Soil Dynamics and Earthquake Engineering 18 (1999) 519–530

www.elsevier.com/locate/soildyn

Common problems in automatic digitization of

strong motion accelerograms
M.D. Trifunac*, V.W. Lee, M.I. Todorovska
Civil Engineering Department, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA 90089-2531, USA

Abstract
Common problems encountered in automatic digitization of strong motion accelerograms, recorded on film, are presented and discussed.
These include synchronization of the time scale for the three components of motion, non-uniform film speed, trace following in case of
scratches or trace crossings, distortions from high contrast preprocessing of the scanned image, and trace “rotation” resulting from rotated
position of the scanned film record. Procedures for correcting or eliminating these problems are suggested. The image processing hardware
has developed so much during the past 20 years, that at present it exceeds the technical requirements for processing strong motion
accelerograms. The problems described in this paper result from lack of training of the operators and lack of quality control in the process,
which still seems to be esoteric and highly specialized. This situation may have been caused by the low demand by the engineering profession
for high quality and large volume of strong motion data. q 1999 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.
Keywords: Automatic digitization of accelerograms; Accelerogram data processing; Strong motion data; Accelerogram image processing

1. Introduction capabilities, there have been dramatic improvements in

The hardware and software for automatic digitization of
strong motion accelerograms benefited from the rapid
growth of the image processing technology since the
1970s. Modern scanners were first used to scan large
number of accelerograms in the late 1970s. The first system
ran on a Data General NOVA computer and used OPRO-
NICS rotating drum scanner. Although the resolution of this
scanner was 12.5 × 12.5 mm (2032 dpi), it was actually
operated at a four times smaller resolution of 50 × 50 mm
(508 dpi) which was found to be optimal for this type of
application. The cost of hardware for this system in 1977
was US$180 000 [1]. About 10 years later, personal compu-
ters (PCs) and inexpensive flat-bed scanners (at first, HP
ScanJet II Plus, with 300 dpi optical resolution) appeared,
and the automatic digitization software was modified to
work on a PC (first on IBM PC AT; [2]). Today this system
is running on a Pentium II PC with HP ScanJet 4c (600 dpi
optical resolution). The cost of the most modern hardware
system is under US$5000. Fig. 1 illustrates the progress in
hardware capabilities (scanner resolution, CPU speed, capa-
city of hard disk storage, typical scanning time, typical
operator time, and cost of one system). In the hardware
* Corresponding author. Tel.: 1 1-213-740-0570; fax: 1 1-213-744-
1426.
E-mail address: trifunac@usc.edu (M.D. Trifunac)
0267-7261/99/$ - see front matter q 1999 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.
PII: S0267-726 1(99)00018-4
CPU speed and in hard disk capacity. Even more dramatic
has been the reduction of cost of the hardware system and
reduction of operator time since 1970s.
Judging by the current trends in computer and informa-
tion technologies, the possibilities for further improvements
of the digitization system and for new developments are
essentially unlimited. However, advanced hardware and
software alone do not guarantee high quality of the digitized
data. Critical for high quality processed data remains to be
an experienced operator and rigorous quality control. We
have found recently many errors in commercially processed
records of the 1994 Northridge earthquake and one after-
shock, which we believe are due to operator inexperience,
false expectation that the software will perform all the tasks
perfectly and automatically, and lack of quality control.
Errors caused by lack of operator knowledge of the empiri-
cal procedures in the automatic trace following software,
bad operator judgement and lack of quality control can be
so severe that the quality of data from automatic digitizers
may be inferior even to the old hand digitized accelerograms
[3]. Errors of such nature may be very common in digitized
strong motion data worldwide, due to the large volume of
recorded analog data, and pressure to reduce the backlogs.
Empirical modeling of strong ground motion amplitudes
and studies aiming to interpret the physical nature of strong
motion depend on the availability of a large number of
uniformly and accurately processed accelerograms. The
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Fig. 1. Evolution in the hardware capabilities for automatic digitization of
accelerograms, cost reduction and operator time.
amount of data for such analyses is growing, as more instru-
ments are deployed and more earthquakes are recorded. For
example, we had 186 uniformly processed three-component
accelerograms in the mid-1970s, about 550 in the early
1980s, and about 2000 in the early 1990s. With such a
large number of records, digitized and processed by many
different organizations, it is becoming increasingly difficult
to control the quality and uniformity of the data. At present,
the digitized strong motion data worldwide is of non-
uniform quality and often lacks complete supporting docu-
mentation. Recording strong motion is a long term process,
changes in personnel responsible for network operation and
data processing are inevitable, and it is often impossible to
recover the original information. Unless this practice
changes soon, it will become difficult to recover and
preserve data it took so long to record, and to carry out
large scale regression analyses and many new specialized
studies.
