Sponsored by
Zoo Digital to help restore nation's films
DVD software specialist Zoo Digital has won a £350,000 grant to work on restoring Britain's archive of thousands of films.
The Sheffield company designs, sells and licenses software to help film studios cut costs by speeding up production of discs and packaging.
Yesterday the company said it has won a grant from the Technology Strategy Board (TSB) to fund its Commercialisation of Motion Picture Archive (COMPA) project.
The project will see Zoo work alongside the British Film Institute (BFI) to create software to automate the restoration and enhancement of films and videos, allowing them to be converted onto high-definition platforms such as Blu-ray.
The BFI, guardian of the UK's film archive, is responsible for maintaining, preserving and restoring collections with significant cultural and heritage value.
Its archive contains more than 50,000 fiction films, over 100,000 non-fiction titles and around 625,000 television programmes.
Traditionally, film restoration has been done through manual or semi-automated systems, a heavily labour-intensive and costly process.
"Whilst this may be viable for restoring productions of major studio classics, given the new revenue potential, these costs are prohibitive for less mainstream material," Zoo said in a statement.
Zoo chief executive Stuart Green added: "We are delighted to be working on such an exciting project and collaborating with the BFI.
"Zoo has a strong track record in designing software and services which reduce the needs for extensive manpower and related costs in the film industry. We are confident that we can create software systems that will enable studios and organiSations such as the BFI to restore commercial content as well as important cultural and heritage material."
Analysts at house brokers Finncap said the grant boosts its year end net cash expectation of 3m.
"This is a further stamp of credibility for Zoo's products, which, as ever, automate previously labour intensive procedures," they said.
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