Retouching old videos

[parinjoy]

I have some video clips from back in 1970s of my grandparents. As they were saved on Verbatim and Sony CDs, over time they have eroded. Somehow using ImgBurn and PowerISO, I was able to extract most of the videos (not all of them as some recent ones had crashed entirely, recovering them could be part of another topic) but the video quality, well was from 1970s and not the 1080p we see today. I wanted to retouch, do some color correction and if possible give it some more pixels to make it feel more vibrant. Which software can I use and which effects can I apply ? I have a maximum of 11^th Generation Intel Core i5-1135G7 and NVIDIA GeForce MX330, but I am comfortable with long rendering times. Any more information you need, I'll be happy to provide in the replies. I would be grateful for any help the community can offer. Thank You  

(Preserving the videos for long term storage now without corrosion and crashing is also quite interesting, maybe will take another topic on that.)

[Needfuldoer]

What kind of video files are you working with?

 

Since it's from the 70s, I'm assuming the original source was an 8mm or Super 8 film. Do any of your relatives still have those reels? If so, you'd be better off digitizing those with a film scanner, rather than using an Nth generation transfer that probably went through VHS or MiniDV along the way.

 

At a bare minimum, subscribe to Creative Cloud for a while so you can experiment with Premiere. BlackMagic Davinci Resolve has some pretty powerful features for the $0 admission price, too.

[Electronics Wizardy]

What format are the videos in? If its from the 70s its probably from film or tape, as there wasn't really any digital stuff back then. If its film, you probably want a better scan if possible.

 

I'd just keep the original files here, as software to upscale will keep getting better, and you get artifacts or issues with upscaling. 

 

There is software like topaz that will work decently, so Id give that a try, but all of the good upscaling software isn't free that I know of.

 

A lot of this will be trail and error as it really depends on the footage your using.

[parinjoy]

Thanks Needfuldoer for the reply, I have the files currently in .mov and .avi digital format on my external hard disk. 1970 might have been a little but too much but thet were in some pretty old CDs. I tried adobe after effects but did not get satisfactory result, (maybe I had the effect parameters wrong) Hence I needed some guidance.

[Needfuldoer]

14 minutes ago, parinjoy said:

Thanks Needfuldoer for the reply, I have the files currently in .mov and .avi digital format on my external hard disk. 1970 might have been a little but too much but thet were in some pretty old CDs

Yeah, inexpensive CD-Rs start going bad after 20 years. 

 

".mov" and ".avi" doesn't really tell us much, those are just containers. (That's like saying "I went to the store and bought shopping bag".) A tool like MediaInfo will tell you the important stuff: codec, bitrate, and resolution. 

 

Like I said, check with your older relatives to see if anyone knows what happened to the original source those movies were shot on. If it was a VHS camcorder from the 80s, there's only so much resolution to work with. If they were shot on film, and someone still has those film reels, a $200-300 8mm film scanner is a worthwhile investment. The oversimplified way to think about it is that 8mm film can hold roughly 720p resolution. (Of course you can scan it at any resolution, but there's a point where all you're doing is resolving film grain.) Some detail would be lost in a standard definition tape transfer, especially one done in the 90s to VHS.

 

[parinjoy]

1 minute ago, Needfuldoer said:

Yeah, inexpensive CD-Rs start going bad after 20 years. 

 

".mov" and ".avi" doesn't really tell us much, those are just containers. (That's like saying "I went to the store and bought shopping bag".) A tool like MediaInfo will tell you the important stuff: codec, bitrate, and resolution. 

 

Like I said, check with your older relatives to see if anyone knows what happened to the original source those movies were shot on. If it was a VHS camcorder from the 80s, there's only so much resolution to work with. If they were shot on film, and someone still has those film reels, the $200-300 an 8mm film scanner costs is a worthwhile investment. The oversimplified way to think about it is that 8mm film can hold roughly 720p resolution. (Of course you can scan it at any resolution, but there's a point where all you're doing is getting film grain.) Some detail would be lost in a standard definition tape transfer, especially one done in the 90s to VHS.

 

I'll check with MediaInfo but as far as I know, they have nothing other than the CDs. The events were recorded by a camerahouse and they had only handed over the CDs to them for viewing. 

[rrats]

Can you find the original 8mm reels?

 

If not then send a sample of clip you are trying to restore. Avisynth is a really useful software when it comes to video restoration