Contrary to the popular perception, the bottleneck in data
processing and dissemination is not in the digitization of
analog records, but in verification, quality control, inclusion
in a database, and the lack of clearly defined priorities.
Groups which gather, process and disseminate data are
rarely involved in large scale data analyses, and so do not
have first hand experience of what constitutes complete and
necessary data. Thus the supporting information of
processed accelerograms is often incomplete. For example,
instrument characteristics are rarely supplied in adequate
detail, so that more advanced instrument correction
algorithms cannot be implemented [4–7]. Transducer char-
acteristics are not calibrated periodically in field conditions;
in many instances, nominal values are used, or 10–20 years
old values supplied by the manufacturer [8]. Cross-referen-
cing data files with detailed information on the earthquake
source and recording site characteristics is often not avail-
able or is incomplete.
The purpose of this paper is to point out some common
problems encountered in automatic digitization of acceler-
ograms, to describe their origin and how to avoid them, and
to illustrate their appearance in digitized records. The
intended audience are both those that produce and those
that use strong motion data, the former to recognize and
avoid these problems, and the latter to be aware of these
problems in analyzing the data. The presented examples
come from digitization of real strong motion accelerograms,
and are typical of errors we found in commercially digitized
recordings of the 17 January, 1994, Northridge, California,
earthquake …ML ˆ 6:4† and its 20 March, 1994, aftershock at
the Van Norman complex of the Los Angeles Department of
Water and Power [9]. We redigitized these records for
compatibility with records of the same earthquake in this
area, which we digitized earlier. We will refer to the two
versions of a record as “old” and “new.” In this paper, we
compare the two versions and try to explain the differences.
For better understanding of the discussed problems, we
describe briefly our system for automatic digitization and
the principles around which the software was designed, and
refer the readers to references which offer more detail. We
could find no detailed description of the system used to
process the “old” versions, in professional journals or in
technical reports. So, in many instances we only guess
how the “old” version was digitized.
2. Automatic digitization procedures
The main tasks in automatic digitization of accelerograms
are: (1) converting the film image into a digital bitmap with
a defined binary or gray-scale level for each pixel (corre-
sponding to the optical density of the film record); (2) creat-
ing line segments out of the bitmap by automatic trace
following (given a threshold gray level and minimum
trace width in pixels, specified by the operator); (3) inter-
active editing of the set of line segments created automati-
cally by the computer programs performing the previous
task; and (4) trace concatenation, in case of long records
and several separately scanned pages, and writing the trace
coordinates (in the scanner coordinate system) and other
information (e.g. scanning resolution and trace type) into
a disk file, in format recognizable by the software for further
processing (involving instrument and baseline corrections,
[10,11]). These tasks are performed by four computer
programs with respective generic names: Film, Trace, TV
and Scribe [1]. These programs have evolved with the
evolution of hardware. Numerous major changes and
 M.D. Trifunac et al. / Soil Dynamics and Earthquake Engineering 18 (1999) 519–530
Fig. 2. First 10 s of the 1994 Northridge earthquake accelerogram at
Sylmar Converter Station-East, Valve Hall (ground floor).
improvements have been added in the late 1980s [2] and
again in 1995/96, but the sequence of tasks has not changed.
Our current software package, LeAuto, consists of
computer programs LeFilm, LeTrace, LeTV and LeScribe.
LeFilm is interactive, menu driven program which drives
the scanner to produce a gray-scale bitmap image of the film
record (256 levels of gray is the default mode; the other two
modes are binary black-and-white and gray-scale at 16
levels of gray). The operator interactively chooses a mini-
mum size rectangular window containing all the necessary
information to be saved for further processing, and an opti-
mum threshold level and minimum trace width for the auto-
matic trace following by the next program. The operator
also defines the starting points for each trace and trace
type. Program LeTrace performs the trace following and
is entirely automatic. Program LeTV is entirely interactive
and menu driven. The trace editing is the most time consum-
ing part of the procedure. The program efficiency and the
quality of the output depend on the operator training and
experience. The operator intervention consists of deletion of
line segments resulting from imperfections of the film
record (scratches and dirt particles), joining consecutive
segments of a particular trace, adding and deleting points
in a line segment, and also completely redigitizing selected
portions of traces at a threshold level different from the one
Fig. 3. The 1994 Northridge earthquake accelerogram at Sylmar Converter Station-East (free-field): (a) first 2 s; and (b) beginning of the vertical trace.
