METRO BROADCAST TAKE DELIVERY OF ARCHANGEL

SOHO facilities house Metro Broadcast have taken delivery of the latest in archive restoration equipment – Snell & Wilcox’s Archangel – and have already started work on a range of titles for French broadcasters Canal Plus.
The first title to be given the Archangel treatment was ‘The Brides of Fu Manchu’, the 1966 classic starring Christopher Lee who, as Fu Manchu, gets to deliver the immortal line: “The world shall hear from me again”.
The restoration work was commissioned on behalf of Canal Plus by Simon Hill, Technical Manager at CineServe. Hill said: “When I saw the restored film, I was delighted. The quality is far beyond anything I expected and there’s no loss of detail, which is usually the trade-off with video restoration.”
The restored version will be released on DVD in the New Year. Metro have completed a further 3 titles, with more committed for 2002.
Archangel is a real-time restoration system with the ability to correct all of the artefacts common to archive media, such as noise, dirt, scratches, unsteadiness and flicker – on a real-time basis. The operator can also vary processing parameters manually to achieve the optimum level and type of correction in key areas. Archangel comprises two principal processing components: a noise reduction processor and a unit to correct unsteadiness and flicker. A third-party time line controller and disk storage array for control and operation complete the restoration system. (CD)