11th May 2021
Hungary’s National Film Institute and Film Archive (referred to as NFI-FA), has recently installed a state-of-the-art Scanity HDR, 4K film scanner, at its facility in Budapest.
Established in 1957, NFI-FA is responsible for safeguarding and enabling access to the film heritage of Hungary as the only public collection for audio-visual content. The Archive has the most extensive film collection in Hungary and houses approximately 72,000 film titles, and about 360,000 inventory items.
Restoration and transfer of films from flammable nitrate stock to safety film materials has always been a priority for NFI-FA, and in 2017, a major film digitisation and restoration programme was launched, restoring 120 feature films to 2K or 4K quality. Today, the aim is to digitise the Archive’s entire film stock. Backed by annual government funding, NFI-FA is now able to fully restore a larger number of films than before, at 4K, thus preserving this heritage and making the content available to wider audiences.
After a lengthy review, dft’s Scanity HDR 4K scanner, with WetGate, was chosen as it suited NFI-FA’s requirements perfectly. Scanity HDR can ingest film in 2K and 4K to produce outstanding image quality, even at high speeds up to real-time. It has been designed for the safe and gentle handling of precious film stocks, and the end-to-end process makes is ideal for this kind of work.
Benedek Kaban, Technical and Development Manager at NFI-FA, is delighted with the new scanner. “The addition of the WetGate to the Scanity has vastly improve our processes. Base scratches can be ‘removed’ during the scanning process, which means the restoration process is faster and more efficient than before.”
György Ráduly, Director at NFI-FA stated: “For a Film Archive, the most important task today is to preserve the film collection, by digitising in the highest quality, at an optimal speed and maximum used capacity. At NFI-FA, 90% of our film collection can be classed as “difficult” in terms of the scan and restoration tasks. The WetGate and the dust and scratch concealment options of the Scanity have enabled us to go much further than we have been able to do previously in terms of preservation and restoration, and as a result we are now able to show previously unseen material to our audience.”
Simon Carter, Sales Director at dft comments: “We are delighted that NFI-FA chose to install Scanity HDR for their film scanning requirements and for all the help and support of our regional partners Boneheadz and Silicon Computers Hungary. Scanity HDR 4K provides a controlled, high speed film ingest, and addresses a number of other key archive film issues – such as shrinkage, warped films and dust/scratch management via its highly specialised aquarium style 35mm/16mm WetGate solution, which has transformed the quality of the deliverables, facilitating both significant quality benefits and time saved. We are looking forward to the time when these historical remastered / restored films can be shared by all. ”
Editors notes:
dft (Digital Film Technology) has been at the forefront of film scanning technology for over 75 years, supplying the film post production market with a range of high quality, leading edge products and services. With a reputation for quality, dft is head quartered in Germany and has a network of sales, service and support centres worldwide.
dft is a subsidiary of the Prasad Corporation Ltd, India.
www.dft-film.com
Further information: Digital Film Technology GmbHPublic RelationsEmail: pr@dft-film.comTel: +49 (6151) 8503 500