521
used by LeTrace. Most of the modifications of this program
have aimed to help the operator make decisions and ease the
editing process as much as possible. Most of the examples
discussed in the next section (Section 3) of this paper have
been extracted from various operations performed by this
program. The last program, LeScribe, can be executed in an
automatic or interactive mode. The former is used for short,
one page, film records. The latter is used for multiple page
records and allows operator intervention and visual control
of joining the trace segments from different pages.
Fig. 2 shows an example of a film record (the first 10 s of
an accelerogram record of the Northridge earthquake at the
Van Norman Complex). It has three acceleration traces (L, V
and T), one baseline (B) and two two-pulse-per-second
(2PPS) traces (the segmented lines at the top and bottom).
It is seen that the T-trace intersects at many places with the
baseline. Significant operator intervention and use of a
special automatic digitization software (employing dynamic
optimization of threshold levels and monitoring the top or
bottom edges of a trace) had to be employed to digitize this
trace.
3. Common problems encountered in automatic
digitization
3.1. Delays in digitized time series for different components
of motion
The position of the first digitized point of an acceleration
trace determines the origin of its time coordinates. Because
of the common trigger mechanism, all the three traces (L, V
and T) start to be recorded simultaneously, but if the first
point is not digitized properly, there will be a time delay in
the digitized time series. Synchronization of the origin time
and of the running time scales for all the recorded compo-
nents in a film record is crucial for many applications, for
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Fig. 4. Illustration of a bitmap image of a trace beginning for different
threshold levels (200, 215 and 235), and the corresponding outcomes of
automatic digitization.
example in inverse analyses of the earthquake source
mechanism (“random” time delays in the digitized data
affect the numerical stability of the inversion), applications
that require linear combination of the recorded components
of motion, such as computation of the radial and transfer
components of motion (affect the accuracy of peak ampli-
tudes in the rotated directions; [12]), in analyses of building
response from wave propagation viewpoint, or in correction
of accelerograms for cross-axis sensitivity and transducer
misalignment (these corrections are meaningless unless
the three components are synchronized; [6–8,13]).
The difficulty in selecting the first point to be digitized is
Fig. 5. The vertical trace of the 1994 Northridge earthquake accelerogram at Sylmar Converter Station-Valve Group 1–6 (basement): (a) the beginning; (b) the
beginning enlarged by macro-photography, showing gradual build up of optical density; (c) the beginning enlarged by a repeated Xerox process and the “old”
digitized version of the record. The dashed line shows the “old” digitization.
due to the fact that the traces are weak immediately after
trigger (while the light bulb warms up; during ,0.1 s), and
the position of the first digitized point changes with different
choice of threshold level. This is illustrated in Figs. 3 and 4.
Part (a) of Fig. 3 shows the first 2 s of a film record and part
(b) shows an enlargement of the beginning of the V-trace.
Fig. 4 (an illustration of an image in LeTV) shows the
position of the first digitized point and the bitmap (raw
digitized data) for different choices of threshold levels of
gray (between 200 and 240). It is seen that for lower thresh-
old level, the trace width increases and the trace beginning
“moves” to the left, while the opposite is true when the
threshold level is increased. This situation is further compli-
cated by the fact that the trace “darkness” on the film, trans-
lated to trace “thickness” after scanning, is in general
different for each trace on the same film, and depends not
only on time after trigger but also on the amplitude of
recorded motions (larger amplitude results in “lighter”, i.e.
“thinner” trace for any given constant threshold level). The
examples in Figs. 3 and 4 are from a record of the 1994
Northridge earthquake; gray threshold levels of 180–240
were common in digitization of the Northridge records.
Because of the above, choosing one common threshold
level for the entire accelerogram (which was the default
procedure in the old versions of program LeTrace) will
result in variations of the origin time by at least several
pixels. Other parameters specified for the trace following,
e.g. minimum trace width (usually selected as 2–4 pixels for
digitization with 600 dpi) will also contribute errors to the
selection of the first point, and the overall uncertainty of the
origin of the time axes can exceed 0.01–0.02 s (2–5 pixels
for 600 dpi digitization resolution). One way to reduce these
errors is intervention by the operator who can choose
manually the first point, but this is time consuming and is
 M.D. Trifunac et al. / Soil Dynamics and Earthquake Engineering 18 (1999) 519–530
Fig. 6. Beginning of the accelerogram of the 20 March, 1994, Northridge aftershock at Sylmar Converter Station, Valve Group 7: (a) ground floor; and (b) free-
field site. Two digitized versions, the “old” and the “new”, are shown (by a dashed and a solid line), and the time delay between the two.
subjective. To increase the efficiency of this step and to
eliminate operators subjectivity, since 1994 we have used a
new special purpose algorithm which determines automati-
cally the “best” starting point for each acceleration trace.
