THE PROCESS

 

The process of taking original game film and transferring it to a digital format is both time-consuming and expensive.  It is an analog process - this means that it doesn't happen any faster than the film itself can be run.  Our 16mm film transfers use a telecine unit and a direct, frame-by-frame scanning process. The film is first cleaned, inspected and placed into our scanning unit.  Damaged film with ripped sprockets are not affected by the transfer process because sprockets are not used to pull the film. The film is then scanned, frame-by-frame, using the sharper emulsion side of the film using a camera with three 1/2-inch-chip CCDs through the enlarged gate of the mechanism, allowing a full, 100%-size scan of the image, not cropped as used in most telecine transfers. The film is lit using an ultra-cool LED light which is much gentler on the film than most high-temperature bulbs.  Each progressive-scanned image is then pieced together via customized software to create a speed-accurate motion image, no matter what the original frame rate of the film was.

 

A typical football game was originally processed into 3 7" reels of 16mm film:  R1/R2/R3 game sequence OR into 5 7" reels of 16mm film:  O1 & 2, D1 & 2 and Kicking / Special Teams.  The viewing experience is very different.  Game sequence is what you would expect - all of the plays of the game in order without the huddles.  Coaching sequence or O/D/K divides the game up into each teams offensive and defensive plays by half (so the O1 reel would be 1st Half Offense) and an additional reel for special teams and kicks.  So depending on the producer of the film, games can run from 40 minutes all the way up to 80 minutes.

 

Despite our best effort and equipment, there are often significant variances that result in differing quality output of the DVD's.  Each of these reels may have been sourced from different teams and film processors and over the course of years may have been handled or stored in different ways.  The result is that most of our games have mixed quality throughout any given DVD.  We do our best to mitigate that through digital editing techniques, but are generally limited by the quality of the original films.  You will likely be very pleased with the results!