1440 x 1080 reduction for 4:3 very old film (1964)

[loninappleton]

I have an overly large MKV black and white whose origins are obscure. It has to be 16mm original upscaled or broadcast some place.
My knowledge of tools is limited to Handbrake and it's settings though other suggestions may be possible.
This 1440 by 1080 looks to have the same grain as a 16 mm film of origin. The media size is 6.64Gb which is a mystery: Upscaling,
raw video from a VHS. No idea on the history. [In point of fact I don't trust much of it to be accurate. The aspect ration reduces to standard 640 by 480 so I'm trying that in Handbrake with some sharpening, denoise etc. but I really need a knowledgable opinion
rather than guesswork

The goal is get the size down to 1gb or so for the hour long length and improve the video to minimum graininess. If the Dolby audio shown can be removed I'd do that with something like Audacity if such is possible. All of these statistics seem off.


Here is the Mediainfo:

MediaInfo mainscreen states that this was made in MKVmerge around 2019

General
Unique ID : 246184212175854088474302096675397843603 (0xB9355AC77D9B84DBA577E0E285123A93)
Complete name : C:\Users\Public\The.Brig.1964.*********.mkv
Format : Matroska
Format version : Version 4
File size : 6.64 GiB
Duration : 1 h 5 min
Overall bit rate mode : Variable
Overall bit rate : 14.5 Mb/s
Frame rate : 24.000 FPS
Encoded date : 2017-07-27 18:28:22 UTC
Writing application : mkvmerge v10.0.0 ('To Drown In You') 64bit
Writing library : libebml v1.3.4 + libmatroska v1.4.5

Video
ID : 1
Format : AVC
Format/Info : Advanced Video Codec
Format profile : High@L4
Format settings : CABAC / 4 Ref Frames
Format settings, CABAC : Yes
Format settings, Reference frames : 4 frames
Codec ID : V_MPEG4/ISO/AVC
Duration : 1 h 5 min
Bit rate mode : Variable
Bit rate : 14.2 Mb/s
Maximum bit rate : 15.0 Mb/s
Width : 1 440 pixels
Height : 1 080 pixels
Display aspect ratio : 4:3
Frame rate mode : Constant
Frame rate : 24.000 FPS
Color space : YUV
Chroma subsampling : 4:2:0
Bit depth : 8 bits
Scan type : Progressive
Bits/(Pixel*Frame) : 0.381
Stream size : 6.54 GiB (98%)
Default : Yes
Forced : No
Color range : Limited
Color primaries : BT.709
Transfer characteristics : BT.709
Matrix coefficients : BT.709

Audio
ID : 2
Format : E-AC-3
Format/Info : Enhanced AC-3
Commercial name : Dolby Digital Plus
Codec ID : A_EAC3
Duration : 1 h 5 min
Bit rate mode : Constant
Bit rate : 224 kb/s
Channel(s) : 2 channels
Channel layout : L R
Sampling rate : 48.0 kHz
Frame rate : 31.250 FPS (1536 SPF)
Compression mode : Lossy
Stream size : 105 MiB (2%)
Language : English
Service kind : Complete Main
Default : Yes
Forced : No

[davexnet]

Can you post a sample, at least 60 seconds, that illustrates the issues ?

[DB83]

Well I guess you know the 'magic' formula that file size = runlength*bitrate. So in your example that redicousely high video bitrate is the major factor in the ultimate size.

What, of course, is not known was the rationale in doing that - maybe for projection purposes but who knows.


To get down to your aimed filesize and the smaller frame (which itself has no influence on file size) a video bitrate of 1500-1800 kbps will suffice. And if you do not want that audio you can save on that with AAC at as little as 96 kbps.


I do not use handbrake but I can suggest avidemux for the task. It has filters to do all you require.


But beyond that, I doubt if anyone can comment re noise reduction since without a sample we are all blind.

[Cornucopia]

The more predictable/regular the video, the more compressible. The more unpredictable/random, the less compressible (harder it is to compress), for any given quality set.
Since noise is an example of ultimate randomness, if the title is very noisy/grainy, it will not compress nearly as much as expected, unless you allow for further reduction in quality. Or process it to make it more regular/less noisy (which has its own effect of quality reduction).


Scott

[jagabo]

This 1440 by 1080 looks to have the same grain as a 16 mm film of origin. The media size is 6.64Gb which is a mystery: Upscaling, raw video from a VHS. No idea on the history.