This algorithm was tested on hundreds of accelerograms,
and was found to be successful (error less than one pixel)
in about 95% of cases). Difficult cases would still require
Fig. 7. Same as Fig. 6 but for the accelerograms at Los Angeles Dam, West
Abutment. The difference between the two digitized versions in choosing
the beginning is significant. In the “old” version, the beginning seems to be
chosen arbitrarily.
523
operator intervention. An example of a circumstance that
can complicate this task is when the gap between the end of
the previous record and the onset of the current record is too
short or the traces overlap, so that they appear as continuous
on the scanned image. When such traces are displaced (i.e.
the trace starts with a large amplitude), this problem is
eliminated. An illustration of such “overlap” is shown in
Fig. 5. The dashed line in part (c) is an example of an
inaccurately digitized trace (0.05 s was omitted in the begin-
ning).
Fig. 6 shows an example of raw data images and inaccu-
rately (arbitrarily) digitized trace beginnings (the dashed
line, referred to as “old” digitization) and trace beginning
digitized with the help of the new features of program
LeFilm, LeTV and LeTrace. In this example the magnitude
of the error for the “old” digitization is difficult to interpret,
because of the lack of apparent reasoning that guided the
operator. For example, it is not clear why the “old” digitiza-
tion of the L trace in Fig. 6(b) starts early with a “ramp” of
, 0.05 s, in a manner not related to the raw data. Parts (a)
and (b) show, respectively, motions recorded at the ground
floor of a structure and in the free-field (approximately 25 m
away towards southwest), both recorded by the same multi-
channel recorder (CR-1), on the same film and with
common trigger time. Such records are invaluable for soil-
structure interaction studies, and for analyses of differential
motions between the two closely spaced points. Errors as
those seen in Fig. 6 (in the origin times of different compo-
nents) make the “old” digitization useless for detailed
studies, and misleading for an unsuspecting user. “Conclu-
sions” that could result from such data would be, e.g. that
the high frequency strong motion amplitudes are not corre-
lated at separation distance of 25 m, that the two sites have
different soil properties (i.e. different wave velocities), that
the wave train approached the two stations from a different
direction (i.e. different phase velocities) and so on. Another
example is shown in Fig. 7 (Los Angeles dam, right abutment
524 M.D. Trifunac et al. / Soil Dynamics and Earthquake Engineering 18 (1999) 519–530
Fig. 8. Appearance of the scanned image of the record and the outcome of
automatic trace following for different choices of threshold level. This
example corresponds to an image scanned at 600 dpi resolution with 256
level gray scale. Notice the spurious peak in the digitized data due to noise
in the scanned image for lower threshold level (190). For higher threshold
levels (e.g. 230), the trace image becomes discontinuous. For clarity, the
horizontal scale is stretched three times relative to the vertical.
Fig. 9. Beginning of the vertical trace of the 1994 Northridge at Sylmar
Converter Station-East (free-field), and two digitized versions of the record.
The “old” version is delayed by 0.053 s, and has a spurious peak near 0.4 s.
record of the Northridge earthquake). It is seen that, in the
“old” digitization (dashed line), the operator started to digi-
tize the L, V and T traces 0.135, 0.190 and 0.175 s after
trigger.
Many such errors go undetected, because their amplitudes
are small enough that visual comparison of raw data output
from digitization with original film cannot detect the discre-
pancies, and because hardly any records happen to be digi-
tized more than once, independently, allowing such
comparisons. The errors illustrated in Fig. 6(a) and (b)
and in particular the errors shown in Fig. 7 show negligence
and lack of quality control. The cumulative investment of
time and of resources in the analysis of the recorded motions
and of their effects on different structures is significant. In
the light of these conditions the above described errors
cannot be tolerated.
3.2. Trace following
3.2.1. Non-uniform optical density
Ideally, the traces on the film should be thin, sharp and
uniformly dark, resulting in a scanned trace image which is
continuous. In reality, the optical density of the trace varies
with the trace amplitude, and there are “random” variations
resulting from imperfections of the instrument or handling
of the film. The scanned trace image is, in general, lighter
for larger trace amplitudes, but at the very peak it is darker.
The reason for the former is that, for uniform film speed and
light bulb intensity, the light beam moves faster and travels
longer distances as it exposes the film, and for the latter is
that the trace segments just below the peak partially overlap
due to finite trace thickness, and the vertical trace velocity is
zero at the peak, so that the light beam exposes the film
longer. Typical imperfections include scratches or dust,
poor focussing of the traces, fogged or dirty mirrors and
lenses, variable darkness of the film background, etc. and
result in “random” fluctuations of trace darkness.
