Restoration of media assets is a major component of the work of many audio visual archives. Whilst assets remain on discrete analogue or digital media, the process of restoration is invariably focussed upon the restoration of the media itself, with the assumption that this will lead to a greater retrieval of the information held on that media.

In the realm of film restoration the restoration of old film stock can have a dramatic effect on the quality of the content, but it is an expensive and highly specialised task. With limited financial resources, it is an unfortunate fact of life that much material will be lost for ever as media decays past the stage where it can be viably restored.

Digital restoration however is directed more at the content itself, the pattern of information contained within a sequence of images, or a sound wave. Software based restoration of images, both still and moving, can incorporate processes based on knowledge about both the media upon which the information was stored, and also the scene photographed.

To give an example; if an entire frame of film is damaged, it is possible to double up a preceding or following frame without too much loss of quality. However, it is only digital process which can extrapolate multiple frames based upon information of the scene, and still retain an acceptable video quality.

The field of digital restoration is an advancing one, and is taking advantage of the rapid advances in computer hardware and digital signal processing software. These advances are making it possible to have restoration capabilities available on the desktop, at a relatively low cost, and usable by personal with less specialised technical skills.

Once content is digitised, restoration of its quality is a cheaper process, and one that can be carried out more quickly, and therefore upon more content. As technology advances the process can be repeated, to increase the final quality of the data, and successive generations of restoration can incrementally improve the content of the archive.

Of course to capitalise upon these digital restoration techniques, your initial digitisation must be of the very highest calibre, and that is just what the PrestoSpace project is designed to help you do.