Newb B&W Film restore

Hi All,

I found a great [s:0a28e089c9]1939[/s:0a28e089c9] 1935 version of Scrooge on archive.org. It has been compressed to a MP4 file which I have downloaded. I found a filter that allows me to view the file in VirtualDub. I'm trying to figure out the best set of filters to run on this to try and get a better picture.

I did see that the MSU group does have an old movie filter but, it is non-public.

The film is grainy and has lots of video black spots/pops and lines in it. It looks almost like it is a capture of the actual projection. The picture's brightness flickers as well, which I am hoping a contrast/brightness filter could help to limit. Sound has an old school hiss/pop in it as well, which I will have to use Audacity and filters in there to play with.

I've never really done a restoration before but, have played with VirtualDub in the past. The results were usually very "plasticy" because I am not an expert in these things.

I just feel it is a shame that there are some great classics freely available on archive.org but, the quality is so low. I just want to slightly improve things and maybe re-post it on archive.org for others to appreciate. I do understand the garbage in/garbage out concept with video and restorations as I have done some minor video production stuff myself. I am just trying to find a way to slightly improve the overall quality, without making things worse.

Any help/suggestions are greatly appreciated and I am truly thankful for any advice that can be given. Also, if anyone has any tips for the audio as well, this would be appreciated too.

I think what you propose is an awful lot of effort for probably very little, if any, improvement but it's your time to waste. I do also consider that doing so might help you to learn some skills that you can use in the future on other video projects, so there is certainly some value in that.

My suggestion would be that you abandon the idea to do it in VirtualDub and learn to use AviSynth instead. All the experts here seem to think that AviSynth gives you superior processing options over VirtualDub. I am hardly an expert in AviSynth, but I do some regular capturing of an old 50s black and white TV show I'm fond of that is not on DVD and I use AviSynth to process my captures as necessary. I've had to play with Tweak() and Levels() under AviSynth to reduce some brightness issues with a few of my captures.

I don't know if archive.org will be interested in your work or not. Again, I think you may gain some useful skills just from doing the work, but if your goal is that you want them to make available what you do, that may not be realistic. I just don't know. I don't have any audio tips as if I feel inclined to mess with that, I use and old version of CoolEdit that I have, but that's not freeware.

I may export the frames to a lossless image type and then try doing some minor edits in Picasa. I mean, I could use the "retouch" feature in Picasa but, that would be frame by frame for all 136k+ frames. I will attempt to do a batch correction of the lighting/saturation.

I believe the images will be around 112 Gigs total.

I don't think that I will have the time/patience to use GIMP or Photoshop on each frame though. I have found that Picasa's "I'm feeling lucky" filter works really well to clean up the color/lighting of an image. I could also adjust the fill lighting as well for some frames.

If I am really bored, or suddenly have hours with nothing better to do. I will do some frame by frame retouching.

I just want to try and improve things, even if slightly.

I'll also see if I can find a straight AVI of the file. If I can find that, what would be the best ways to go about restoring that footage?

UPDATE:

There is a divx version of the film floating around. I have yet to be able to find an uncompressed, pure AVI anywhere as of right now. The Divx is the best that I can find as of right now...

IMDB doesn't list a version of Scrooge made in 1939. If you mean the English 1935 version, wouldn't it be simpler just to buy one of the DVD versions?

Sorry, I did mean the 1935 version. From what I have seen in regard to the DVD versions, these have been cut to 60 minutes, while the original is longer. I also don't think that there is much in the way of improvement in the quality on the DVD versions. I think they pretty much take the same grainy film grab and throw it on DVD.

Edit:

There is a color restoration that was done on the original full-length cut. However, I do not believe there is one that just restores the quality to the black and white version... Plus, I do want the experience of using wither AviSynth or VirtualDub as I like playing around with video.

If this is just as a training/experiment, I would start with Virtualdub. If you decide to process the entire video, then AVISynth would be invaluable as a time savings and quality program, but it has a bit of a learning curve.

If you haven't been there, take a look at this VD filter site: http://www.thedeemon.com/VirtualDubFilters/ They list quite a few of the VD filters available.

Audacity should work well enough for the audio. The newest versions can output in several formats.

I would start with a representative clip of about ten minutes and convert it to a lossless format like Lagarith or HuffyUV. That will let you make several filter passes without much quality loss for comparison and learning how the filters work.

With B+W, filtering is much simpler since no color correction should be required. Mostly it would be denoising. Several filters for that. 'Gradation curves' may help with setting the brightness/darkness levels. And Neat Video can do wonders with noisy video, without too much of the 'plastic' look. There are also specific noise filters for spots and scratches. And deflickering filters.

And for pure preservation, some would say that doing anything to a film like that would be wrong as it should be viewed just as it is.

redwudz, thanks for the advice. I will try that. Like I said, I saw the video for the first time and loved it but, wanted to play around with it myself. I'll get the higher resolution divx codec version of the video and then play around and see what results I get.