A decent 1440x1080 16mm film transfer should be much sharper than any VHS source.

[loninappleton]

Well I guess you know the 'magic' formula that file size = runlength*bitrate. So in your example that redicousely high video bitrate is the major factor in the ultimate size.

What, of course, is not known was the rationale in doing that - maybe for projection purposes but who knows.


To get down to your aimed filesize and the smaller frame (which itself has no influence on file size) a video bitrate of 1500-1800 kbps will suffice. And if you do not want that audio you can save on that with AAC at as little as 96 kbps.


I do not use handbrake but I can suggest avidemux for the task. It has filters to do all you require.


But beyond that, I doubt if anyone can comment re noise reduction since without a sample we are all blind.

I have used AVIDemux but not to much depth. It may be a task that's beyond me since I know nothing about calculating bitrate etc.. It was just an idea. I'll see what happens after I make a clip for you of the 6.64 content and review what I ran through handbrake. In the end as others have suggested on various topics: viewing it as original without twiddling will give a better feel for the content. The film is called The Brig which is a play developed from a Marine's experience of military prison. It's not a happy go luck show. It led to a Congressional investigation at the time. I'm intending to check if this is public domain since the production outfit ceased to exist long ago. Best thing for that is ask at Internet Archive.

So not a rush job. I have subtitle projects etc.

[DB83]

BTW No need to worry about the calculation since I already did that for you - I just happend to have a 65 min video so did not even to have to worry about that either. But most would not use the constant bitrate from an h264 (AVC) encoder by use a Constant Rate Factor (CRF) of 18-20. I think that is what I did when I created the video.

But you can also use avidemux to create the sample. Just use copy for both video and audio. Mp4 or mkv fro the output format and use the A/B markers to select your sample.

[loninappleton]

BTW No need to worry about the calculation since I already did that for you - I just happend to have a 65 min video so did not even to have to worry about that either. But most would not use the constant bitrate from an h264 (AVC) encoder by use a Constant Rate Factor (CRF) of 18-20. I think that is what I did when I created the video.

But you can also use avidemux to create the sample. Just use copy for both video and audio. Mp4 or mkv fro the output format and use the A/B markers to select your sample.

Thanks for the effort. Yes I know where the bit rate is entered on handbrake.

What I intend to do is make a clip from the same time on the overly large one and also another about a minute as requested for the recode I made which looks pretty good. I think the log of Handbrake on that will show the details but as I recall

Use Preset Fast 480 x 30p
Set Video to 640 x 480
CC 20
23.976 FPS
Encoder Preset Very Slow


Filters the way I've come to do on most
Detelecine = Default
Interlace = Default
Denoise == Off
Sharpen = Laptop set to Medium
Deblock = light

[loninappleton]

uploading clips is going too slow at videohelp. Probably the size of even a small clip....

I don't think uploading to Mediafire will change anything in the videos:

https://www.mediafire.com/file/lvud80l2apx9ejq/The.Brig.1964+clip+1440+by+1080.mkv/file

and the one I recoded in Handbrake with settings above:

https://www.mediafire.com/file/0xbki536d9dxtm7/The.Brig.1964.+640+by+480+4+clip+in+mkv...oonix.mkv/file

[DB83]

I'll leave it to others to comment if the sample requires any de-noising etc (although, personally, it never bothers me)

One thing I have noticed though is that you do not have a 640*480 vid but a 720*540 one. And you will get an approx 2 gb file at the given bitrate.

[davexnet]

Is your 1080p video really a capture from VHS? Maybe they used a time base corrector,
because except for some obvious camera shake the image is rock steady.

If your aim is to reduce the grain it can be done, looks like regular film grain,
I don't think it's so bad

[loninappleton]

Is your 1080p video really a capture from VHS? Maybe they used a time base corrector,
because except for some obvious camera shake the image is rock steady.

If your aim is to reduce the grain it can be done, looks like regular film grain,
I don't don't think it's so bad

Then the ok one is the Handbrake recode (?) Good. That's what I wanted to hear.

This piece being so old, the only thing that I can say for sure is that the 16mm archived print is held at Harvardfilmarchive.org and I just learned that yesterday. The theatre company had The Brig and a documentary on their work out on VHS when VHS was new from Mystic Fire Productions. AA54Q231QWI also found out there's at least one version with softcoded French subtitles. I had access to that but did not view it yet.