A SOFTWARE company that digitises old film footage has secured £217,000 from Kelvin Capital and the Scottish Investment Bank to help commercialise its technology.

Glasgow based iMetafilm, previously known as Windense, uses digital SLR cameras to capture multiple pictures of the same film frame.

That is then run through its Omniscan software while the images can also be tagged with relevant descriptions of what is in the shot.

The business, which is already working with the American Library of Congress, says the resultant footage it transforms is then fully searchable.

Founders Michael and Linda Howell believe this could help convince companies to digitise old footage ranging from films and news reels to football matches and bands on tour.

Mr Howell said: "At present, nobody fully knows what is there and people are even scared to open old film reels in case they get damaged. Our cost-effective technology can bring millions of forgotten or unseen moments into light, searchable by anyone on any device.

""Previously we were just thinking in terms of saving archive footage. However, having vast amounts of content without the ability to search it and scrutinise it is almost useless. Now we have a much more in-depth process which in turn makes it usable and more valuable.

"The potential is limitless, and it could be very personal. For example, in terms of genealogy imagine you could search for footage of war from the place and time where your ancestor served, or find a gig your parents went to decades ago."

The funding is being used to build more scanning units and begin the labour intensive digitisation process for customers.

Longer term iMetafilm hopes to have large scale scanning farms based in Scotland.

Jim Hall, co-founder of Kelvin Capital, said: "This has the potential to be an industry game-changer, and is exactly the kind of Scottish-based technology business we love to support. It's a hot area at the moment, and the size of the opportunity for whomever takes the lead is vast."

IMetafilm was advised by law firm Harper Macleod.