The variations in darkness (optical density) of the film
image result in variations of gray levels of the scanned
pixels. The “width” of the scanned trace image depends
on the chosen threshold level, and can be controlled by
choosing this level. Pixels with smaller gray level than the
threshold will be considered as “white” (background) in the
case of dark traces on white or transparent background.
Traces are “wider” for lower threshold level, and become
discontinuous for sufficiently high threshold level. Fig. 8
illustrates these variations. It shows a bitmap image of an
acceleration trace for three threshold levels of gray, 190,
220 and 230 (600 dpi scanning resolution, 256 levels of
gray). It is seen that, for threshold level 230, trace bitmap
image is narrow and discontinuous. For threshold level 190,
near the acceleration peaks, the trace bitmap image is wide
and continuous, and has rough boundaries (to the right of the
negative peak). The rough boundaries are caused by random
variations in the trace and background optical densities, and
may lead to spurious peaks in the digitized data.
 M.D. Trifunac et al. / Soil Dynamics and Earthquake Engineering 18 (1999) 519–530
Fig. 10. An illustration of “pulses” in the digitized data due to scratches on
the film and nonuniform optical density of a trace.
The estimated amplitude of the digitized signal (y-coor-
dinate) by the automatic trace following algorithm, is at the
middle of the vertical cross-section of the bitmap trace
image, and depends on the chosen threshold level. The
signal is estimated more accurately from the bitmap if the
Fig. 11. An illustration of errors in digitized data near intersecting accel-
eration and fixed traces: the transverse trace of the 1994 Northridge record
at Sylmar Converter Station-East, free-field, ,9.5 s after trigger.
525
traces are thinner but continuous. If the bitmap trace image
is discontinuous, not enough measured information is
included in the estimation, and if threshold level is too
low (thick trace) the signal is estimated from measurements
which are too noisy. The “optimum” threshold level for the
illustration in Fig. 8 appears to be near 220. However, this
level will not be the optimal one along the entire length of
the record, because the trace darkness on the film, and
consequently the thickness of the scanned trace image,
depend on the signal amplitude. The operator adopts a
threshold level for automatic trace following which is “opti-
mal” for most parts of the signal, and in the finishing phase
corrects the detectable errors due to too high or too low
threshold levels.
Fig. 9 shows another example of a spurious peak. Such
peaks are difficult to detect, because many local acceleration
peaks do have similar “double” peaks. These spurious peaks
can be detected only by detailed and time consuming visual
inspection of all digitized signals versus the scanned image
(raw data) for various threshold levels.
A related type of a problem occurs when there is a
“white” spot in the middle of the scanned trace image, illu-
strated in Fig. 10(a). The automatic trace following algo-
rithm will follow the wider branch of the trace, producing a
pulse like error in the estimated signal. A related and often
overlooked problem occurs when the trace has a one sided
indentation (Fig. 10(b)) or when a dust particle, a dark
scratch or a dark shadow crosses the trace (Fig. 10(c)).
Digitization errors illustrated in Fig. 10 are very common,
difficult to detect and occur almost exclusively for data
scanned with 600 dpi resolution. Such errors were very
rare for scanning with 300 dpi. For higher resolutions, e.g.
1200 dpi, these errors will multiply and may be responsible
for most of the operators time in manual verification and
correcting the data in LeTV.
Intersection of an acceleration with a fixed trace
(“straight” line created by a fixed mirror) is usually not
difficult to interpret automatically, particularly if the trace
following algorithm can memorize, as well as control the
variations of the slope of the estimated signal based on prior
knowledge of the type of trace followed. However, situa-
tions when the baseline is unusually thick and the accelera-
tion trace has a peak near the baseline are difficult to handle
automatically, and the best approach is to check for such
problems and fix them manually in the editing phase of
program LeTV. Fig. 11 shows an example of two spurious
peaks in the digitized signal resulting from such a situation,
which have remained undetected in commercially digitized
record of the Northridge earthquake.
3.2.2. Smoothing of the high frequency peaks
Another common problem with automatic trace following
is “low-pass filtering” of high frequency peaks in the
recorded signal. This is caused by merging and partial over-
lapping of the trace just below the peak, due to finite thick-
ness of the light beam exposing the film. In the immediate
526 M.D. Trifunac et al. / Soil Dynamics and Earthquake Engineering 18 (1999) 519–530
Fig. 12. (a) The “old” and “new” digitized versions near the beginning of
the vertical trace of the 1994 Northridge record at Sylmar Converter
Station, Valve Hall Floor. The difference between the two versions is
probably due to smoothing effects of the automatic trace following algo-
rithm, more pronounced for lower threshold levels. (b) Illustration of differ-
ences in data digitized by the LeAuto software caused by different threshold
levels, for a portion of the trace shown in part (a). The image was scanned
with 600 dpi resolution and 256 level gray scale.
vicinity of the peak, the resulting trace thickness is
increased, but only on the side towards the zero-acceleration
line, and the amplitude of the estimated signal at the peak is
biased towards smaller values. This problem is pronounced
for vertical acceleration traces, which usually contain more
high frequencies than the horizontal accelerations, espe-
cially in the near-field of moderate and large earthquakes.
