INSTITUTION

Your institution faces ongoing challenges to catalogue and preserve your archived assets. Whilst carefully controlled storage conditions can help to stabilise many historic assets, physical film, tape and audio media in particular do deteriorate over time. Working closely with you we can help protect your audiovisual collections and make your incredible heritage available to the world.

Big Collection,
Small Budget?

Digitise your collection at a fraction of the cost of preservation scanning with our Fast Affordable Catalogue Transfer service (FACT).

Rapidly generate viewing files for your entire film collection
Identify what films to prioritise for full preservation scanning
Make full catalogue available for viewing online or licensing

This exclusive service is perfect for large film collections where a low cost way is needed to identify and catalogue the content on each reel.

Get More Info

An Institution is Built On Its Heritage

A World-Class Team

Our highly-experienced team are recognised leaders in their fields having worked with film collections around the world. Nulight Studios is also an approved supplier to national and regional film archives including the British Film Institute, BBC, and ITV.

Advice & Expertise

Our knowledgeable team can advise on the most cost effective approach to digitising and restoring archive film. Whether you’re writing a grant proposal or need help with a current initiative we can help make your project a success.

Safeguarding Your Film

We adhere to accepted best practice for the physical repair, cleaning and treatment of archive film. All client material is stored in a temperature and humidity controlled library within our secure facility monitored by 24 hour CCTV.

Film Shuttle Service

Transport your film securely and safely with our shuttle-van service serving London and other UK destinations. Scheduling collections and deliveries right to your door couldn’t be easier or faster.

Exceptional Value

Benefit from world-class film scanning technology, industry leading restoration software and the combined experience of our audio-visual team at a fraction of the cost of similar London-based facilities..

Ethical Standards

We recognise our duty of respect to the film, and to restore it to the truest possible representation of the original intentions of its creator. In so doing we seek to remove accretions of time, wear and tear without changing or distorting the nature of the original material.

Our Process

Explore our custom workflow for institutional archives

Collect & Catalogue

We can arrange collection of your media by courier or by our secure van service. On arrival to our facility all film, tape and audio media is barcoded and logged in our media asset management system. Valuable information on your films physical condition is recorded such as degree of shrinkage and severity of any mould or vinegar syndrome that might be evident. These records inform every step in the scanning and restoration process.

Inspect & Repair

Our team thoroughly inspects your film to identify any issues that could affect picture quality during the scan. This includes repair of weak joins and torn edges as well as treatment of mouldy, shrunken or brittle film. This preparation stage helps deliver a cleaner and more stable image as well as significantly reducing the time and cost of any subsequent restoration.

Ultrasonic Cleaning

Film material from 8mm to 35mm is run through our Lipsner Smith ultrasonic film cleaner. Surface dirt is gently removed by ultrasonic waves in a warm solvent bath to prepare it for scanning. Ultrasonic film cleaning is the safest and most effective method to professionally clean any motion picture film including acetate, nitrate, and polyester.

Digitise Picture & Sound

We use the state-of-the-art Golden Eye 4 archive film scanner which is both gentle on film and supports all standard plus many obsolete formats. Our best-light transfer process ensures every frame is captured at up to 4K resolution and 16-bit colour and stored as DPX. Combined optical or magnetic audio is captured at the same time with other audio formats transferred separately and then synced to picture.

Picture Restoration

Picture restoration occurs in two stages. First, we use Phoenix auto-restoration tools to remove the majority of surface debris or picture damage such as dust, dirt sparkle and flicker. Next, we meticulously inspect each frame and restore issues such as scratches, tears, hairs, stability, grain, and warping. In addition to film we can restore a wide range of issues specific to video tape including dropouts, interlacing, noise, moire and crosstalk.

Sound Restoration

Our sound restoration process begins with a clean and noise-free digital transfer of magnetic, variable density optical and variable area optical formats. Our sound engineer uses a range of techniques with ProTools and other audio software to remove any unwanted noise such as high frequency hiss, pops and crackle whilst taking great care to preserve the original character of the sound.

Review & Approval

At any point it’s easy to review your films and suggest changes through our client portal. Larger, high quality files can also be sent using Media Shuttle. Alternatively, clients are always welcome to visit our facilities in person to review thier films on 4K monitors or our 2K projection suite.

Export and Delivery

Original scans and/or restored film are typically delivered as 10, 12 or 16 bit log DPX files, alongside a visually lossless copy (eg. ProRes HQ), a compressed viewing copy (eg. h.264) and any captured and restored sound in WAV files. We also support alternative mathematically lossless formats including MXF, FFV1 and the Matroska container format for long term preservation and storage. An MD5 checksum is created during copying to either hard drive or LTO.

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8

Client Testimonials

Nulight clearly have a passion for film and their knowledge, experience and attention to detail in every step of the process, from prep to digital restoration, is evident in the final product – our film has never looked better!

James Gibbs, Media Technology Officer

Working with Nulight to restore our early 16mm films was simply a delight. The negative rolls were often in a delicate condition but Nulight took great care in ensuring that every detail was preserved and restored and beautifully graded. The results were simply staggering, suffice it to say I’d never seen these films looking so good, even when they were prints fresh from the laboratory.

David Sproxton, Co-Founder

LUX has worked with Nulight Studios on a number of archival film scanning projects and we would recommend them highly, their experience, knowledge and care is truly unparalleled.

Benjamin Cook, Director

After researching facilities, costs and recommendations within the industry, we approached Bristol-based restoration specialists Nulight Studios. From our first enquiry, their helpful approach guided us through all the processes and options, enabling us to find most creatively appropriate and cost-effective route to the restoration.

Ian Mackinnon, Co-Founder

Even when working to tight deadlines, Nulight delivered to a very high standard. As producers, the workflow process was simple and easy, their staff a pleasure to work with and pricing estimates were always accurate. I highly recommend Nulight’s services.

Sarah Peat, Executive Producer

Communication is excellent, you are kept informed of progress, can view the material online and request any tweaks which are dealt with promptly and efficiently. We wouldn’t hesitate to recommend Nulight to anyone looking to have their film scanned and restored to the highest standards possible.