Blending Two Source Videos?

[Daarkcloud]

So, I have two copies of a vintage film.  One copy of the film is in 1080p and is a beautiful transfer from its original source.  The other is the same film colorized in the 90s that was released on VHS only.  I'm wondering, is it possible to blend the color information onto the better quality Black and White version of the film?  I was researching that there might be a way with Adobe Premier had a blend feature, but either way I think it's over my head.  Suggestions?  Is this just a pipedream for an old film buff?  

[Bombastinator]

26 minutes ago, Daarkcloud said:

So, I have two copies of a vintage film.  One copy of the film is in 1080p and is a beautiful transfer from its original source.  The other is the same film colorized in the 90s that was released on VHS only.  I'm wondering, is it possible to blend the color information onto the better quality Black and White version of the film?  I was researching that there might be a way with Adobe Premier had a blend feature, but either way I think it's over my head.  Suggestions?  Is this just a pipedream for an old film buff?  

TLDNR:  I don’t think so.  What you would get is something no better than the “bad but colored one” The original colorization methodology iirc was based on the concept that black and white film actually reacted to color but not in a visible way and a colorized film is actually a false color film where the black levels of a color print were analyzed with extreme accuracy and then assigned a color.  Some interesting things came out one of which was that light green cam across as a very brilliant white, so it was used by some very famous black and white films and series.  Notably Laurel and Hardy did this which made their films uncolorizable as their faces were green.  Iirc “the munstors” also did this.  This describes the problem: it does every pixel equally.

[Roswell]

Good and bad news.

 

Bad news is that this would be at minimum, extremely time consuming and tedious. You could easily strip out white and most of the gray spectrum and then dump that on top of the color version which would leave you with the B/W version's more defined dark edges. Problem is making the two line up correctly. A VHS tape is going to end up deviating significantly in timing as the film goes on. Manually correcting this would be a nightmare.

 

Good news is that stuff like Topaz Lab's AI tools exist: https://www.topazlabs.com/video-enhance-ai

 

If the VHS is of decent quality, you'd probably get a good result out of it. It's not exactly cheap but you at least test it out for free to see if you get favorable results. If it works out you can keep an eye out for their frequent sales and stack on any of the random promo codes floating around.

[Daarkcloud]

17 minutes ago, Bombastinator said:

TLDNR:  I don’t think so.  What you would get is something no better than the “bad but colored one” The original colorization methodology iirc was based on the concept that black and white film actually reacted to color but not in a visible way and a colorized film is actually a false color film where the black levels of a color print were analyzed with extreme accuracy and then assigned a color.  Some interesting things came out one of which was that light green cam across as a very brilliant white, so it was used by some very famous black and white films and series.  Notably Laurel and Hardy did this which made their films uncolorizable as their faces were green.  Iirc “the munstors” also did this.  This describes the problem: it does every pixel equally.

Yeah, the colorized one looks a little bizarre... It's like they colorized it and then dramatically turned up the saturation and down the contrast.  

[Daarkcloud]

3 minutes ago, Roswell said:

Good and bad news.

 

Bad news is that this would be at minimum, extremely time consuming and tedious. You could easily strip out white and most of the gray spectrum and then dump that on top of the color version which would leave you with the B/W version's more defined dark edges. Problem is making the two line up correctly. A VHS tape is going to end up deviating significantly in timing as the film goes on. Manually correcting this would be a nightmare.

 

Good news is that stuff like Topaz Lab's AI tools exist: https://www.topazlabs.com/video-enhance-ai

 

If the VHS is of decent quality, you'd probably get a good result out of it. It's not exactly cheap but you at least test it out for free to see if you get favorable results. If it works out you can keep an eye out for their frequent sales and stack on any of the random promo codes floating around.

I'll have to look at it.  The VHS copy is one I transferred to DVD then ripped.

[Bombastinator]

5 minutes ago, Roswell said:

Good and bad news.

 

Bad news is that this would be at minimum, extremely time consuming and tedious. You could easily strip out white and most of the gray spectrum and then dump that on top of the color version which would leave you with the B/W version's more defined dark edges. Problem is making the two line up correctly. A VHS tape is going to end up deviating significantly in timing as the film goes on. Manually correcting this would be a nightmare.

 

Good news is that stuff like Topaz Lab's AI tools exist: https://www.topazlabs.com/video-enhance-ai

 

If the VHS is of decent quality, you'd probably get a good result out of it. It's not exactly cheap but you at least test it out for free to see if you get favorable results. If it works out you can keep an eye out for their frequent sales and stack on any of the random promo codes floating around.

This would be decent quality?  My understanding is the pixels of the video image are just much larger.  The VHS would be 480i whereas the B&W is 1080p.  There would be a weird on again off again halo I would think.  It’s possible that this software you speak of has this covered I guess.

