This July marks the 40th anniversary of man setting foot on the surface of the moon. Few moving images are more widely known than the black-and-white video of Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin descending the ladder of the Apollo 11 lunar landing module. That landmark in human history symbolizes what mankind can achieve. Unlike most other milestones reached by intrepid explorers, the moment was captured with a video camera.

As part of the celebrations marking the anniversary, NASA commissioned a restoration of the moonwalk images.

"After performing their due diligence, NASA chose to treat Lowry Digital as a sole source provider for these restoration services," says the company's Chief Operating Officer Mike Inchalik. "That speaks to Lowry Digital's unparalleled proprietary technology and experience in repairing moving images. While others can apply a bit of color adjustment to deal with faded images and paint out some dirt and scratches by hand, no one else has the tools we have invented over the past decade to automatically remove a myriad of types of picture artifacts, or to reduce noise and increase image detail.

"Given that the original recordings of the Apollo 11 mission did not survive, this ability to deal with the lost picture detail, as well as the increased noise and artifacts introduced after original photography, was essential," he adds.

The project is also historically resonant for Lowry Digital. Company founder John Lowry worked with NASA to improve images as they were sent back live from the Apollo 16 and 17 missions. Those ideas and methods, developed by Lowry in the 1970s with his team at Image Transform, formed the seed that grew into The Lowry Process(tm), the state-of-the-art temporal image processing technology at the heart of Lowry Digital's current work on the Apollo 11 images.

The images entrusted to Lowry Digital were produced by television scan converters located at NASA's tracking sites. Some of the material, including the famous descent of the ladder by Armstrong, was captured while the camera was mounted on the leg of the module. Later, Armstrong moved the camera to a tripod, where it captured images of the flag being planted and Aldrin's toying with the moon's weaker gravity, for example. Altogether, Lowry Digital is handling roughly two-and-a-half hours of material.

Under the initial restoration effort, preliminary imagery was completed by Lowry Digital in July to be shown by NASA to demonstrate the techniques that will be used to restore the surviving footage. The restoration is ongoing, and scheduled to be completed in September.

The images have been gathered mainly from four sources. According to NASA, the original, archival, one-inch videotape copies of this footage seem to have been degaussed, recertified, and reused. The original images beamed back to Earth were captured at 10 frames per second, with 320 lines of resolution for the live telecast. NASA tracked down a number of copies around the world that were recorded in a variety of formats. One source was an 8 mm wind-up film camera that was handheld and aimed at a video monitor at mission control. Amazingly, this 8 mm film copy includes the only extant copy of some portions of the telecast.

Part of Lowry Digital's challenge is to untangle the knot of formats, frame rates and resolutions. The images had been sent to Earth using slow scan television (SSTV), a primitive, low-bandwidth mode of video communication. Frame rates were a particular puzzle because the images had been translated to PAL, NTSC and other television standards using conversion techniques that moved fields and frames ahead and back to make the 10-frames-per-second material work in 25 fps PAL or 30 fps NTSC. Other material had been translated to VHS format from feeds coming from various points in the system. The 8 mm film images were recorded at 16 frames per second. All these formats and techniques added their own artifacts and flaws to the images.

The Lowry Process(tm) uses temporal image processing to reduce noise and improve detail. The process compares information from a large number of consecutive frames in a sequence and uses the similarities and differences between those frames to regain proper contrast, resolution and noise level in each frame. The Lowry Process incorporates very powerful imaging algorithms that have been fine-tuned over the course of more than 400 major feature film restorations performed over the past nine years.

The team at Lowry Digital is also developing a number of solutions specific to the unique problems inherent in the Apollo 11 images. For example, Senior Algorithm Scientist Kimball Thurston developed a "vignetting correction:" that addressed the variations in brightness across the frame. These variations are typical of an analog tube camera of that vintage. Because the cameras require a moment or two to register an image, ghosting is also problem - shadow areas look transparent briefly before becoming opaque.

Other issues include lag, smearing, and bleed. All these issues require specially tailored solutions. Some issues were introduced in the original photography. The RCA camera had limited dynamic range and had trouble with the extreme contrast of light in space. Some of the problems were introduced in transmission and others in recording. The SSTV convertor was sometimes unable to handle the blackest areas of the image and would revert to middle gray. Further flaws were introduced in translation to other formats and media, and still others are the result of the media aging. Tracking the flaws back to their source helped the Lowry team make decisions about what needed fixing.

