Restoration of motion picture soundtracks by digital image-processing

A restoration of the optical soundtrack performed directly at the image level image makes it possible to deal with every kind of degradation (such as a long vertical scratch or a lateral fungus) even if one do not know its equivalent in the acoustic level.
Variable area soundtracks are symmetrical with respect to a vertical axis, this property can be used to restore the damaged side of such soundtracks:

Variable density soundtracks have a constant gray level in each line, the restoration of this kind of soundtracks may rely on this property:

The digitizer

The digitizer used in the RESONANCES Project has a linear camera able to scan 48000 lines of 512 pixels with 12 bits gray level depth in 1 second:

Results

The following images show some restoration examples:

Before restoration	After restoration

Related publications

• A. Hassaïne Restauration des Pistes Sonores Optiques Cinématographiques : Approche par Traitement d'Images, PhD thesis, Centre de Morphologie Mathématique, Mines Paris-Tech, December 2009.
  
• A. Hassaïne, E. Decencière and B. Besserer,Efficient restoration of variable area soundtracks, Image Analysis & Stereology. June 2009.
  
• A. Hassaïne, E. Decencière and B. Besserer, Restoration of variable density film soundtracks, in 17th European Signal Processing Conference 2009.
• J. Taquet, B. Besserer, A. Hassaïne and E. Decencière, Detection and correction of under/overexposed optical soundtracks by coupling image and audio signal processing, EURASIP Journal on Advances in Signal Processing, Vol. 2008.
• B. Besserer, A. Hassaïne and E. Decencière, Restoration of Under/Overexposed Optical Soundtracks, Archiving 2008, Bern, Switzerland, 2008.
• E. Brun, A. Hassaïne, B. Besserer and E. Decencière, Restoration of variable area soundtracks, in 2007 IEEE International Conference on Image Processing.

References

@INPROCEEDINGS{Valenzuela2003,
   AUTHOR    = "Valenzuela, J.",
   TITLE     = "Digital Audio Image Restoration : Introducing a new approach to the reproduction and restoration of analog optical soundtracks for motion picture films",
   BOOKTITLE = "IBC 2003 Conference Papers",
   YEAR      = "2003",
   publisher = "Technicolor Creative Services.",
}

@INPROCEEDINGS{Richter2003,
   AUTHOR    = "Richter, D. and Poetsch, D. and Kuiper, A.",
   TITLE     = "Localization of faults in multiple double sided variable area code sound tracks on motion picture films using digital image processing",
   BOOKTITLE = "13th International Czech - Slovak Scientific Conference Radioelektronika",
   YEAR      = "2003",
}

@MASTERSTHESIS{Streule99,
   AUTHOR    = "Streule, P.",
   TITLE     = "Digital image based restoration of optical movie soundtracks",
   YEAR      = "1999",
   SCHOOL    = "ETH Zurich",
}

@INPROCEEDINGS{Kuiper2005,
   AUTHOR    = "Kuiper, A.",
   TITLE     = "Detection of dirt blotches on optical soundtracks using digital image processing",
   BOOKTITLE = "15th International Czech - Slovak Scientific Conference Radioelektronika",
   YEAR      = "2005",
}

@MISC{Valenzuela2006,
   AUTHOR       = "Valenzuela, J. and Williams, V.",
   TITLE        = "Variable area film soundtrack renovation",
   YEAR         = "2006",
   HOWPUBLISHED = "United States patent 7,126,663",
}

@MISC{Valenzuela2006,
   AUTHOR       = "Valenzuela, J. and Williams, V.",
   TITLE        = "Processing variable area film soundtracks",
   YEAR         = "2006",
   HOWPUBLISHED = "United States patent 7,123,339",
}