Doctor Who - Documentary s01e10 Episode Script
Restoring the Aztecs
Raw 1990s version with poor sound quality and print damage in contrast with the new transfer from the archive negative.
Old telecine transfers tend to be noisy, lacking in detail, and jittery with lots of scratches, dirt and sparkle on the print.
The start of part one is particularly poor and is probably from a duplicate negative, replacing a damaged section.
Note the poor sound quality, with prominent hiss, pops and crackles from the film's optical soundtrack.
This restored version has been sourced from the archive negative and transferred on the ''Spirit'' telecine with the maximum picture area reproduced.
Digital noise reduction removes low levels of video and film noise without softening detail.
The sound has been extensively restored using various techniques, including complex filtering and painstaking manual retouching of waveforms to remove clicks and pops and reduce sibilance.
Film sequences are prone to damage due to the comparatively poor 1960s telecine equipment.
This damage is very apparent in slow motion.
Print damage is painted out by hand using information from adjacent frames, or nearby areas in the same frame.
Every one of around 140,000 frames in the story has to be checked.
Observant viewers may notice that in this shot the edge of the set is clearly visible on right of frame! This is even more obvious if the area normally hidden by the edge of the TV screen is revealed You can even see the edge of the painted backdrop! This can easily be corrected with paintbox techniques as demonstrated here.
However, the original shot is a nice example of 1960s TV and has not been replaced on this DVD.
This sequence from an old transfer demonstrates a very poor piece of stock footage of a storm You can't make a silk purse from a sow's ear, but extensive repairs still make a difference! Scrolling credits tend to demonstrate the low resolution, geometric distortion and instability of film recordings The captions have been remade and matched to the original hand-produced versions, showing how they would have looked in 1964.
With few exceptions, ''Doctor Who'' was made with electronic studio cameras showing 50 discrete images (fields ) per second.
This means motion appears much smoother than with the 25 images per second of film.
When episodes were sold to TV stations without colour videotape facilities, they were copied onto black and white film.
The film recorder was a modified film camera pointing at a flat, high-resolution TV monitor.
Every two fields of video were exposed on one frame of film, ''locking'' them together This reduces the smoothness and causes some motion blur when the film is viewed.
Also, the image is slightly zoomed-in compared with the original video; the missing information is lost forever.
''The Aztecs'' was made on the 405-line TV system.
The existing film recordings reproduce around 365 of these horizontal lines, which are blended together to prevent Moire patterning.
Running at 25 frames per second, the image has a more jerky look than video.
This is even more obvious at half normal speed.
The VidFIRE process compares consecutive frames on the film recording and synthesises a new image halfway between the other two.
When processed and run at half speed, the smoother motion in the image is instantly noticeable.
The newly synthesised frame can be interlaced with the adjacent film frame and run at normal speed.
This approximates the original video look which the episodes would have had when seen in 1964.
The better the film recording, the more convincing the effect This example from ''The Krotons'' (1968) is from a 35mm negative and closely resembles the look of video.
Old telecine transfers tend to be noisy, lacking in detail, and jittery with lots of scratches, dirt and sparkle on the print.
The start of part one is particularly poor and is probably from a duplicate negative, replacing a damaged section.
Note the poor sound quality, with prominent hiss, pops and crackles from the film's optical soundtrack.
This restored version has been sourced from the archive negative and transferred on the ''Spirit'' telecine with the maximum picture area reproduced.
Digital noise reduction removes low levels of video and film noise without softening detail.
The sound has been extensively restored using various techniques, including complex filtering and painstaking manual retouching of waveforms to remove clicks and pops and reduce sibilance.
Film sequences are prone to damage due to the comparatively poor 1960s telecine equipment.
This damage is very apparent in slow motion.
Print damage is painted out by hand using information from adjacent frames, or nearby areas in the same frame.
Every one of around 140,000 frames in the story has to be checked.
Observant viewers may notice that in this shot the edge of the set is clearly visible on right of frame! This is even more obvious if the area normally hidden by the edge of the TV screen is revealed You can even see the edge of the painted backdrop! This can easily be corrected with paintbox techniques as demonstrated here.
However, the original shot is a nice example of 1960s TV and has not been replaced on this DVD.
This sequence from an old transfer demonstrates a very poor piece of stock footage of a storm You can't make a silk purse from a sow's ear, but extensive repairs still make a difference! Scrolling credits tend to demonstrate the low resolution, geometric distortion and instability of film recordings The captions have been remade and matched to the original hand-produced versions, showing how they would have looked in 1964.
With few exceptions, ''Doctor Who'' was made with electronic studio cameras showing 50 discrete images (fields ) per second.
This means motion appears much smoother than with the 25 images per second of film.
When episodes were sold to TV stations without colour videotape facilities, they were copied onto black and white film.
The film recorder was a modified film camera pointing at a flat, high-resolution TV monitor.
Every two fields of video were exposed on one frame of film, ''locking'' them together This reduces the smoothness and causes some motion blur when the film is viewed.
Also, the image is slightly zoomed-in compared with the original video; the missing information is lost forever.
''The Aztecs'' was made on the 405-line TV system.
The existing film recordings reproduce around 365 of these horizontal lines, which are blended together to prevent Moire patterning.
Running at 25 frames per second, the image has a more jerky look than video.
This is even more obvious at half normal speed.
The VidFIRE process compares consecutive frames on the film recording and synthesises a new image halfway between the other two.
When processed and run at half speed, the smoother motion in the image is instantly noticeable.
The newly synthesised frame can be interlaced with the adjacent film frame and run at normal speed.
This approximates the original video look which the episodes would have had when seen in 1964.
The better the film recording, the more convincing the effect This example from ''The Krotons'' (1968) is from a 35mm negative and closely resembles the look of video.