[Bombastinator]

5 minutes ago, Daarkcloud said:

Yeah, the colorized one looks a little bizarre... It's like they colorized it and then dramatically turned up the saturation and down the contrast.  

Up saturation down contrast is an artifact of the colorization process. 

[Roswell]

32 minutes ago, Bombastinator said:

This would be decent quality?  My understanding is the pixels of the video image are just much larger.  The VHS would be 480i whereas the B&W is 1080p.  There would be a weird on again off again halo I would think.  It’s possible that this software you speak of has this covered I guess.

Topaz isn’t an upscaler in the traditional sense. They sell a neural AI model with a front end that adds detail (or sharpness or denoising). I and most others in the professional design or photography space use their stuff for our workflows, it’s basically a necessity.

 

That said… I don’t use the video version and it’s hard to tell how well it will work without access to the file they want to upscale.

 

As far as interlacing goes, most editors have an option built in to blend frames for deinterlacing.

[Bombastinator]

14 minutes ago, Roswell said:

Topaz isn’t an upscaler in the traditional sense. They sell a neural AI model with a front end that adds detail (or sharpness or denoising). I and most others in the professional design or photography space use their stuff for our workflows, it’s basically a necessity.

 

That said… I don’t use the video version and it’s hard to tell how well it will work without access to the file they want to upscale.

 

As far as interlacing goes, most editors have an option built in to blend frames for deinterlacing.

Sure, but 480i is 240p.  There is just a massive difference in the amount of functional data.  Even if you can get functional 480p out of it it’s still a massive difference.  Seems like there would likely be artifacts of one kind or another be it the halo thing or some sort of upscaling artifact. Stuff can be done with AI and temporal stuff so it would be reduced, but it still strikes me as unlikely.  I could be wrong.  I’m out of date.  

Edited June 27, 2022 by Bombastinator

[Roswell]

1 hour ago, Bombastinator said:

Sure, but 480i is 240p.  There is just a massive difference in the amount of functional data.  Even if you can get functional 480p out of it it’s still a massive difference.  Seems like there would likely be artifacts of one kind or another be it the halo thing or some sort of upscaling artifact. Stuff can be done with AI and temporal stuff so it would be reduced, but it still strikes me as unlikely.  I could be wrong.  I’m out of date.  

AI has come a long, long way. Here's 240p to 1440p. It's obviously not perfect, but it's miles better than the source, especially in motion. In today's use it's more for upscaling a significant crop from an already high resolution image/video. It does do well with low res restoration though, as you can see.

 

 

[Daarkcloud]

6 minutes ago, Roswell said:

AI has come a long, long way.

 

I wonder if AI interpolation can help fill in the gaps.

[Roswell]

6 minutes ago, Daarkcloud said:

I wonder if AI interpolation can help fill in the gaps.

The video version of the software actually has that. It’s a new feature, I honestly don’t know how it performs though in comparison to the traditional blending method.

 

Here’s an example video from their YouTube channel:

 

 

[Daarkcloud]

1 hour ago, Roswell said:

The video version of the software actually has that. It’s a new feature, I honestly don’t know how it performs though in comparison to the traditional blending method.

 

Here’s an example video from their YouTube channel:

 

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I tied it with the rip I have so far, and the deinterlacing is a bit lacking.  I'm going to try and re-rip it deinterlaced and use that file.  The film I'm trying to work with is 42nd Street

[Daarkcloud]

[Roswell]

1 hour ago, Daarkcloud said:

I wonder if the noise is throwing it off… How does it compare to your original rip? 

[Daarkcloud]

Well, this is what I've got so far.  I feel like maybe I'll try and work my way up and see what happens.  

[Daarkcloud]

12 hours ago, Roswell said:

I wonder if the noise is throwing it off… How does it compare to your original rip? 

The direct playback automatically deinterlaces, so when I screencap it looks better.  Every attempt to rip it (even with deinterlacing) it stays interlaced.  I'm wondering if my issue is VLC player 

[Bombastinator]

6 minutes ago, Daarkcloud said:

Well, this is what I've got so far.  I feel like maybe I'll try and work my way up and see what happens.  

Is that the video or the composite?

[Daarkcloud]

32 minutes ago, Bombastinator said:

Is that the video or the composite?

That's the video after being run through Topaz.  I'm thinking because there's so much noise it's struggling.  It does look betterish.

[Bombastinator]

3 hours ago, Daarkcloud said:

That's the video after being run through Topaz.  I'm thinking because there's so much noise it's struggling.  It does look betterish.

Yeah that’s a traditional problem with old film.  It’s old and has had a lot of time to be battered about.