Zoo Digital Regulatory News (ZOO)

10 Nov 2009 07:00



ZOO Digital Group plc

("ZOO" or "The Group"))

AWARDED GOVERNMENT FUNDING FOR FILM AND VIDEO RESTORATION PROJECT

ZOO Digital, the provider of software and software-led services for the filmed entertainment market, has been awarded a £350,000 grant from the Technology Strategy Board (TSB) to fund its Commercialisation of Motion Picture Archive (COMPA) project. The project, which will be led by ZOO and includes the British Film Institute as a partner, will seek to create software systems that enable the highly automated restoration and enhancement of film and video material onto high definition platforms such as Blu-ray.

Traditionally, restoration of film material has been done through manual or semi-automated systems, which are used by skilled operators to clean up any imperfections in the moving picture sequences. This can be a painstaking process which not only takes a significant period of time, but also has substantial cost implications. Whilst this may be viable for restoring productions of major studio classics, given the new revenue potential, these costs are prohibitive for less mainstream material. 

The British Film Institute is one of many organizations in the UK and around the world that look after sometimes expansive collections of film and video archives dating back to the early days of film making and video recording. As the guardian of the UK's National Film Archive, the BFI is responsible for maintaining, preserving and restoring collections that have significant cultural and heritage value. Its archive contains more than 50,000 fiction films, over 100,000 non-fiction titles and around 625,000 television programmes.

Stuart Green, CEO of ZOO, commented:  'We are delighted to be working on such an exciting project and collaborating with the BFI. ZOO has a strong track record in designing software and services which reduce the needs for extensive manpower and related costs in the film industry. We are confident that we can create software systems that will enable studios and organizations such as the BFI to restore commercial content as well as important cultural and heritage material." 

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About ZOO Digital Group plc:

ZOO Digital Group plc is a provider of creative media transformation software and related services. ZOO's products form an integrated suite of desktop applications and on-demand systems that work with printed materials and audio/visual content, adapting these media to different languages, sizes, and technical formats. ZOO makes this process extremely quick and cost effective and is clearly differentiated in the market. 

ZOO's services are built on its proprietary patented software and enable customers to reduce considerably the costs and time to market of regionalized filmed entertainment titles and marketing campaigns across multiple territories and across a wide range of applications and formats, including printed materials, DVD, Blu-ray Disc, video on demand, electronic sell-through and broadcast. Working closely with language translation partners, ZOO's media adaptation software transforms computer-based workflows through radical process re-engineering and provides clear differentiation for the company's production, consulting and custom development services.

ZOO is focused on the worldwide creative media production markets and in particular video production for entertainment applications, with customers including major film studios and other producers and publishers of video-based consumer products.