For Independent Producers & Rights Holders
Put your film and animation catalog back in distribution
Features, shorts, documentaries, and animation remastered from SD and HD masters to 4K — so acquisitions teams, streamers, and festival programmers judge the work rather than the transfer it arrived on.
Free 4K sample · Animation upscales exceptionally well · Grain preserved, not scrubbed
Original and 4K, side by side
Samples
Live action and animation, side by side
The two respond very differently to enhancement, and animation is the pleasant surprise. Drag each slider to compare a frame, then press play for the moving version.
Old Movies
Features, shorts, and documentaries
Old telecine transfers are soft, low in contrast, and often carry compression from a DVD-era encode. Recovering detail without flattening the grain structure is the balance we're after.
Drag to compare
- Noise reduction
- Noise reduction
- Sharpening
- Noise reduction
- Sharpening
Animation
Animation and cel-based work
Animation is the best-case material for this work. Flat color fields and hard line art give enhancement unambiguous edges to rebuild, so results are dramatic in a way live action rarely matches.
Drag to compare
- Deinterlacing
- Sharpening
- Color correction
- Stabilization
- Color correction
- Noise reduction
- Sharpening
- Deinterlacing
- Sharpening
- Color correction
- Stabilization
What holds a catalog back
The transfer, not the film
Most independent catalogs aren't limited by the work itself. They're limited by the master somebody made in 2004.
Soft telecine transfers
SD transfers made for DVD were never intended to survive a 65-inch panel. The resolution ceiling was the delivery format, not the negative.
DVD-era compression
Blocking, banding in gradients, and mosquito noise around edges are baked into the picture. A new encode doesn't remove them; enhancement does.
Interlaced and pulldown artifacts
Broadcast and DVD masters carry telecine pulldown and field order problems that read as juddering motion on any modern display.
Faded and shifted color
Older transfers drift toward magenta or lose density entirely. Restoring a neutral, consistent grade is often the single most visible change.
Line halos on animation
Cel animation transferred to tape develops ringing and edge halos around the linework — exactly the artifact that makes animation look cheap at scale.
Reels that don't match
Material transferred at different times, on different machines, drifts between reels. It reads as carelessness to an acquisitions team.
Why it pays
A 4K master is a distribution asset
For a rights holder this isn't a cosmetic exercise — it changes which doors the catalog can walk through.
Platform technical minimums
Major streamers publish delivery specs, and SD masters simply don't qualify. A 4K master is frequently the difference between a catalog being considered and being declined at ingest.
Licensing and re-release value
Remastered titles can be relicensed, bundled, and re-released into territories and windows the original masters were never eligible for.
Animation ages remarkably well
Line art and flat color hold up at 4K in a way live action doesn't. An animation catalog is often the highest-return material in an entire library.
Festivals and retrospectives
Anniversary screenings, retrospectives, and repertory programming all need a projectable master. Most independent titles simply don't have one.
Commissioned for
- Independent features and shorts
- Animation series and cel-based catalogs
- Documentary libraries
- Distributor and sales-agent deliverables
- Festival, retrospective, and repertory screenings
- Public domain and rights-cleared restorations
Delivered as
- 4K UHD masters in ProRes, H.264, or H.265
- Grain structure preserved rather than scrubbed away
- Consistent grade matched across reels
- Deinterlaced and pulldown-corrected where needed
- Reconstructed titles and credit sequences
- Editorial-ready files for your post house or distributor
Free Sample Offer
Try before you buy
Send us up to 30 seconds of your video and we'll create a free 4K sample, so you can see exactly what your footage is capable of before starting the full project.
No cost · No obligation
- 1
Send Us Your Video
Upload up to 30 seconds through any link you like — Dropbox, Google Drive, WeTransfer, or Frame.io.
- 2
We Test and Enhance a Sample
We run your footage through the treatments it actually needs and dial in the look.
- 3
You Approve the Look
Review the 4K sample side by side with your original. Adjustments are free at this stage.
- 4
We Convert the Full Video
Once you're happy, the approved settings are applied across the entire project.
- 5
You Receive Final Files
Delivered in the format you need — for YouTube, streaming, archive, or your own screen.
Questions
The things people ask first
Our best master is a DVD or DigiBeta transfer, not the negative.
That's what most independent catalogs have, and it's what this work is for. A rescan from the negative will always beat enhancement if the negative exists and the budget does — but for the large majority of titles where neither is true, remastering the best available transfer is the realistic route to a 4K deliverable.
Will you scrub the film grain?
Not unless you ask us to. Grain is part of how the work looks and aggressive denoising produces the waxy, plastic result that gives AI remastering a bad name. We manage grain — evening it out, removing the noise that isn't grain — while keeping the texture that belongs there.
Does animation really upscale better than live action?
Noticeably, yes. Enhancement works by inferring detail from edges and structure, and animation is almost entirely hard edges and flat fields. There's far less ambiguity than in foliage, crowds, or skin texture, so the results are cleaner and more predictable. It's usually the material we're most confident about before even seeing it.
Can you match reels that were transferred years apart?
Yes — shot matching across reels is part of the Premium tier, and on a feature it's often the work that matters most. Nothing signals an unrestored title faster than a visible shift at a reel change.
Can you deliver to a distributor's spec sheet?
Send us the spec and we'll deliver against it — codec, container, resolution, frame rate, audio configuration, and naming. If something in the sheet isn't achievable from your source, we'll tell you before starting rather than at delivery.
How do you price a catalog?
Per project, based on total runtime, the condition of the masters, and the delivery requirements. A consistent multi-title catalog prices very differently from a handful of damaged one-offs, and the quote reflects that.
Pick your most difficult title
Send thirty seconds of the title you're least confident about — the softest transfer, the worst reel. We'll remaster it to 4K for free, and you'll know exactly where your catalog stands.
Contact
Start with a free 4K sample
Tell us a little about your footage. The more detail you give, the more useful our first reply will be.
Prefer email? ayal@revive4k.com
Typical reply: within one business day