Restoring Cartoons

[Rugratskid]

I have 26, 7 minute cartoons I'd like to fix up the best I could. They're all from different sources, and each one looks different, but none have any actual VHS problems, except one for about 2 seconds, but I don't care about it. I'm not looking for perfect either, just something a little better than the original. Any advice for these would be nice! Here are the episodes: https://www.dropbox.com/sh/9drb1jptuh8ykx2/3eFtR1WcUF Take as much time as you want. I'd just like these fixed (walking me through it or doing it urself is fine) in a few months. These are NOT on DVD anywhere legally, so that's why I'd love to see them looking better.

[sanlyn]

Rugratskid, no one is going to work with video that has gone through several stages of bad processing, much less download all of them. If these are downloads from websites like uTube, etc., be advised that they've been ruined by experts at ruining video. If you have sources from which these downloads were made, that's what you should work with. If there are no original sources, be advised that they are rather hopeless to begin with and that, in any case, you would have a great deal to learn...and, yes, it would take weeks if not months to learn it.

[Rugratskid]

I have some VHS rips in 780X480 format, but the others were from Youtube. None of them are terrible though.

[manono]

I'd just like these fixed (walking me through it or doing it urself is fine) in a few months.

And how much are you offering for the job, per episode, to do your work for you, or to advise you on how to do the work? Nothing? No problem.

[Rugratskid]

Sadly, I have no money. Just looking for some advice on getting better picture with maybe Virtualdub.

[DB83]

It seems also that you do not understand how the forum works.

It does not exist to do full restoration for all and sundry but rather to offer specific help for specific issues. As sanlyn says, no one in their right mind will download 26 videos and be expected, however long it takes, to restore these.

You got 'lucky' with that 1 minute ad. Do not push you luck.

[sanlyn]

Because they all have similar problems (and they're pretty dreadful clips, really), you could suggest one on two to get you started and apply what you learn to the others. But don't expect much in the line of results. The sample clips have very little to work with.

[Rugratskid]

Could someone just help me with the first episode? I might be able to just use Sony Vegas's Color Match to fix that one, since I have a reference picture from a VHS sing along.

[sanlyn]

I don't see anything particularly wrong with the color. That's the very least of the problems. First, decide what you want for the final output. Do you want these vids to be on disc or a drive for TV display, or computer display only? Do you want "standard" mp4 (I'd advise mkv, not mp4). To comply with standards, they have to be resized and the audio is not compliant for DVD, AVCHD, or BluRay, all of which can be encoded for 4:3 display.

You can't make any of the needed repairs in Sony Vegas or any other NLE, and VirtualDub won't help much. You'll have to work with Avisynth for almost all of it.

[Rugratskid]

They will be for a DVD, if that helps.

[sanlyn]

DVD is MPEG2 only, interlaced -- although progressive might play on newer systems. No mp4 or anything else. Besides cleaning up the toons, each has to be resized to 720x480, audio resampled from 44KHz to 48KHz, then the toons have to be encoded to MPEG2 and authored for DVD.

[sanlyn]

A few seconds of cartoon #1 ("good neighbor") is attached. Could stand more work and an audio tweak. This required 5 steps: 3 Avisynth scripts + 2 VirtualDub runs, over 15 filters. The original is quite a mess. A typical 7-minute cartoon like this one would take about 18 hours to process. And don't expect too much; the source is in far worse condition that any video should be, even by uTube's low standards.

Attached: Preview of PAL 720x576 mkv 25 fps, 4:3 (can also be encoded for PAL DVD). I will have to clean up the script and the filter list and post early tomorrow. Very late here now.

[Rugratskid]

Wow, this looks great. What script did you use for making colors look more still? I'm not sure what the exact term is.

[lordsmurf]

I already told you I'd fix them all, for free -- if the source was decent.
And what I've downloaded so far, it's decent.

Cartoons is my hobby, and I like Alvin.

But you never contacted me. So PM me!

[jman98]

I already told you I'd fix them all, for free -- if the source was decent.
And what I've downloaded so far, it's decent.

Cartoons is my hobby, and I like Alvin.

But you never contacted me. So PM me!

rugratskid - You need to take him up on this offer!

[sanlyn]

I think lordsmurf has a good idea, and he's definitely a pro. To take dirty crummy damaged noisy wiggly uTube stuff that's ugly with low-bitrate compression artifacts and line sync errors is no easy task, even for a seasoned user. I have attached a text file of the scripts I used for the mkv sample posted earlier, to show you what I mean. I have no idea that you'll find the scripts somewhat intimidating, if nothing else. I used the same scripts to encode the PAL DVD sample, also attached. There are likely at least 15 ways to get the same results, but none of them will be as simple as running the vid through an NLE.

The h264 mkv preview was encoded with TMPGenc Mastering Works v5. THE PAL DVD version attached below was encoded with HCenc and audio+video sync with TMPGenc Smart Renderer v4.

[DB83]

OP. If you had such an offer from LS why did you create this topic in the first place ?

Good Samaritans are very rare these days. You should not pass by on the other side.

