BBC R&D blog - Missing Morecambe and Wise episode recovery

The BBC has posted (so far two parts) a blog detailing revolutionary new techniques being used to recover a missing episode of The Morecambe and Wise Show from the comedy duos missing 1968 series. The reel of film is suffering from an advanced case of vinegar syndrome, meaning it can't be unwound without destroying the images contained on it.

Part one.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/rd/blog/2017-12-morecambe-wise-video-film-archive-restoration

Part two.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/rd/blog/2017-12-morecambe-wise-video-xray-microtomography

I found this absolutely fascinating so thought I'd share it here.

Sawdust.

 

Thanks for sharing that, as you say, absolutely fascinating!

 

In a similar vein, the Doctor Who Restoration Team website has a lot of detail of how they go about cleaning up the episodes for release (mainly first to third doctors) http://www.restoration-team.co.uk/
In part one of the R&D blog, there's this comment:
Early BBC telerecording equipment was exceptionally crude and it was not unknown for some unwary insect to be captured sitting in the middle of the TV screen, during the recording process – forever burnt into that programme’s film recording
The DWRT also did the work for the DVD release of BBC versions of Quatermass serials. And sure enough, in episode 2 of the The Quatermass Experiment there is a bug on the screen visible for about 30 seconds.

 

If you read between the lines it's all linked, the M&W episode was found by Phil Morris who returned nine episodes of Doctor Who? In 2013 and it was found in the same place as those episodes. Paul Vanezis who kept the film safe in his fridge was a member of the DWRT, the team no longer officially exists as all DW material has been released on DVD (unless more has been found).

Sawdust.

 

Thought I recognised the names. They've done a very good job over the years. Hopefully some more are found, no one really thought those nine episodes of DW would be found so one can hope.

 

For me the most amazing thing where Doctor Who was concerned was recovering the colour subcarrier information from black and white telerecordings (a practice that existed on some programmes until the mid-1980s, I am told) and using that to regenerate the colour programme from the black and white film.

 

It can be variable. Patchy for Ambassadors of Death and Invasion of Dinosaurs, quite good on Mind of Evil.
The sub carrier signal should have been filtered out as it makes the B&W image more noisy but fortunately usually wasn't. Ep one of The Mind of Evil was filtered so they had to manually colourise it. The result is fairly good, only appearing flat in places.

 

Part three.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/rd/blog/2017-12-morecambe-wise-film-recovery-processing-algorithm

The final part (for now).

Sawdust.

 

A fascinating read but, funnily enough, the thing that first jumped off the page at me in the second and third parts was the name Roy Budd.

Famously the composer of the Get Carter theme tune, which accompanies the opening credits, for anyone who enjoys the nostalgia-fest trip up the East Coast Main Line that they are...

 

There are sound technical reasons for not filtering the subcarrier out on a monochrome display device, as mentioned here; 'constant luminance'.

http://downloads.bbc.co.uk/rd/pubs/reports/1972-29.pdf