The Machine Room wins BBC Archives contract

The Machine Room has won a prestigious £1 million BBC Archives contract to restore and transfer over 3.5 million feet of old 16mm news and current affairs footage.
BBC Archives has over 14 years worth of news stories on Ektachrome film, which has suffered from physical degradation due to long-term storage and use. The preservation process protects the material by physically cleaning and restoring the film elements and producing a digital videotape master for the archive.
The two-year contract with The Machine Room is part of a wider restoration project to transfer all the BBC’s archive material into a digital format for both heritage preservation and re-use in programmes or in its entirety.
Danny Whybrow, Managing Director at The Machine Room, explained: “We painstakingly examine each frame of footage for any imperfections before restoring them to the best physical condition possible. From there our telecine team takes over to grade and transfer each reel to digital videotape. We are also encoding each tape to MPEG1 on CD.”
He continued: “We have a unique offering here at The Machine Room on the restoration side. No other company has access to the same blend of optical and digital restoration technologies under the one roof. As well as providing physical archive film preservation and restoration capabilities in our Film Treatment Centre, we can now offer electronic video restoration in both standard and high-definition using our recently purchased Teranex ImageRestore system.”
(GB)