Morecambe & Wise programme recovery

[Dave Moll]

From what I've seen, recovering the colour information from a monochrome recording is far from straightforward, and is only possible at all if the colour subcarrier remains present (not filtered out) in the recorded signal. It works by interpreting the pattern of dots left in the image by the subcarrier and using computer software to analyse this and do its best to re-create the colour signals. From what I recall, quite a lot of post-processing was required to obtain an acceptable recovery of the original colour.

My recollections are from an exercise a while back to perform this on an episode of Dad's Army

[Ted Kendall]

Originally Posted by Grubhead

So you just need a computer to convert it back into colour!

Well, you don't just sit with your feet on the desk and let the machine do it. I use some awesomely powerful stuff to do sound restoration and without careful driving (for which read the time of a skilled and therefore costly engineer) the results are dire. The disciplines are the same for pictures. The process relies on the original telerecording operator having not engaged the chroma filter, and deducing the chroma information from the resultant patterning.