WASHINGTON: NASA is restoring its video of the Apollo 11 mission, which culminated in Neil Armstrong’s moon walk achieved 40 years ago yesterday. The National Aeronautics and Space Administration polished up a few clips in 720p and posted them in Quicktime files on the NASA site next to versions of the originals. Downloads were a bit slow today for TVB, but the improvement of the video is distinct.
“The broadcast version of that video has a ghostly, choppy look with all sorts of flaws,” Government Video’s Sanjay Talwaniwrote. “That video came from the sky at 10 frames per second, 320 lines. To provide video to broadcasters, NASA had special standards converters constructed for each of the tracking stations that would receive the signals. The converters relied on simple optical conversion--a standard NTSC television camera trained on the screen of a special slow-scan monitor.”
The new video is being lifted from original one-inch tapes. The entire project is expected to be done by September. More detailed information on the Apollo 11 footage restoration is available at Government Video.