High frequency, large vertical accelerations result in large
amplitude, rapidly oscillating traces with low optical
density (e.g. see the vertical traces in Figs. 2 and 3(a)).
They require lower than average threshold levels for auto-
matic trace following, otherwise the trace is not continuous.
On the contrary, lowering the threshold level will increase
the filtering of high frequencies, and to avoid this effect in
portions of the signal with intermediate and small accelera-
tions (e.g. see horizontal acceleration traces in Figs. 2 and
3(a)), the threshold level should be as high as possible. It
should be mentioned here that this problem cannot be solved
by reducing the pixel size. Its consequences can be diminished
only by reducing the trace width on the film (by careful
focussing), and by increasing the film speed beyond 1 cm/s.
The contradictory requirements calling for lower thresh-
old level, so that the trace image is continuous, and for
higher threshold level, so that peak amplitudes are not
reduced, can be solved simultaneously if variable threshold
levels are used in automatic trace following. This requires
sophisticated and reliable software, and highly skilled
operators. For these reasons, we run this software only in
the manual mode in program LeTV. Such a software is
generally not available, and usually a compromise must be
made by choosing some intermediate threshold level. This
leads to (1) smoothing of the amplitudes of high frequency
peaks (“low-pass filtering”) where the chosen threshold
level is too low (Fig. 12), and (2) missing variations in the
signal where the chosen threshold level is too high (e.g.
ascending and descending line segments in the areas with
large peaks; see Figs. 5(c) and 12). The latter causes high
frequency large peak amplitudes to be connected by straight
lines because the darkness of the portion in between is
below the working threshold level. Fig. 12(b) illustrates
outcomes of automatic trace following for different thresh-
old levels in the region outlined in Fig. 12(a). It is seen that,
for threshold level ,200, the high frequency acceleration
(,20 Hz wave) is reduced, and it almost disappears for
threshold level 150 or lower. For threshold levels 200–
230, the trace image between the peaks is progressively
lost (due to too high working threshold level) and is “digi-
tized” as a straight line (e.g. see also “old” digitization in
Fig. 5(c), between 0.4 and 0.6 s).
3.2.3. Distortions due to high-contrast preprocessing of the
film image
Many of the above problems can be reduced or eliminated
by working with 256 levels of gray, versus 16 levels or black
and white image only. This, however, requires large capa-
city and fast access hard disk, as well as a fast CPU, and was
difficult or impractical to implement in the past, when only
286, 386 or 486 PCs were available. Simple, well recorded
accelerations can be processed successfully by using only
16 levels of gray (0—“white”; 15—“black”). However,
digitizing a binary black-and-white scanned image is very
difficult, will inevitably require extensive photographic or
digital enhancement of contrast, and will lead to situations
which are very difficult to process correctly. Moderate
enhancement of contrast can be useful (sometimes it is
essential), but it may also lead to complicated distortions
of the traces, to the extent that is not acceptable. Such
distortions of the bitmap are illustrated in Fig. 13. Part (a)
shows a segment of a record of the 20 March, 1994, North-
ridge earthquake aftershock (M ˆ 5.3) copied directly from
the film. In part (b), an enlarged portion of the vertical
acceleration trace is shown, after successive Xeroxing of
the record (equivalent to multiple high-contrast processing
of the film image). It can be seen that this process introduced
characteristic elongation of peak amplitudes (see also the
 M.D. Trifunac et al. / Soil Dynamics and Earthquake Engineering 18 (1999) 519–530
Fig. 13. (a) Segment of the 20 March aftershock record at Sylmar Converter Station-East, free-field, scanned from film. (b) An enlarged portion of the vertical
trace after repeated Xeroxing, showing associated distortions. Also the “old” and “new” versions of digitized data are shown. The differences may be due to
high contrast preprocessing of the scanned image in producing the “old” version.
vertical traces in Fig. 6(a) and (b) in which the film image
was enlarged by successive Xeroxing). Fig. 13(b) shows
comparison of two independent digitizations of this segment
which differ significantly near the peaks. It appears that the
“old” digitized version has distortions near peaks of the
same type as the repeatedly Xeroxed image shown below.
