Sir Winston Churchill’s Farewell to Parliament 27th July 1964

Alive Studios recently had the privilege of being sent some wonderful 8mm cine film of Winston Churchill in the 1960s.  

Our customer, British author Edward Gill explains what is on his film;

“I doubt if there are many now living who were in the House of Commons on the 27th July 1964 to witness Churchill’s last day in Parliament. Fortunate I was to be the very last person he passed by as he left the Chamber on that final day…”

The events of this historic occasion were caught on Mr Gill’s trusty 8mm cine camera.  The 200ft reel of film has been transferred to various mediums over the years, including VHS and DVD, but only ever in standard definition.  Keen to see what modern technology could do, he entrusted the film to Alive Studios to produce a High Definition scan, which they put onto a memory stick, which can be plugged straight into the USB port of a normal TV, and can also be watched and edited in any computer.

To enable Mr Gill to share this film with friends, family and other interested parties, Alive Studios also uploaded the movie in HD to their ‘Karishma Cloud’ which is an online gallery they give to all customers to help them safely share their memories online.

Incredibly, Mr Gill found the same event filmed from another angle on the British Pathe website, in which you can see Mr Gill filming with his cine camera!

Below is an excerpt from the book ‘Another World’, kindly reproduced here with permission from Edward Gill. Click here to read

Karishma Cloud v5.6

Is now available to all Alive Studios customers. In this version we have concentrated on movies, so your movies will now load faster with more controls then ever before

  • 10 Second rewind tool
  • Faster loading times for all your movies
  • Google Cast and AirPlay ready. Now you can push your movies to your TV
  • Set playback rate to create slow motion video playback

Try these brand new features for yourself by logging into you Karishma Cloud account

Alive Studios extends sponsorship deal with boxer Zane Turner

Alive Studios are delighted to announce that we have just agreed a new deal with the ‘Team Turner’ camp, and are proud to be sponsoring Zane for another year.  His first professional fight in February was an incredible victory with a 3rd round TKO.

Alive Studios’ Owner Steven Flowers commented “I see Zane in the gym every week and find his passion and dedication contagious.  I’ve followed boxing all my life, and have a feeling he is destined for great things. I look forward to seeing Zane’s name up in lights”.

Let’s hope Steven is right – Zanes personal success will also be a huge success for sport in Devon and an inspiration to local youngsters. Find out more

Betamax Video Colour Correction Example

On the left you can see the Betamax tape playing on a normal video player without any colour correction. On the right we are using our remastering deck to stabilise the image, then I have carried out various stages of colour correction to bring the picture back to a more natural and realistic state.
This level of remastering and colour correction is standard on all video tape transfers carried out here at Alive Studios.

For more info visit us at: alivestudios.co.uk/video-transfer

Video Tape Cleaning Example

Old video and camcorder tape formats like VHS, Betamax, Hi8 etc. can suffer from dirt, debris and even mould stuck to the ribbon, as shown in the photo to the right taken from a customers job recently. This causes the picture to skip, bounce, and have distracting interference such as lines and white fuzzy flecks.

One of the things that makes our transfer superior to others is the cleaning process we undertake prior to transfer. Our decks also feature continuous cleaning even as the tape is being transferred. The result is a much smoother, less jumpy and cleaner image.

Video tape cleaning and transfer

If you have old video tapes, you may have noticed an alarming white dust appearing on the inside of your tapes. This is fungal mould that eats into the cellulose which rapidly destroys the video tape.  However, if caught soon enough, and handled correctly, it is possible to salvage them – be it VHS, Betamax, Video 8, Hi 8 and many more, At Alive Studios, we have facilities to clean the mould and digitise the films before the precious content is lost forever.

For just £75 we will arrange to safely collect the tape, clean, digitise, edit and remaster the footage, then upload your movie to our incredible Karishma Cloud, before returning it on a USB stick in full HD.

If you have old video tapes, don’t leave it too late – contact Alive Studios today.

16mm Cine Film to DVD transfer against Alive Studios film scanning in HD

Our client, had this 16mm film scanned by another company for a special screening of this historical event in Bampton Village, England. After viewing the results they wondered if it was the best it could be, so asked us to pick it up and have a go…
As you can see from the results, our scan is far superior, with a larger view of the cell, compared to the somewhat cropped version by the competitor. The most noticeable difference is that our speed is much more life-like and realistic, along with a sharper, crisper image, and richer colours.

If you’ve had film scanned elsewhere, and wonder if it could be better, send it to us at Alive Studios for a free comparison.

Super 8 Before and After Example 2

This video shows the difference you can expect between a cheap high-street transfer and a frame-by-frame scan done at Alive Studios.

The video on the left was sent in by a customer who had given their cine films to a camera shop. The transfer appears to be done with MiniDV recording equipment, and then put onto DVD. Such a shame as DVD’s only hold SD footage, and much of the quality has been lost in this process.

The video on the right is what our scanners produced from the same cine reels. You can see how much more of the frame we can see, and how much clearer and sharper the images are, and with more natural colour. We supplied the customer with HD MPEG files on a USB stick. We can also scan in 4K.

Go to http://www.alivestudios.co.uk/cine-fi… for find out more