27^th March 2021

The Taiwan Film and Audiovisual Institute (TFAI), the national film archive for Taiwan, has recently installed a Scanity HDR film scanner, from dft, as part of its programme to preserve and store Taiwan’s film heritage, promote film culture and promote the development of the film industry.

The archive has a considerable collection, including over 20,000 domestic and foreign films and more than 72,000 domestic and foreign DVDs and video tapes.

Recently, TFAI upgraded its film preservation, collection and digital restoration facility, digitally restoring a number of classic Chinese movies. As part of this, following a great deal of research, TFAI invested in dft’s Scanity HDR, with a WetGate, with 16mm and 35mm gates, as one of its primary film scanners.

TFAI’s Film Restoration Department explained why they chose Scanity: “We chose Scanity for several reasons – it is capable of scanning high-quality images at real-time (24fps/2k) speeds, and it has an exceptionally good reputation for scanning and is used by many archives around the world. We have many films in our archive that urgently need digitising, and we felt confident that Scanity would deliver on quality, performance and speed.

We were impressed with Scanity’s pin-free mechanism and the way it handles delicate, warped and shrunken fragile film stock. We are also looking forward to using our new WetGate system, which will enable us to manage very scratched film stocks.”

To ensure safe delivery and installation, dft’s engineer, Benjamin Kratz, “flew half around the earth during the pandemic”, before spending two weeks in quarantine in Taiwan prior to the two-week installation and training, as well as another two weeks in quarantine on return to his home in Germany.

Now installed, Scanity HDR will be used to digitise TFAI’s film collections, including those which are deteriorating with age and will require restoration in the future.

TFAI’s Film Restoration Department comments: “Scanity is important for us largely because it is pin-less, which is critical for our archival collections. So far, we are comfortable with how Scanity handles our archival films. For films with damaged perforations, Scanity uses algorithms to detect the frame, and that help us to manage them better. We like the ‘cache’ facility in the operating software, as it enables us to browse and locate specific frames easily. Lastly, Scanity’s speed allows us to quickly react on any project that given to us – which is really important.”

Simon Carter, director at dft commented: “We are delighted that TFAI has joined dft’s family of Scanity HDR WetGate users. I’m sure that the combined professionalism of TFAI and that of the Scanity 4K HDR with WetGate technology will liberate the long-standing high-quality deliverables needed by the Taiwanese people for generations to come.”

ENDS

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 GmbH
Public Relations
Email: pr@dft-film.com
Tel: +49 (6151) 8503 500