Film Restoration Issue

[Neil Garner]

I am a broadcast engineer/trainer working to help with the workflow of an archive restoration project in Africa. Part of this includes the rescue and restoration of a large number of newsreel films from the 50's - 70's. The film has been stored upright for the last 40 years and is suffering from a number of issues because of this, along with the hot climate and moisture/vinegar issues. Even the best preserved film has a cyclic colour grading issue which is related to the orientation of the spool and the damage inflicted during storage. Result the film has a strong alternating yellow/lilac lift cast every 2 or 3 seconds.

At this point I need to point out that i am new to Resolve and am not a colourist.... although I have worked with Vision Control and some basic post production grading tools over many years and started my career 30+ years ago in Telecine where I did grade film... However, with Resolve I am very much a novice....

We have been using auto key-framing to gently move from each colour correction state to the next, which works well but this is incredibly laborious as each new grade and auto keyframe needs to be created individually. Does anyone know how to copy an individual keyframes grading attributes to another keyframe in the same shot/node... because this is effectively what we need to deal with across the entirety of each roll? My guess is that this would make an excellent starting point to then follow on with a finer tune.

I have found I can copy settings from one shot to another or one node to another, but at present cannot copy from a key-frame to another (next but one) keyframe.

[Marc Wielage]

Yes, you can grab a still frame of the "good" image and then paste that within the keyframe area and that should recall the keyframed color correction. You have to kind of figure out a strategy for dealing with color fading. To tell you the truth, I don't think Resolve (or Baselight or Lustre or whatever) is the best tool for that job: you'd be better off doing kind of a "best light" and then sending the files through an MTI DRS or a similar restoration system just to "stabilize" the color fading, and then take those files and color correct them for a final look. 

The problem with film color fading is that it's non-linear, meaning that one side of the image is going to be more faded than the other, so you could wind up having to use a lot of power windows and masks on top of the keyframe issue. The labor involved would be ridiculous, to the point where it'd drive you mad. 

One thing I know that Lowry Digital did back in the day (when I was there around 2010-2012) was they would break the image down into RGB, then process and reduce the flicker and fading on a channel by channel basis. Once that was done, they would merge the RGB files back together again. That may be more complicated than what you want or need to do, but it's interesting to note that generally one channel is flickering or wavering more than the others, and that might give you a clue as to how to attack the problem.

[Neil Garner]

Marc,

Thanks for your help... that is just what I needed to know.  Your other ideas regarding how to proceed are also interesting ,however, the big issue with this project is that it is being done on a shoestring budget because it is being funded by an overseas charity with very limited means! Resolve is free to use which is why we chose it! Actually the transfers will all be done using a projector and camera.... (not very professional, I know...), but when the nearest telecine or scanner is 'n' thousand miles away, it makes the whole issue all the more taxing. In addition, the government who own this film, do not want it taken from the country!

The content is all newsreel so already has the issue of limited or no lighting control and having to deal with very dark skin tones in very bright conditions, creating very deep shadows and high contrast, so even in its' heyday, it would have been far from ideal material.

Realistically, we need to train locals to do this work and provide a limited and manageable workflow which costs nothing more than local pay rates.... so the task is a challenging one. However, I believe that even if not perfect, we will be able to achieve a good deal in terms of saving the content and if a small quantity of it is required for broadcast at some future point, it can always be fully restored then. My feeling at this point is that anything which makes it more viewable and therefore allows a wide audience to see it will be as much as we can manage at this point.

Once again thanks for your help...