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  1. Video Restorer lordsmurf's Avatar
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    Interesting!

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VidFIRE

    VidFIRE (Video Field Interpolation Restoration Effect) is a restoration technique intended to restore the video-like motion of footage originally shot with television cameras now existing only in formats with telerecording as their basis. The word is both a noun and a verb.

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reverse_Standards_Conversion

    Reverse Standards Conversion or RSC is a process developed by the BBC for the restoration of video recordings which have already been converted between different video standards using early conversion techniques.

    RSC was developed as an alternative to double-conversion. Use of RSC bypasses the generation of the artefacts that would be introduced in a normal NTSC->PAL conversion, and actually reverses the early standards conversion method used to create the NTSC copies. RSC is the result of reverse engineering the method of conversion inherent in the old traditional BBC PAL -> NTSC converter. RSC attempts to separate the information from the merged lines and fields of the NTSC conversion. One of the problems inherent in this is that of increased noise. RSC employs techniques to minimise the resultant noise - both in the separation process itself, and in preparation of the NTSC material prior to processing through use of HF linear filtering.
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  2. interesting. if i read it right, they copied the original video tapes onto film, using a camera shooting the tape playing on a monitor. now they want to artificially separate the film frames into fields. wouldn't that end up with 24fps interlaced? bizarre. i like the original name they had for it better - "Video Field Artificial Restoration Technique" or VidFART
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  3. One amendment to make to the VidFire article:

    When videotape technology was first created, in the 1950s, tapes were extremely costly; but their reusability meant that the cost of a single tape could be spread across several productions, with each successive production erasing and then reusing the tape from a previous one, with the result that relatively few programmes produced on videotape in the 1950s and 1960s still exist in their original format."
    Many of the productions from those days don't exist at all. In fact the BBC are actively looking for missing programmes that they may have sold over-seas in the feint hope that there still may be some laying forgotten in a TV station store-room somewhere.

    There have been a few successes; The Tomb Of The Cybermen, mentioned in the VidFire article, was recovered from a television station in Hong Kong in 1990 IIRC.

    There are also many colour productions that were Telecined onto B&W film and only now exist in B&W; however...

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CjK-b4x9ZmQ (BBC news item)
    Cole
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  4. I remember reading about VidFIRE being used on old Dr Who recordings about five years ago. Of course, the same technique (synthesizing tween frames with motion estimation) is used in all the new 100 Hz and 120 Hz HDTVs (without re-interlacing fields, obviously). And some AviSynth slow motion and smooth frame rate conversion filters (MvTools).
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