[jagabo]

If you want some thing quick and dirty to start with:

ffVideoSource("E1 Good Neighbor.mp4") 
Stab()
TTempSmooth(maxr=6, strength=4, lthresh=20, cthresh=25, lmdiff=10, cmdiff=15)
HqDering()
Sharpen(0.3, 0.0)
Santiag()
MergeChroma(aWarpSharp(depth=10), aWarpSharp(depth=20))
Overlay(last, ColorYUV(off_y=-8, off_u=9, off_v=-2), 0, 0, GreyScale(last).ColorYUV(cont_y=30))
Crop(2,2,-6,-2)
nnedi3_rpow2(2, cshift="Spline36Resize", fwidth=720, fheight=576)

The strong TTempSmooth stabilizes the brightness/colors in the static parts of the image. It ends up ghosting and losing some low contrast detail in moving areas though -- panning shots, for example. You can play around with the arguments to try to get it working better. Note the curtains in this shot:

source:


after TTempSmooth:


You'll probably want to adjust the mask in the Overlay/ColorYUV line.

Sample similar to Sanlyn's attached. The full 7 minute clip took about 13 minutes to filter and encode on my i5 2500K.

[lordsmurf]

There's still several things being overlooked on the video. And we've not even talked about the audio yet! Each episode has it's own problems. Since the show isn't released, and not likely to get one, this is worth my hobby time. Just know that 26 eps would take, at minimum, 26 days if I were doing one per day. And I won't. So something like this takes a few months. But it's worth it.

This is an easy project, compared to what I normally do!

[Rugratskid]

I PMed you about this. I totally forgot to PM you a while back.

[sanlyn]

If you want some thing quick and dirty to start with:

. . . 
. . .

Overlay(last, ColorYUV(off_y=-8, off_u=9, off_v=-2), 0, 0, GreyScale(last).ColorYUV(cont_y=30))
...
...

Ah, yes, ye olde greyscale idea again. Always intrigued to see examples of this sort of mask/overlay technique. Another one for my jagabo folder! Thanks again. I really must get a handle on using this sort of thing.

[jagabo]

Overlay(last, ColorYUV(off_y=-8, off_u=9, off_v=-2), 0, 0, GreyScale(last).ColorYUV(cont_y=30))

Ah, yes, ye olde greyscale idea again. Always intrigued to see examples of this sort of mask/overlay technique.

I think you understand this part but for the benefit of the OP: The use of a mask with overlay is conceptually very simple. Areas where the mask is black only the first image shows through. In areas where the mask is white only the second image shows through. Where the mask is grey you get a weighted (depending the shade of grey) mix of the two.

Why did I use Overlay here to adjust the colors? If you look at the chroma channels you'll see that in black areas both U and V are very close to the neutral grey. But in the bright white areas U is significatnly low and V is a little high:



If I simply used ColorYUV(off_u=9, off_v=-2) the brights would be close to pure white but the blacks would be discolored. So I wanted a way to apply the ColorYUV adjustment to the bright parts of the picture but leave the dark parts of the picture unchanged. The solution is to use the luma of the image itself as an alpha mask. The black pixels keep the original colors, the white pixels get the adjusted colors, pixels in between get a mix.

Note, for purposes of this explanation I wanted sample that had both black and white right next to each other. In the above image the sample was taken from near the bottom of a particular frame. The discoloration of this portion of this frame was a bit more than for the overall video. For the ColorYUV adjustment I used compromise values for the overall clip, not for this particular portion of this particular frame.

I also just realized that I should have left the V adjustment out of that line.

[lordsmurf]

Could one of you give me stab.
It's not on this computer, and the official download is 404.
I want to see what jagabo did.

The overlay is interesting -- I don't remember doing that before (though I may have at some point)
The shadows are still too dark on Ep1.
Personally, I adjust color from Premiere or FCP. But learning (re-learning?) this looks worthwhile.

[jagabo]

Stab.avs in ZIP attached.

[jagabo]

Here's an example with correction customized for that particular crop:

source:


after Overlay(last, ColorYUV(off_u=18, off_v=-4), 0, 0, GreyScale(last).ColorYUV(cont_y=30)):


The full frame after Overlay(last, ColorYUV(off_u=18, off_v=-4), 0, 0, GreyScale(last).ColorYUV(cont_y=30)):


I assumed the shirt was white and the pants were black in this frame. But I couldn't find anything that I was confident should be pure grey. So I don't know is how accurate the middle greys are after this adjustment. That's where adjusting the mask may help.

[Rugratskid]

That looks great. Better than what I had. BTW, about 3/4 of these came from Nickelodeon airings, and the rest came from FOX-25 VHS airings (none of them are copies from me)

[jagabo]

Here's a video example where the script causes loss of detail and ghosting. Note how the lines in the curtains largely disappear during the pan. There are ghosts in the piano lid. And the bar that holds the lid open disappears. Once the camera stops panning all those problems get cleaned up. Reducing the TTempSmooth settings will alleviate those problems but you'll get less effective deflickering in still sequences. Maybe someone knows one of the motion compensated temporal noise reducers that works better.

[sanlyn]

I used VirtualDub's DeFlicker. There's the Avisynth version, but it seems to behave differently.

[Rugratskid]

This was the best I could do with Virtualdub in about 5 minutes. I thought it needed more red. Now it looks TOO red.

[sanlyn]

Nope. The picture on the left needs more blue. Use a pixel value sampler to analyze color problems. The first clue in the pic on the left bis the white in the cloth and the eyes. They're too yellow. You balance yellow (which is red + green) by adding its complementary color, which is Blue.

There's a free pixel sampler that sits on your desktop and reads pixel values anywhere: Csamp http://www.netreach.net/~gavin/gavsfreeware/csamp.htm