After several years experience in transferring old cine film to DVD, we decided to push our knowledge to the limit by designing a new way of scanning the film - a way which would not only capture the film in all it's glory, but actually show the customer more of their film than they had ever seen before... We knew there was more image on the film than a projector can show you, so our first task was to make sure you see the film from corner to corner.

We also felt that we should be improving the picture for our customers, not just reproducing it. We took these ideas and our experience into development, and after 18 months of pure development, we were ready to beta-test the new system. Our method of scanning each cell as an individual image has proved phenomenal. The combination of our custom-built lenses and broadcast studio equipment provided us with a picture amazingly sharp and clear, with the full cell in view as customers have never seen before...

This leap in technology is so far superior to previous releases that it is being hailed as not just an improvement,
but a revolution.

After first conceiving the idea of this model over 18 months ago, our technicians beta-tested two machines during November and December of 2006. We installed further models over the Christmas break, which has provided us with enough capacity to retire all previous systems and now run only the Phoenix System for every single order*.

So What's New? From a technical stance, the changes in our machinery are dramatic:- For instance, in the past we would suffer problems caused by damaged sprocket holes which cause the film to shudder and jump, often rendering the film useless as a stable picture cannot be made. This is a problem no more - Phoenix uses sprocketless technology to gently guide the film over the scanner. So whilst we do not claim miracles, if you have film that will not play in a projector any more then you know Alive Studios can definately help you.

Frame by Frame Scanning
Your film produced by Alive Studios will be so much sharper than anywhere else because we do not shoot your film onto a screen and film it. When sent in to us your film is guided over a scanner and digital images are made of each and every cell of your film. If you're thinking "what?" take a good look at your film and you will see that it is made up of a series of still photographs - usually around 18 images for each second of film (18fps or 'frames per second'). So your little 4 minute film roll is made up of around 4300 still images which when projected against a screen one after the other, create a moving picture - or film.

So now you have a basic understanding of what you actually possess in those canisters, you can understand the need to digitally scan each of these little cells individually, in order to authentically recreate the film. And of course, we have the added bonus that once these images are safely on our computers, we can work our magic even further. We still employ the same painstaking techniques in running the images first through a re-mastering system which detects and removes many of the defects caused by dust and scratches, then through the software, with careful editing to remove unwanted sections such as leader-tape. Finally, your editor will watch each section of film and apply colour correction filters to restore the natural colours and remove horrible tints caused over time.

Optical flow technology
An important part of capturing cine film is getting the frame rate right. If you shot your film at 18fps (frames per second), we need to turn that into 25fps to work on your TV set. To do this, our software creates the missing frames for us. The difference at Alive Studios is that we us Optical Flow Technology, developed originally for Apple's 'Shake', which uses a reverse telecine feature to restore the original frame rate of a film by removing pulldown, so even on frame by frame playback, you will not get the unpleasant 'blurry' frame experienced by less powerful software applications.

Improvements to Sound Sound enthusiasts will be pleased to hear that 2007 sees the release of a new soundtrack to accompany films - free of charge as always. Our music licence gives you full Surround Sound, and if your film has it's own soundtrack, this will be output on your DVD in Dolby Digital Professional.

If you love the medium of old film and don't want to lose the feeling in it's reproduction, but understand the necessity to protect it, and are excited by the possibility of actually improving it, then Alive Studios is the company for you.

With this leap, we are now encoding the film to DVD at a higher level to retain the full quality. Higher quality means we now put around 70-80mins on each DVD. Despite the obvious material cost to Alive Studios in doing this, we feel this is something we are obliged to do to retain the full quality of our workmanship. To put more than 80mins of film on a DV would, in our opinion, lower the quality of your DVD.

We have always felt we offered the highest quality transfer in the UK, and with the launch of this new system,
we have surpassed this and now offer something even more unique. We call it Phoenix.

The Phoenix System works with 8mm - super8 - 16mm - 35mm film
and from April 2008 9.5mm film