The “new” version, digitized by the LeAuto software
(600 dpi resolution and 256 levels of gray), shows no such
distortions. We do not know the exact reason for the distor-
tion in the “old” version of this record, and we have never
encountered such distortions in our digitization of strong
motion records. We speculate that this record was digitized
after excessive high-contrast enhancement of the bitmap
image by software, or by a lithographic photo process
prior to scanning. These types of distortions should have
been detected in the quality control phase of the job.
3.3. Non-uniform film speed
The nominal film speed for typical strong motion accel-
erographs is 1 cm/s (SMA-1, CR-1). For the M02 accelero-
graph (New Zealand) which records on a 35 mm film, the
actual film speed is 1.5 cm/s, and this is equivalent to 3 cm/s
for a 70 mm film (SMA-1). Increasing the film speed
improves the resolution and accuracy of digitization of
high frequency accelerations not only in time, but also in
amplitude (see the discussion on the low-pass filtering of
high frequency and large amplitude accelerations in Section
3.2). The old AR-240 accelerograph (which recorded the
Pacoima Dam accelerogram during the 1971 San Fernando,
California, earthquake) had a recording speed of 2 cm/s
(equivalent to 0.5 cm/s on a 70 mm film; [14]).
Most instruments have one or two relays which produce a
527
two-pulses-per-second signal (2PPS), recorded along the
top and bottom edges of the film or paper. About 20 years
ago, one of these relays was converted to work with a local
clock which produces a binary code of the Julian day, hour,
minute and second every 10 s. At first, it was believed that
absolute trigger time was not necessary for recorded strong
ground motion [14], but since it was first introduced in the
early 1970s [15], it opened many new possibilities for
advanced wave propagation studies in strong motion seis-
mology.
The 2PPS signal accuracy is believed to be ,1%, but it is
rarely calibrated. Since the early 1970s, we have assumed
that the time coordinate of analog records is scaled more
accurately using 2PPS pulses (generated electronically)
rather than by the nominal speed of the film (driven
mechanically), and have used it to correct for minor varia-
tions in the film speed [1–3]. Exceptions are records for
which the 2PPS and absolute clock relays malfunctioned
simultaneously (e.g. [16]). Figs. 7, 9, 12(a) and 13 show
differences in the digitized accelerations when the time is
scaled using the digitized 2PPS signal (“new”) and when we
assume uniform film speed was used (“old”). The difference
is manifested by time dependent delays between the two
records.
Occasionally the film speed may experience abrupt
changes and stalls. This is caused by friction in the film
driving mechanism, friction in the film cassette or by faulty
motors, and in general cannot be corrected uniquely. Dura-
tion of short stalls can be estimated by measuring the short-
ening of distance between consecutive pulses of the 2PPS
signal. Approximate corrections of the digitized data then
can be performed by inserting “gaps” into the scanned
bitmap image, and recreating manually the missing portion
528 M.D. Trifunac et al. / Soil Dynamics and Earthquake Engineering 18 (1999) 519–530
Fig. 14. Illustration of a record imperfectly aligned with the scanner. There is an angle a between the coordinate system of the scanner (XSCAN –YSCAN) and the
accelerogram coordinate system (xREC –yREC). The two fiducial marks can be used to evaluate a and correct for it.
of traces [17]. A description of processing an accelerogram
with many stalls can be found in [16].
3.4. Rotation of the digitized traces
Because the record is digitized directly from the scanned
image, it is important that the film or paper original is well
aligned with the scanner. Perfect alignment would mean that
the time axis of the record is parallel to one of the scanner
axes. In reality, however, this is difficult to achieve, and the
two are off by some small but finite angle, a . The problem
of imperfect alignment is one of the oldest problems recog-
nized in digitization and processing of strong motion accel-
erograms [10]. By careful placement of the original onto the
scanner or the digitizing table, angle a can be kept small,
i.e. of the order of 18 (Fig. 14). One simple way to correct for
Fig. 15. Differences in the “old” and “new” versions of a digitized record
showing relative rotation by an angle a (see Fig. 14). The “new” version
was corrected for this angle with the help of the fiducial marks shown in
Fig. 14.
this angle is by marking and digitizing at least one pair of
fiducial points onto one of the fixed traces, evaluating a
from the position of these marks, and rotating back the
digitized signals for the same angle. The accuracy of this
correction is sufficient for typical acceleration records. It
may be limited by the noise in the scanned image of the
baseline only for very short records (less than 5–10 s long).
