Standard High-Speed Scanning of 16mm / 35mm Microfilm

All scanning is performed by Creekside's manufacturer-trained personnel on the latest generation of high-speed rollfilm scanners.

• Auto Document Detect
• Color Depth
  • Bitonal (black and white)
  • 256-Color Grayscale
• Gamma Correction
• Processing
  • Sharpen
  • Despeckle
  • Crop
  • Deskew
  • Rotation
• Resolution: 100 -- 600 dpi (depending on application)
• Image File Formats
  • TIFF (monochrome / uncompressed / multi-page)
  • JPEG
  • CALS
  • PDF
  • PNG
  • JPEG 2000
  • many others -- contact us for details

Lossless Scanning and Auditing

For older or poor quality film (unfortunately often used to store valuable historical records), an additional quality control step is usually necessary and highly recommended to ensure the complete capture of the reel and proper framing of images during the “cutting” process.  This process involves initially scanning the entire reel as a single “ribbon” image and then presenting a series of suggested detected frames to the scanner operator, who visually inspects the ribbon frame-by-frame to ensure the content is properly captured. 

Auditing a roll of 16mm microfilm -- click for detail

The operator has the opportunity to make adjustments and corrections to the frames before the final cut process.  This eliminates the possibility of the two most common problems with automated scanning – skipped images and incorrect cropping.  Furthermore, images can be processed independently of one another (e.g., to extract detail from a particularly dark frame). The ribbon can be saved in case any future changes are required.  Ask around -- few microfilm digitization vendors today have this capability.

Optical Character Recognition (OCR)

A variety of automated text extraction options are available for type-based media such as print documents, newspapers, etc.  These are often dependent on the target file format.  For example, documents digitized into PDF archives can use Adobe’s native index and search capabilities.  More customized tagging solutions are also available -- contact us to discuss your specific requirements.

Manual Tagging / Transcription

 In order to make raw digital content searchable, it must be tagged.  This is relatively trivial with type-based content such as newspapers, but can be a challenge with other types of records.  Often it is not possible to automate this process with older microfilm or film including handwritten / cursive script documents, and humans must manually transcribe and enter the documents’ content. 

Media

Digitized content can be delivered on a variety of physical media.  Note: FTP transfer is typically NOT an option due to the time and bandwidth required to transfer large binary files.  Types of media available include:

• CDs (700 MB max)
• DVDs (4.7 GB max)
• Hard drives
• Others – contact to discuss