Frame by Frame Editing / Painting

[abvision]

Hi all.

Im hoping that some of your knowledgable video enthusiats may be able to help me.. I have license and a U-MATIC transfer of a movie which unfortunately has some faint sparkly lines flitter across the image occasionally throughout the running time and that may be distracting to people when watching it as it makes its tape source more obvious.

I am wondering whether they could be run through some kind of filtering or remastering software to remove them. I am prepared to this by hand, frame-by-frame if need be. Could anyone perhaps give some advise on the best way to do this and the best software involved.

Thank you for your time!

Clive

P.S - Yes I could get this professionally done, but with a cost to go with it and unfortunately a cost I can not really afford. The movie will eventually be authored to DVD profesisonally with menu's etc.. If anyone has any suggestions for decent, reasonably priced DVD authoring / menu design / replication (not duplication) companies, perhaps PM me.

[filmboss80]

Of course, anything can be done. You don't mention software. I've used Premeire exports to Photoshop to remove scratches in motion picture film footage, but it took me 2 days just to touch up a 10-second sequence. If the "sparkly lines" (which I assume is oxide dropout) are small enough, you can run the footage through a time base corrector (TBC) that has a dropout compensator. Otherwise, a noise-reduction filter may help, though it will soften the image of your footage. Is the movie available on some other format than 3/4" U-matic (which went obsolete two decades ago)? It is a fairly low-resolution format, compared to what is offered today. Don't expect miracles when dealing with that kind of source material.

[abvision]

I appreciate your reply filmboss!

Wow 2 days to touch up 10 seconds, I didnt realise it would take quite so long.. Id be here for decades then doing a 74 min film lol. It is unfortunate that the best version currently available of said "movie" lies on a U-MATIC tape (which yes I am aware went obsolute decades ago). It is the only "worth offering" uncut print of the movie available from the directors UMATIC tape.. Depsite its low resolution format it is by far - better than the video version that was made available 25 years ago. So really this is all I have got to play with.

Im gonna have a look arround for some TBC's with dropout compensators and shall run it through one. I shall alos run it through something with noise reduction on... then compare the original to those 2 and see whats lookin good and not so good.

I would have prefered to have gone all out profesisonal on it, but the budget for this release as ias per the directors original budget over 30 years ago.. LOW lol

Thanks again for your help.

Clive

[tinker]

Try TMPGEnc Xpress. It has all kind of filters beside a noise one. It may help.
There is a try version of that software.
To do it frame by frame, good luck.

[guns1inger]

Photoshop CS3 Extended can also be used to import, paint and export video footage, so have access to everything photoshop can provide.

[AlanHK]

faint sparkly lines flitter across the image occasionally...

This is the zero-budget, minimum time, method:
To do appreciably better I believe you would have to spend much more time and money.

If by "flitter" means "mark on one frame but not the next", you can use a temporal dirt filter.

When I have a video made from an old movie with scratches, hair, dirt specks visible I use Avisynth and a filter like:

AVISource("RC.avi",false)
RemoveDirt()
Sharpen(0.7)
Levels(25,1.0,255,0,255)

Removedirt is here, and the rest are standard filters.
Because removedirt softens it a bit I add the sharpen.
It's not perfect, but these simple steps vastly improve old video.
If your source is MPEG, you can use DGIndex and MPEG2Source to read it in.

There are a lot more complex filters and methods if you want to get into it deeply.
Visit the Doom9 forum as well.

[edDV]

If you can go above zero budget, pro tape dub houses have real time video processing equipment that can clean up more common U-Matic issues. Look for a dub house used by documentary producers or TV news departments in the larger cities. You will also get a good digital transfer (DV, DVCPro or DigiBeta) from these guys.

If you were in San Francisco, I'd recommend you start with Monaco Labs. They would point you to the best process. Other large cities have similar services.
http://www.monacosf.com/

In Canada, check Vancouver, Toronto and Montreal.