Project Details
- Date: 2014
- Client: Slovak Film Institute
- Partner: Soitron
- Location: Bratislava, SK
The Slovak Film Institute is the sole national film institution operating under the Slovak Ministry of Culture. SFI consists of the National Film Archive and the National Cinematographic Centre and is the seat of MEDIA Desk Slovakia.
In 2014, a modern digitisation workplace of the Slovak Film Institute (SFI) was built in the basement of Cinema Lumière in Bratislava. It was one of the activities of the Digital Audiovision National Project implemented in the SFI since 2011. Construction of the digitisation workplace started in the second half of 2013 and it was put into pilot operation in the first quarter of 2014.
Challenge:
The complete processing procedure designed for a 4K/2K resolution.
The significance of the digitisation workplace activities and outputs will be tested over time, but it was already obvious that its existence is a must in the era of digital cinema. Accordingly, the workplace is of crucial importance to maintain continuity in making the audiovisual heritage of Slovakia accessible. SFI needed to build a digitization workplace for the digitization of cultural objects (film, sound and audio-visual objects). The requirement was the ability to work with uncompressed 4k material in real time in the entire process from scanning, corrections and restoration to quality control and derivative production. HW performance, especially of central storage, was critical.
Solution:
Complete workplace as a solution for challenging digital era for film heritage institutions
We designed and delivered the vast majority of the equipment of the digitization workplace and thus fulfilled all the requirements of SFI: Central Data Storage 4Bright SAN, Film Scanner Scanity, Color Correction BaseLight4, Editing and Mastering Station Clipster and 11 Restoration Stations PFClean.
The restored digital master in high 4K/2K resolution and the original image scan and sound transcription are the main outputs of the digital workplace.
The digitised and restored audiovisual works from this workplace are comparable, in qualitative terms, with the digitally restored works from other significant international film archives.
“A digitisation workplace is being established which is capable of converting films into a digital form and, at the same time, a complete image and sound chain for digitisation is created. Thanks to this project the Slovak Film Institute has become a modern archive of the 21st century.”
Peter Dubecký, the SFI’s General Director