Editing colors in a video

[FatalX]

I have a video file here and there is a scene that is in a black and white tinge.

I would like to remove the black and white effects and restore the original colors, is there any way to do this? Or can the original format not be changed that way?

[guns1inger]

What's gone is gone. If the video is just desaturated and some colour remains, you might be able to boost it somewhat. But if it is black and white, there isn't much you can do about it. There are colourisation tools for video, however they tend to be very expensive. There are some cheap plugins for photoshop, and if you have Cs3/4/5 then you could load just that section into photoshop and colourise it by hand.

[jagabo]

Yes, if the video is completely grayscale the only way to restore color is to colorize it. Even with the best of software this is a very manually intensive task. If there is a little color left you can boost the saturation. You'll probably also have to fiddle with other color parameters too. Hue, white balance, gradation curves, etc.

[frlane]

Is the actual video file in black & white? Or has it been made black and white in the timeline?

[FatalX]

Oh, I see.

Yes, the actual video file is black and white, for a certain scene, which I'd like to restore color to.

Well, you see it's not exactly 100% black and white, it has more of a "black and white brownish tinge" to it.

So, how would I go about manually restoring the color, and how much quality loss would there be? Is it worth it?

[guns1inger]

I don't know of any decent video plugins, but there are a few for photoshop. You would need at least CS3 Extended edition so you can import the section that needs to be worked on. You would then colourise each frame until they are all done, and save out the new version. This would be then be edited into the video in place of the black and white version. I don't know what the video means to you, so I cannot judge if the effort will be worth it for the result. It certainly won't look the same as the rest of the video.

This is one of the plugins that might do what you need.

[FatalX]

I don't know of any decent video plugins, but there are a few for photoshop. You would need at least CS3 Extended edition so you can import the section that needs to be worked on. You would then colourise each frame until they are all done, and save out the new version. This would be then be edited into the video in place of the black and white version. I don't know what the video means to you, so I cannot judge if the effort will be worth it for the result. It certainly won't look the same as the rest of the video.

This is one of the plugins that might do what you need.

I see, thanks a lot for the help.

My last question would be if you know of any tools that could render in HD? The file I'm trying to colorize is an HD m2ts file, and I certainly don't want to colorize it if I lose a substantial amount of quality.

I know that quality loss is inevitable, but I'd prefer it'd be very, very little, if not unnoticable. Even if I must amplify the new video file size.

If that simply isn't possible, then I guess i'll just stick with what I got.

[guns1inger]

What are you rendering ?

Photoshop doesn't really care too much how big it is so long as you have the memory to accommodate it. You can use TSmuxer to split or join HD files without re-encoding, and avi demux to encode H264 at HD, amongst other things (Xvid4PSP, Format Factory etc).

You need to me more specific about what you encoding to, and why.

[jagabo]

Well, you see it's not exactly 100% black and white, it has more of a "black and white brownish tinge" to it.

That sounds like a sepia tone. Basically this is what happens when a black and white photograph dyed or aged.

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

Since none of the original colors are present this has to be hand colorized.

original full color:


faded (colors can be restored):


grayscale (must be hand colorsized):


sepia (must be hand colorized):


faded and sepia (can be restored but difficult):

[FatalX]

What are you rendering ?

Photoshop doesn't really care too much how big it is so long as you have the memory to accommodate it. You can use TSmuxer to split or join HD files without re-encoding, and avi demux to encode H264 at HD, amongst other things (Xvid4PSP, Format Factory etc).

You need to me more specific about what you encoding to, and why.

Here's the Media Info

Video
ID : 4113 (0x1011)
Menu ID : 1 (0x1)
Format : AVC
Format/Info : Advanced Video Codec
Format profile : High@L4.1
Format settings, CABAC : Yes
Format settings, ReFrames : 3 frames
Duration : 46mn 56s
Bit rate : 6 612 Kbps
Nominal bit rate : 7 000 Kbps
Width : 1 920 pixels
Height : 1 080 pixels
Display aspect ratio : 16:9
Frame rate : 23.976 fps
Resolution : 8 bits
Colorimetry : 4:2:0
Scan type : Progressive
Bits/(Pixel*Frame) : 0.133
Stream size : 2.17 GiB (87%)
Writing library : x264 core 80 r1376M 3feaec2
Encoding settings : cabac=1 / ref=3 / deblock=1:0:0 / analyse=0x3:0x113 / me=hex / subme=7 / psy=1 / psy_rd=1.0:0.0 / mixed_ref=1 / me_range=16 / chroma_me=1 / trellis=1 / 8x8dct=1 / cqm=0 / deadzone=21,11 / fast_pskip=1 / chroma_qp_offset=-2 / threads=3 / sliced_threads=0 / nr=0 / decimate=1 / mbaff=0 / constrained_intra=0 / bframes=3 / b_pyramid=0 / b_adapt=1 / b_bias=0 / direct=1 / wpredb=1 / wpredp=2 / keyint=250 / keyint_min=25 / scenecut=40 / rc_lookahead=40 / rc=abr / mbtree=1 / bitrate=7000 / ratetol=1.0 / qcomp=0.60 / qpmin=10 / qpmax=51 / qpstep=4 / ip_ratio=1.40 / aq=1:1.0

However, it isn't the full file I want to render, I only want to colorize about a minute and a half of footage.
I want to encode to an m2ts file, at the same resolution, and preferably as close as possible to the original quality.

And yes, it is a sepia tone.

[jagabo]

That's about 2000 frames you want to colorize. It's going to take a long time in Photoshop. If the shot is sepia tone then it was probably meant to be that way. Why bother "fixing" it?

[FatalX]

The reason I want to colorize it is because the sepia tone is just a form of censorship for a scene. I'd like to restore the original colors, as I prefer it that way.

I'm willing to go that extra mile as long as the quality is almost unnoticably different from the original.