Technical Clean-up for old kinescopes

[Avid Listener]

I've seen some incredible digital restorations of old, fading movies. They've turned faded, grainy looking old movies into cinema, that looks like it was supposed to look on the big screen back in the 10's, 20s', or 30's. Would it be possible to work the same sort of restoration on the surviving kinescopes of the incredible classic live TV dramas of the 1950's? I'd love to see some of the shows on The Philco Television Playhouse, Kraft Television Theatre, Playhouse 90, Climax! and others. There were also a lot of one-off specials. Some of these shows were broadcast in color, but only recorded on black and white kinescopes, so colorizing them would simply be a restoration to their original look. The kinescopes weren't very good to begin with, but if they could be cleaned up, I think they'd perform well on retro TV channels, as well as selling well on DVD, Blue Ray, or Digital Download.

Not too long ago, I saw a presentation of the original Casino Royale, the first dramatization of one of Ian Fleming's James Bond books. But, they switched James Bond into a CIA agent, and made Felix Lighter the Brit from MI6. Barry Nelson played 007.

 

[anotherguyTN]

There's a process called LiveFeed that can be used to restore older TV shows, but all I've been able to find about them is their website at http://www.kinescopes.com/livefeed.html and a few samples on You Tube at https://www.youtube.com/user/livefeedvideoimaging/videos . Somehow I think that they really haven't had enough demand for the process, even from the retro networks.

 

[JeffM]

I've seen some examples of their work, and it's remarkable. Either Game Show Network or the successors to Goodson-Todman had them "clean up" the kinescopes of some of the "What's My Line?" and other episodes from the 50's; and they look like live broadcasts. They're still b/w, of course, and have the lighting typical of quiz shows, but a great improvement over a lot of kinnies. (And I've seen and handled actual 16mm kinnies in my time, some were remarkably good and others really were as horrible as most people think they were.) I understand that, while Goodson-Todman did not keep most of their daytime shows, they did have nearly complete runs of their prime-time series; which is more than a lot of producers kept.

If there's a market for restorations of this kind, especially on DVD, I'd love to see them; not only the live dramas but the great variety shows of that era.

 

[Goat Rodeo Cowboy]

The technology that has developed in this area is rather amazing. I remember when we got the first glimpse of the supposedly private gathering in Florida where Mitt Romney uttered his "47% comments". They were rough and raw and fuzzy. Without an announcer, a voice-over explaining what you were looking at, you really had trouble making it. And then over maybe a three week period, we began seeing cleaner and sharper and clearer versions. I sometimes "Photoshop" old family photographs. Given enough time and some experimentation, you can do marvels to a fuzzy old black and white still photo. The time AND EXPENSE of processing the old kinescopes... even though a lot of automation has been developed... has to be very EXPENSIVE. Only those episodes that could be viable in the commercial market are going to be tackled for now.

I suspect there are some technicians and lab folks standing around lip-synching the old country music tune from 60 years ago: "If you've got the money, Babe, I've got the time!"