James+Insell


 * Position** - Founder of the Colour Recovery Working Group.


 * Employment** - [|BBC Research] - Involved in Video Quality work, Archive retrieval, Access to Archives, and High-Definition.


 * Background** - In 2004, along with Jim Easterbrook of BBC Research, set up a system used to Reverse Standards Convert the BBC's 525-line collection of Dr.Who, Doomwatch, Up Pompeii! and other programmes.


 * Interest in the Group** - I first noticed colour breakthrough on a UK Gold transmission of 'Ambassadors of Death' film recordings in 1994, and gave thought to what may have caused this. I came to the conclusion that, somehow, colour information had been captured within the film recording and assumed that this would be in the form of non-separated chroma embedded with luma on the film itself. In 2000, in discussion with Steve Roberts of the [|Doctor Who Restoration Team], I put forward my theory and Steve confirmed that, indeed, film recordings were often made without the prior separation of chroma, but the 'chroma' would be filtered out upon rescanning. I suggested that it may be possible to extract and decode the chroma signal and use it to recolour B&W programmes held in the form of film recordings. Since 2000, I have informally been dabbling with ideas and examining source material. I have also been attempting to gain support for the establishment of a formal project to develop a technique for colour recovery. Unfortunately, funding and support for such a project has not been forthcoming as yet, and in 2007 I decided to investigate the setting up of an informal, non-funded, collaborative approach to the work.


 * Skills offered** - Knowledge of PAL, C++, Mathematics, Image processing.

-- James Insell 06/03/2007