While marking and digitizing fiducial points is esential for
long records that require scanning multiple pages (the fedu-
cial marks are used to match the independently digitized
pages), it is often neglected by some operators for one
page records, and in those cases correction for the angle a
is not performed. The associated distortions for a real record
are illustrated in Fig. 15. It shows a segment of the trans-
verse acceleration trace of the record in Fig. 14. The “old”
digitized trace appears to be rotated clockwise relative to the
“new” trace by a , 0:98. This is most obvious near the
positive and negative peaks. Assuming that the scanners
used for the “old” and “new” digitized versions were both
accurate, and knowing that the “new” version was corrected
for a rotation a , the difference between the “old” and “new”
versions could be explained as an error in the “old” version
due to imperfect alignment of the original record with the
scanner (a , 18). If this record was photographically
enlarged before scanning, the observed rotation could also
be explained as distortion caused by imperfections of the
lens, or by non-parallel planes of the negative and of the
projected image.
4. Discussion and conclusions
Selected most common problems encountered in auto-
matic digitization of accelerograms recorded on film were
illustrated and discussed. This was preceded by a brief
review of the changes in hardware and software capabilities
since the 1970s. Differences between two digitized versions
of the same original records were discussed and explained in
most of the presented examples (the “old” version was digi-
tized commercially for the LADWP in 1994, and the “new”
 M.D. Trifunac et al. / Soil Dynamics and Earthquake Engineering 18 (1999) 519–530
version was digitized by the authors of this paper using the
LeAuto software package). The problems discussed include
errors in identifying the origin of common time coordinates
for the three recorded components of motion, smoothing of
the high frequency peaks as well as of amplitude variations
between peaks (both in segments of the record with moder-
ate and large signal amplitudes), spurious peaks and noise in
the digitized signal due to imperfections of the film image or
specific circumstances (e.g. intersection of traces), possible
distortions due to high contrast preprocessing of the scanned
image, scaling of the time coordinate and rotation of the
digitized signal. The errors due to all of these problems
can be either eliminated or significantly reduced, automati-
cally by intelligent algorithms (performing accurate identi-
fication of trigger times for each trace individually and
correction for common time scale fluctuations) or manually
by operator intervention.
The most important factor determining the quality of the
processed data is the experience of the operator and rigorous
quality control of the outcome of the automatic trace follow-
ing. An experienced operator can avoid most of these
problems by carefully using the software. Finally, critical
comments and suggestions by experienced operators are
invaluable for further improvement of the automatic digiti-
zation software. The efficiency and reliability of this soft-
ware can be improved only by close interaction between the
programmer and an experienced operator.
The digitization of accelerograms recorded on film can be
viewed as an estimation problem using noisy measurements,
and the result is nonunique. Too high threshold level results
in exclusion of recorded information in the estimation
process, and too low threshold level results in including
too much noise in the estimation process. We showed that
systematic biases in the estimate due to this “noise” (e.g.
spurious peaks and additional pulses, and smoothing of the
sharp peaks) can be eliminated or at least abated by careful
choice of the threshold level. Scanning the image with a 256
level gray-scale is highly recommended, while digitization
from a binary black-and-white bitmap image is discouraged.
A major improvement of the software for automatic trace
following would be a self learning algorithm with adaptive
threshold level. Such an algorithm has been incorporated in
the editing phase of our procedures (LeTV). Within this
phase, the algorithm is used to digitize a trace segment in
a window defined manually by the operator. Much work
remains to be done to include this algorithm in the fully
automatic trace following procedure (LeTrace).
There is a common misperception that the accuracy of
estimating the high frequencies in a record will increase
significantly by scanning the film record at a higher resolu-
tion. This is true only up to a limit. For example, the
“smoothing” of the amplitudes of the sharp peaks can be
eliminated only by better focussing of the light beam (possi-
ble only up to a certain degree) or by increasing the film
speed. Our experience shows that, for higher scanning reso-
lution (600 dpi), the digitized signal detects more noise
529
(high frequency errors) due to imperfections on the film,
such as scratches and dust (these imperfections are “not
seen” or are “smoothed out” by larger pixels, for lower
scanning resolutions e.g. 300 dpi).
We conclude that the governing factor for high quality
digitized accelerograms is rigorous quality control and
experienced and conscientious operator. Intelligent software
as well as the increased hardware capabilities significantly
speed up the process and reduce the labor cost. However, no
software will take care of all of the difficulties. Continuous
and systematic quality control by the operator, at all the
phases of the process, will always remain the determining
factor for the quality of the end product.
Acknowledgements
The authors thank Ron Tognazzini and Craig Davis of the
Los Angeles Department of Water and Power for making
available the original films and the commercially processed
data of the 1994 Northridge earthquake records, used to
illustrate the problems discussed in this paper.
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