Lowry Digital, in consultation with NASA, has determined that some "flaws" in the images should be left in. Dirt and dust on the camera lens is one example. "We could make these images 'perfect,' but at a certain point you begin to lose authenticity," says Lowry's Project Manager for the Apollo 11 restoration, Patrick Edquist. "There are internal reflections from the camera lens that are clearly visible in the images as they were beamed to Earth and, after some discussion, NASA decided that those should be left in. The restored footage will be as improved as we can make it without changing the heart of it."

"We will be applying a lot of the thinking that we apply to restoration generally," says Lowry. "We try to ask, 'What is it that we are trying to reproduce here?' You walk a fine line all the time in that area."

Audio from the Apollo 11 mission has provided Lowry Digital with a reference for reproducing the proper speed of movements, which was sometimes distorted due to the various frame rates and standards conversions.

The company has been consulting with NASA experts, some of whom had worked on the Apollo 11 mission. "These people are providing us with very valuable information that is helping us get to the bottom of these problems," says Thurston. "If you can understand what caused a problem, you are very often taking the first step in defining a solution."

The images are being finished in HD format. NASA plans to use the preliminary highlight sequences in its 40th anniversary celebrations, and to use it as part of a library of space exploration materials accessible to television stations, schools and the like. Ultimately, NASA will provide the public, future historians, and the National Archives with the highest quality video of this historic event, thanks to Lowry Digital's efforts.

"I must say, it's been a delight to revisit Apollo program and the work we started 37 years ago," says Lowry. "It's been a tremendous privilege, and very exciting. For the Apollo 11 work, we started with some pretty rough images, and while they are much improved, they are still far less than pristine. But it's like sitting behind the lens of the camera itself. You are peering out into a world that is not what it was before. It's not the way we are used to seeing it. It's clearer. There are details and depth to the pictures that we have not seen before. It is quite a phenomenal experience to see that for the first time."

"This work for NASA represents the first real effort to apply Lowry Digital's proprietary image processing and repair tools outside the entertainment space," adds Inchalik. "One thing has become crystal clear to us through this project. The need to increase detail and remove the noise and artifacts in moving image sequences is much bigger than just movies and TV shows. The need extends to scientific and industrial images, medical images, security and military images. The underlying technology that John Lowry first invented in the 1970's during Apollo 16 and 17 and is now so much more advanced at Lowry Digital, and applies just as well to those fields. We're excited by those opportunities."

The 15 highlight sequences restored by Lowry Digital and being used throughout NASA's 40th anniversary celebrations include:
• 1.Man's First Step on the Moon - Astronaut Neil Armstrong descends the ladder of the Apollo lunar module and makes man's first steps on the surface of the moon.
• 2.Second Man on the Moon - Astronaut Buzz Aldrin exits the lunar module and climbs down the ladder to the surface of the moon.
• 3.Reading the Plaque - The astronauts unveil and read the commemorative plaque; includes Buzz Aldrin with his visor up showing his hand to the camera.
• 4.TV Panorama - Neil Armstrong moves the TV camera away from the lunar module and shoots a 360-degree panorama.
• 5.Solar Wind Collector - Neil Armstrong photographs Buzz Aldrin setting up the solar wind experiment.
• 6.Raising the Flag - The astronauts set up the American flag on the surface of the moon.
• 7.Buzz Running - Buzz Aldrin demonstrates walking and running on the lunar surface.
• 8.President's Call - The astronauts pause for a telephone call from President Nixon.
• 9.Kicking Moon Dust - Buzz Aldrin kicks moon dust demonstrating how it quickly falls back to the surface.
• 10.Carrying Experiments - The astronauts carry the EASEP experiment packages out to where these will be left on the moon.
• 11.Core Sampling - Buzz Aldrin collects a surface core sample.
• 12.Buzz Re-enters Lunar Module - Buzz Aldrin re-enters the lunar module near the end of the EVA (extra-vehicular activity).
• 13.Rock Box Transfer - Neil Armstrong transfers the sample containers from the surface up to Buzz Aldrin in the lunar module.
• 14.Neil Climbs the Ladder - Neil Armstrong re-enters the lunar module after the completion of the EVA (extra-vehicular activity).
• 15.Equipment Dump - The astronauts' jettison backpacks and other unneeded equipment.