Reports from the Field
From the past to the future
of moving images conservation and restoration

Short presentations on sustainable solutions by Joshua Levy and Reto Kromer, followed by an informal Q&A session and light refreshments. We presume that 2–3 of the suggested topics can be discussed in-depth, depending on the actual interests of the participants.

The visit is offered twice to the delegate of the FIAF Congress in Lausanne on Saturday the 13^th of April 2019: the first one in the morning (from 10 o’clock sharp until noon or so) and the second one in the afternoon (from 2 o’clock sharp until 4-ish) starting at the EPFL (15 min from the Casino de Montbenon by the metro line “m1”).

The admission is free, but an inscription is required, because the space is limited at our small facility.

Suggested Topics

Film storage

An overview of the various low-tech low-energy solutions we have implemented during the last 15 years around the world, especially in countries with almost no existing financial resources and in extremely hot and/or humid environments. And here at our latitude vaults for film storage at 5 °C ± 2 °C and 50 % ± 10 % RH can be completely powered by solar panels on their roof.

Film cleaning

A modular film cleaning machine for all formats from 8 mm to 70 mm can be build by skilled people for CHF 15-38 000, depending on the chosen solvents.

Film digitisation

High-quality archival scanners can be build with little money by skilled people. From a CHF 100 plus camera hand-cranked one, to a CHF 5 000 plus camera motorised one, to a multispectral scanner for CHF 20 000 which produces images at a 4K resolution and a depth of 16-bit per spectral band.

Tape cleaning

A cleaning machine for magnetic tapes from ¼″ to 2″ can be built for CHF 2 500 by skilled people. The presented solution can handle not only open reels, but also cassettes and cartridges of all formats.

Tape digitisation

We will present full digitisation stations for 1″ Type C and U-matic, based on vrecord developed by the AMIA Open Source community, working under Linux, macOS and Windows.

Sustainable IT for AV

How to build an IT infrastructure with little money and that uses only very little – or even no! – power from the grid still being able to handle efficiently audio-visual contents? We will present, among other technologies, how to recycle with a bioreactor the vast majority of the heat produced by a render farm.

Note

• We are very unhappy that our generosity is often betrayed, as many of our materials are distributed without naming their origin. Increasingly, others are even shamelessly claiming authorship of our work, which is just disgusting behaviour. And that’s the very reason why some resources are no longer freely available, but have been moved to password-protected parts of our website.

2023-02-17