John D. Lowry: Restoration Software
The Digital Fix
Then from deep in the third circle of celluloid hell, Lowry shows the way out. Summoning “after” images on a screen to compare alongside the “befores,” he pulls up a perfectly intact Cary Grant. Also Audrey Hepburn in a stunningly photographed black-and-white Rome, and Gloria Swanson as Norma Desmond, both looking ready again for their close ups.
It’s clear that Lowry’s software has repaired the frames, less clear how it found enough visual information to do so. “The motion picture camera presents lots of information to the film frame, to the emulsion,” he says. “The emulsion has a grain structure that allows you to collect certain information, but prevents you from collecting other information. We’re in the business of extracting that information. By borrowing and combining information from a number of frames, you can do some interesting things.”
Suspecting that he lost me at emulsion, Lowry tries again. “It’s like cleaning your glasses so you can see more. We want to remove the veil so that you can see everything that’s in the original.”
Automatic Software
Precisely how Lowry cleans the glasses is the stuff of proprietary algorithms. But the process is fairly transparent. First Lowry’s project managers scan film or tape into high-resolution digital format, note standard problems and tweak the parameters in the proprietary software (for example, to stabilize jitter and weave). Then they process the digital frames on Lowry’s battery of Macs.
“To do the work we are doing today 10 years ago, would have cost tens of millions of dollars for a computer facility. But along came the Power Mac G4 and the Power Mac G5, and suddenly we had an answer.”
Once the file has been through the process, the imagery is eye-checked frame-by-frame, and then checked with clients. “We go through it to make sure the algorithms did their job properly,” he says, “but the algorithms now are very sophisticated and so there are very few do-overs.”
Digital Ins and Outs
Impressively, Lowry’s software works with images in any size and format, including NTSC, PAL, HD, 2K, 4K. And once Lowry creates a pristine digital master, his clients can output to any of those formats to cover everything from a new film to digital projection to DVD.
Besides cleaning better than other technologies can manage, Lowry’s software enhances his clients’ translations across digital formats by avoiding unnecessary early compression. “Because we do our processing at 32-bit floating point, we expand everything we get. We avoid compression in production stages because it usually does terrible things to pictures,” he says.
The eventual compression required to get a movie onto a DVD can leave artifacts if there is a lot of noise in the images, but Lowry’s robust processing yields even compressed images that are artifact free.
Does Compute
Lowry believes that personal computers, even more than the generous studio budgets for DVD production and distribution, have made digital restoration viable.
“To do the work we are doing today 10 years ago, would have cost tens of millions of dollars for a computer facility,” says Lowry. “The economics of it, without question, would have been impossible. But along came the Power Mac G4 and the Power Mac G5, and suddenly we had an answer.”
Jim Ward makes the point that Lowry’s economic model, as much as his algorithms, brought him to Lowry. “His software does 95% of the work,” says Ward. “There’s a huge economic difference between letting 100 Power Mac G5s render all night long versus having 8 or 10 guys sitting at workstations for a much longer period of time eyeballing pieces of dirt.”
Powering Through
Lowry plans to acquire another 100 Power Mac G5s, and he’s clear about why. “Obviously speed. Both the Power Mac G4 and Power Mac G5 have outstanding 32-bit floating point processors, and we make very good use of them. Another major factor is RAM capacity, important in image processing. The new Power Mac G5s are running with 3.5 gigabytes of RAM in each computer.”
Mac OS X figures in Lowry’s plans for working in higher-res formats. “The studios say they need 4K to get out all the information hiding in their films. So we need access to memory, because these frames are all computed while they’re in RAM. Mac OS X gives us the ability to use virtual memory if necessary to swap around.”
Too Clean?
Lowry’s process, while undeniably effective, is also somewhat controversial. Some industry critics have claimed that digital processing cleans a film too well, stripping it of distinctive grain.
“Generally speaking in the industry, grain removal equals detail removal,” says Lowry. “But we’ve been able to reduce the granularity while increasing the detail. I don’t know that anybody else is doing that in an effective way. As a matter of fact, most of the grain we reduce is grain that crept into the film through many generations of optical duplications. The philosophy of my critics, that every grain in a film is sacred, and to leave grain untouched, is a bit ridiculous in my mind.”
Jim Ward, the happy customer, concurs. “The issue of how much grain to keep in the trilogy was Steven Spielberg’s call. It was really about exact balance, which John has the ability to modulate. Steven wanted a little grain — that’s what he likes and prefers — and you see that in the end product, but with beautiful clarity and color saturation.”
Back to the Future
Industry interests are broadening Lowry Digital beyond standard restoration, including amazing experiments like taking smaller formats to IMAX and re-mastering any format for digital projection. “We’re finding new things to apply the software to every day,” says Lowry.
But restoring films remains Lowry’s main business. He’s working again with Jim Ward and Warner Bros., just finishing a restoration of George Lucas’ first film, “THX 1138.” “After we saw what he could do with ‘Indiana Jones,’” says Ward, “we definitely wanted back in the queue.”
Asked what would make an ideal next project, the man who for more than 30 years has pulled the long levers behind a closed industry curtain, makes just the right call. “‘The Wizard of Oz,’ from separations.”
