Converting film based optical soundtrack into a digital file

[Nicholas Kovats]

I had previously posted a suggestion that a software process was available to convert an overscanned image of a film based optical track to a digital audio file without being able to provide concrete examples.

Well never say never. I have been informed that there is an open source software initiative at the University of South Carolina's Interdisciplinary Mathematics Institute (IMI) in conjunction with the their large historical Moving Image Research Collections (MIRC). The research paper is called "An Open Source Application for Image-Based Digital Reproduction of Optical
Film Sound" located here, i.e.

http://www.neh.gov/files/grants/univers ... ptical.pdf

Jeff Kreines and his Kinetta Archival scanner project have provided some real world examples using an alpha version of this Uni of SC software. A high resolution scan is imperative to the software's success. Jeff's examples were scanned at 3296 x 2472, 12 bit resolution and provide additional evidence of the oversampling theory relative to film scans resulting in a "richer" information or color space.

The first film scan is quite remarkable considering that the "The Kodachrome original was badly damaged -- shrunken, torn perfs, vinegar syncrome, cupped..." Beautiful stuff indeed.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AGF-_hRYR4I
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yssDZEoA_WQ

[Will2]

I work with a company out of Maryland (in the U.S.) and they developed this software, looks like it might helpful for you:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v4_1y8_L ... e=youtu.be

This allows for recovery of variable density or variable area soundtracks from scans of composite negatives or composite positive prints. Sound can be recovered from any scanned film image with sufficient resolution and overscan.

They also have crazy cheap rates for processing and transfer on a 2K Spirit.

http://www.videofilmsolutions.com/