Whether it is being used to digitally restore the world's classic motion pictures or to create Oscar Award-winning animated films, HP technology is becoming ever more important to the film industry.
Now the British Film Institute (BFI) has turned to HP to help revolutionise how people access the nation’s film and TV archive collection.
Previously unseen and rarely-viewed footage – such as Audrey Hepburn’s first screen test – will now be freely available for the public to watch thanks to HP technology.
BFI has the largest and arguably the most important moving image archive in the world. Using digital technology, HP will help the BFI unlock the potential of the archive so that it can inspire, educate and entertain audiences everywhere.
With almost half a million films and TV programmes in the collection already, BFI adds tens of thousands of additional items every year. HP is providing the technical know-how to help the BFI manage the vast archive, increase public access, and preserve it for future generations.
HP will provide the technology to power the new ‘Mediatheque’ at BFI Southbank in London. This mini cinema will provide visitors with their very own personal viewing experience, allowing them to choose from thousands of films or TV programmes that cannot be viewed anywhere else – including the episode of Coronation Street where Elsie Tanner pulled her first pint at the Rover’s Return.
Visitors to BFI Southbank will now experience more of their film culture and heritage in a number of new ‘discovery spaces’ with unrivalled access to the BFI National Archive.
HP is creating technology that will change the way movies are created and distributed.
For instance, the HP Digital Media Platform (DMP), originally developed by HP Labs, enables the integrated media storage, processing, management and distribution services and solutions that automate the digital supply chain for the media industry.
The vision of DMP is to help the media industry reap the benefits of the digital revolution – flexibility, efficiency and the ability to open up new markets for digitized film, video and TV.
For a customer that wants to store and re-use its motion picture or video content, DMP is a workflow pipeline. It takes in -- or ingests -- rich media files in the form of, for instance, a digitised classic TV show. As the digital file flows ‘virtually’ through the pipeline it can be transcoded into a different format, dubbed or subtitled, have a low-resolution version created for a web site, then be securely stored as a master. Finally a repurposed copy of the digital TV show flows out of DMP to the end-user, for example through the HP Digital Entertainment Services group’s Video Merchant Service offering.
It helps studios and film archives navigate a world where entertainment and technology are converging.
The BFI sets standards for film preservation and restoration across the world. Classic movies are fragile treasures. They are easily scratched and often shrink or fade as they age. The most famous will occasionally be painstakingly restored by hand. For thousands of other movies the manual process is too expensive.
But without special processing, the dirt, scratches or other imperfections that mar the original frames are transferred to the digital copies – all in high definition.
This is an area of digital technology that HP Labs has investigated in a project with Warner Brothers to automate much of the film restoration process.
The experience gained from such advanced research projects, plus HP’s deep expertise in digital technology, can help the company’s customers and partners to develop innovative solutions to their problems.
Printable version
