. For this the institute not only required a digital film recorder which faithfully preserved the original image information, but was also durable and robust enough to work through the many thousands of films in Gosfilmofond's archives.
Film-Video's Director of Digital Technology Viatcheslav Treyster, in charge of finding the right film recorder for this demanding environment, looks back on the decision process at Gosfilmfond:
The DEFINITY film recorder is a vital part of a complete restoration system which includes scanner, restoration software and hardware installed at the Gosfilmofond laboratory. After extensive comparative tests wwe decided on DEFINITY and could convince the technicials of Gosfilmofond of the high output quality, especially as the delicacy of old film material is concerned.
DEFINITY's fixed LCD geometry and its intricate fixed pin registration makes the system particularly suited for archiving purposes where color separation is required, with the ultimate objective of perfectly superimposing the three color extracts.
Apart from DEFINITY's advantages in terms of performance and image quality, Gosfilmofond was also looking for a partner who could be relied on to address unforeseen issues within hours, rather days or weeks:
The excellent service provided by CCG, and its dependable team who we got to know during the long years of our business connection also were a factor in our choice.
And another benefit of DEFINITY emerged after its installation at Gosfilmfond: Its exceptional ease of use, and low maintenance requirements, even for staff unfamiliar with the specifics of film processing.