An interesting article about high quality film processing on the Amiga can be found in German magazine "Kickstart", issue 1/1993. 

"Kickstart" was a printed magazine by Maxon, the same company that created Cinema4D, ArtEffect, and many other great and well known things Amiga. The magazine focused on serious Amiga usage: hardware, software development, graphics, video production, office applications, etc.

Issue 1/1993 of "Kickstart" has an interesting article on page 94, written by Enrico Corsano, about a custom Amiga 3000 setup that processes film frames at a very high resolution. This is a direct translation of the article.

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"At this optical bank, the interface between film and Amiga is located."

REPORT: The Amiga on high-school duty

Film restoration with the Amiga

By Enrico Corsano

Ever more users recognize that the Amiga is a serious tool for working. That's why it's ever more often used for very special tasks. For about half a year now, an Amiga 3000 is used at the Hochschule für Gestaltung [high-school for design] in Offenbach.

The HfG is an art high-school with a long tradition. It was founded in the previous century as a school for craftsmen. Over time, the assignment changed. The focus moved from craftsmanship to education in art and science, in the classic fields of graphic, painting, sculpting, and stage design. At the end of the 70s, the field of AV-media was added, which has strongly evolved since. This field is divided into film/television and electronic picture. But for years it is planned to merge both divisions and thereby benefit from new opportunities.

A laboratory for new media

In a special media laboratory, for which the school has received a scientific research assignment, electronic media shall be linked with classic film. A special task is the restoration of old film stock. Oftentimes, only singular copies of historically important films are in existence, that also are in very bad condition. Scratches or stains in the pictures. The film stock is brittle and requires conservation. With a normal copy operation, there is a high risk of destroying the original. Thus it's required to proceed with great care.

The Amiga retouching films

The media laboratory is equipped with special film-recording and -playback devices, that can transport film very gently, frame-by-frame. At this so-called optical bank, simple copies, but also special effects can be created. And this is also where the electronics come into play. A extremely high-resolution video camera captures a single frame of a film. It's connected to an Amiga 3000. A special software was developed by Bernd Emese from Darmstadt, that makes it possible to systematically restore the individual frames of the film. To do this, it has special functions, that, for example, are able to detect and remove scratches and stains automatically. 

But many more functions are available. Of course, brightness and contrast can be intensified or eased. Currently, color isn't available yet. Another interesting capability is the correction of the picture position. There are also simple drawing functions. And it's capable of masking, which is particularly important for film application. 

"The program offers a resolution of 2000 x 1500 pixels. For viewing on screen, the image can be scolled."

Automatic film processing

Key is the possibility to automatize different processes. A second of film is made of 25 frames. Ten seconds are made of 250 frames, and a minute of 1500. Manually loading and editing every single frame would consume huge amounts of time. But the software is created in such a way that it can automatically capture and edit the images. The user defines if scratches or stains shall be removed, or brightness correction shall be applied. The software then autonomously loads one image after the other and processes it. To get a reasonable quality, of course a high resolution has to be used. The software can handle images with a resolution of about 2000 x 1500 pixels. Such an image, of course, uses a lot of memory. Despite the Amiga 3000 being equipped with 18MB of RAM, there's room for only 10 images.

High resolution pictures in the Amiga

This isn't a big drawback, though. Because in this application, the goal is to output the processed image files back to film stock. This is done with a high-resolution Agfa image setter, that upscales to image to 4000 x 4000 pixels. This results in excellent image quality. The image setter is automatically controlled by the software. Once processing of an image has finished, it's output on the image setter, and there's room for a new one in the Amiga. So the Amiga is quite busy. The limitations of processing power are indeed easily reached with this application.

Also when it comes to displaying graphics, the new capabilities of the A4000 would look better. Currently, an image is displayed in HiRes, in 16 shades of grey. Since the resolution of the image is higher than that of the Amiga graphics chips, either the complete image can be displayed in downscaled form, or in original size, while only a section is visible on screen. By scrolling, the hidden parts can be quickly reached. This way, it's possible to work well on the Amiga. This is where the speed advantage of the internal graphics chips over an external graphics card becomes apparent.

Unique software on the Amiga

The software developers deserve special praise, having done some pioneering work. The software has many other unique features, in addition to those already mentioned. For example, the film speed can be corrected. Many old silent films were shot at a speed that is too slow by today's standards. The program can then calculate intermediate frames to achieve the desired speed. Also, when correcting other errors, the possibility of comparing images and calculating a new, better one is often used. 

Another focus of the HfG's media laboratory is the creation of computer graphics and animations and their transfer to film. For this purpose though, PCs are available, running a PictureMaker system and 3D Studio. The latter of which, incidentally, Dan Silva, developer of DPaint, contributed to. The PC programs and the associated special hardware aren't exactly up to date. PictureMaker isn't even in in production anymore. Nevertheless, also by today's standards, it's a highly powerful program, with its soft- and hardware allowing the creation of 24-bit images and, above all, very complex animations  in a very easy way. The performance, however, isn't adequate to today's demands anymore. 3D Studio is a relatively new development that is superior to the 20 times more expensive PictureMaker in many respects. The structure of 3D Studio is similar to the software familiar from the Amiga, in many respects. Since there is currently also talk of purchasing 3D software for the Amiga, perhaps an opportunity for a comparison will arise soon. We, in any case, are very excited about it.

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Original article, "Kickstart" issue 1/1993, p. 94 and 95

Source: https://archive.org/details/amiga-kickstart-93-01/

Translation: R. Eberle, 2025.