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BBC Studios and Post Production’s award-winning Digital Media Services team has restored the complete first series of the cult classic British crime-drama, The Professionals, for leading indie distributor Network, with the other series to follow. The High Definition version was released worldwide on Blu-ray on 31 March 2014. The variable condition of the original film footage was one of the main challenges BBC Studios and Post Production’s Digital Media Services team faced. The joins between scenes presented a particular problem during the restoration process, not only due to residual movement after scanning, but also because of the cement and tape splices. As a result, considerable manual intervention was required to bring the film up to an acceptable standard for an HD master, including shot-by-shot grading, grain and dirt management, stabilisation and scratch concealment. To achieve the optimum end results, BBC Studios and Post Production’s Digital Media Services team worked from the 16mm A/B negative source material and colour reversal inter-negs that were held in the British Film Institute’s archive. The film was first scanned into a SCANITY film scanner before being conformed and graded in Nucoda Film Master. The material was then put through DVO processing before being painstakingly manually cleaned using Diamant Dustbuster to remove scratches, taped joins, in-camera dirt and other marks. For more information please visit www.bbcstudiosandpostproduction.com or contact: Louise Wells at Red Lorry Yellow Lorry, bbcstudiosandpostproduction@rlyl.com