Ok,

I've looked through the multiple filters that are available for VirtualDub. I'm going to do some testing with 5-10 minute segments to determine which of the following filter(s) are most effective in the following categories:


To remove flickering from film projection I will test between:

-Anti-Flicker by Alessandro Malanca
-Deflicker - Donald Graft
-MSU DeFlicker

To remove overall noise I will test between:

-MSU DeNoiser
-denoise by tHE fISH
-Dynamic Noise Reduction by Steven Henk Don
-Frequency Suppressor of the Noise by Sergey Stolyarevskiy

For spots/dust in the picture I will test between:

-SpotRemover by Konstantin Khlopenkov
-Processing the pulsed hindrances by Sergey Stolyarevskiy

Lastly, for the fact that the image is jumpy at times I will test Between:

-Video Stabilizer by DigiStudio Team
-Stable video by Sergey Stolyarevskiy

Now, The only question after testing each filter for its effectiveness and deciding which ones I want to use, is the order in which to apply them.

I will post some screen grabs/images of the results of my testing for others who are just starting as well.

I would use Neat Video but, there is an additional cost to use this and I am not quite willing to spend money on a pet project.

If anyone has any opinions/experiences with the above plugins in regard to how effective they are, I'd appreciate the feedback. I will probably start working on this after Christmas, unless I happen to have some extra time tomorrow...

Originally Posted by ctlw83

There is a color restoration that was done on the original full-length cut. However, I do not believe there is one that just restores the quality to the black and white version...

The Legend version restored the black and white (60 minute) version before they colorized it. And both versions are included in the 2 disc DVD set. There's also an Image Entertainment DVD which includes the full 78 minutes and by all accounts is of decent quality. In any event, it'll be way better than what you have or anything you can do with what you have.

Wanting to learn about video encoding is commendable, but you can't make a silk purse from a sow's ear, as they say.

You could always get the Image Entertainment version and then try and restore that to your liking.

Divx is not necessarily better than the MP4 version. You'd have to compare resolutions and bit rates at a minimum. And you won't find an uncompressed AVI version anywhere as that would be gigantic.

Archives.org just puts out what they've got. They don't have the budget to restore anything, so if they don't have a great copy, that's what you get.

The Legend version was described by one Amazon reviewer as a "fraud" in July of this compared to the Image version. Image would be your better choice should you want to buy it. Image doesn't really and truly fully restore everything they put out, but they often do source the best print they can find at a minimum and that's better than companies like Legend do. One of the problems with public domain films is that the restoration can't be copyrighted, so if someone spends the money to do it, another company can legally put out a copy of the restoration. That's actually been a gigantic problem in the music field as many old classical 78 RPM records have been cleaned up by some companies using some of the best restoring people in the business and then some fly by night Italian company will put a direct copy of the cleaned up work which they paid nothing to clean up. One of the bigger British labels in this field seems to have basically stopped releasing public domain classical music because all their stuff just got copied. Only the very best and most historical of public domain movies get a restoration done.

Yeah,

I wish there was a non-profit dedicated to restoring public domain classics. I know archives.org does what they can to catalog them, but, as you mentioned, they are just cataloging and don't have the money for restorations.

It is sad that so many great films and recordings, while they might be made available to the public, will never be restored to as close to the originals as possible.

For what its worth noting here.. the exact version(s) can be a bit tricky to find because it is titled in severals ways..

* Scrooge
* A Christmas Carol

..it all depends on how you search I guess. But, I actually did similar searches a couple of days ago and remembered this because I wanted to find my favorite from 1970, the Albert Finny version on imdb but couldn't find it till I remembered the title, and the ver I was looking for did turn out to be Scrooge. And then, I remembered that I have it on (unopened) VHS, purchases maybe six years ago or so for the purpose of transfering to DVD. Every year I promise myself that I will capture and encode it but always end up being too busy in other projects and things that I run out of time. This year I promised to it, no matter what, but didn't. Oh well. Maybe next year, i'll have it ready by then. I have not seen this version in about the same amount of time I purchased the vhs--dieing to see it, though.

My suggestion was going to be to just get the vhs version(s) because they would be eaiser and more than likely to be have'd, but then someone posted dvd link..oh well. But the chances are that many of the B/W versions are still only on vhs. So, it might be an exciting endeavor to hunt them down for a future project.

It is sad that so many great films and recordings, while they might be made available to the public, will never be restored to as close to the originals as possible

as I was trying to suggest, it might be easier to find on vhs and maybe even laserdisc.

I do also like many of the old B/W versions as well. Gosh, there are so many of them. Most of the ones I've seen (in many previous of years) were from the vhs tapes that were made back in the mid-2-late 80's when I worked part-time at dept stores over the holidays of that era.

-vhelp 5282

:P *~*!*~*!~* HaPpY HoLiDaYs *~*!*~*!~*

Well there is a 3.7GB mpg on that website as well. That could be easier to play with