Film preservation

Robert B. Freeborn <ulfreeb<-a t->cypress< . >mcsr< . >olemiss< . >edu> writes

>    1.  Are there companies that still sell film-cleaning machines,
>        and what are their addresses?
>
>    2.  Back when I was a grad student working with film, our
>        tv/radio department supposedly had a machine for
>        transferring film to video.  Are these machines still
>        manufactured?  By whom?
>
>    3.  A colleague told me about an organization that not only
>        acted as a warehouse for rare audiovisual materials, but
>        also the machines that ran/read them.  Does anyone know the
>        name for this organization, and does their mission cover
>        motion picture film?

There are several companies that sell film cleaning machines, many
of which use different approaches to clean the film.  The process of
motion picture film cleaning is in great flux at the moment since
the main chemical that the industry has used for film cleaning has
been discontinued due to the high CFC problem.  As a result there
are many substitute approaches being developed, and the machines
used to clean the film differ since the chemistry used differs.  I
think that it is fair to say that the Lipsner Smith company is the
main supplier of this equipment and they make several models that
use different solvents.   I might add that this equipment is quite
specialized and quite expensive--expect to pay $40,000 US for one.
If you would like further information, I would be happy to help you
with names off of the list.

Equipment for Film to Tape transfers is even more specialized and
far more expensive.  There are only two major competitors, one being
Phillips and the other being Cintel (formerly Rank Cintel).  These
machines produce extremely high quality transfers and are usually
purchased by companies that provide the services of the equipment by
the hour since skilled operators are an important part of the
process.  These machines start at about $400,000 US and go up to
over $1,000,000.  The only product that is modest in price is made
by the Elmo company which essentially is a film projector with a
camera that is attached.  I believe that this machine is under
$10,000 but as you can guess from the price tag, these machines are
not suitable for a wide variety of film applications and the quality
of the film handling is--shall I say politely--questionable....  I
might add that I am referring to real time film to tape transfer
machines at video resolution--not scanners.  Motion picture film
scanners (which of course can output at video resolution) are made
by  Kodak (Cineon), Imagica, and Quantel (and there are a few other
smaller competitors).  These are non-real time frame by frame
scanners that are used primarily in the special effects field at
very high (4K x 4K x 36 bits) resolution.  These scanners cost about
$250,000US each without the computers or the software that you need
to run them with.

Finally, in your question about old equipment for playback.... you
may be inquiring about our company.  We have one of the largest
collections of obsolete magnetic media  equipment  in the world and
do magnetic media restoration work for a wide variety of clients
using this equipment.  We do indeed do film to tape work with a
Cintel machine as described above.  More information is available at
our web site: http://www.panix.com/~vidipax/

Jim Lindner
VidiPax
The Magnetic Media Restoration Company

                                  ***
                  Conservation DistList Instance 10:77
                   Distributed: Monday, March 3, 1997
                       Message Id: cdl-10-77-004
                                  ***