Rate my restoration? 480i to 960p with color grading and audio fixes

[michaelh99]

tldr; "restored" an old vcr capture and curious if there's some low-hanging fruit I'm missing that could be taken care of without scripting.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3LZ93ZZjTbs

long version:

I'm a long-time lurker here and while I've done my share of video editing and small-scale photo restoration, I haven't tried my hand at video restoration before this past week.

About 10 years ago I received some DVD rips from a fellow dancer and promptly converted them to mp4 and dumped them on youtube. (Here's one of them https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pbNoM0oNJ0c&feature=youtu.be )

Last week I stumbled across a copy of the DVD rip and decided to see what I could do using Davinci Resolve combined with various ffmpeg tools I regularly use for when editing videos.

Thus I began my adventure down the rabbit hole that many of you are familiar with and much more experienced at navigating.

After several days of experimentation I decided that since this is an unpaid passion project, I would skip the scripting based tools because of other demands on my time. After trying a couple-dozen experiments with shutter encoder/ffmpeg, virtualdub, some Boris FX plugins and built-in Resolve features I settled on upscaling to 1440p and interpreting the source at top field first using the bwdif filter as a starting point.

After that it was cutting, grading, noise cleanup, etc. All in Resolve.

I'm not unhappy with the result but curious if there's something obvious I've missed, that the more experienced notice right off.

Oh, I have several more of these I'd like to get to as time permits, so my current desire to stay out of the scripting deep end might become change.

Anyway, let the roasting begin?

[Bwaak]

I wonder where did you get 720i ?

[Sharc]

Huh. Probably garbage in - garbage out. But one should start from scratch with the VHS tape if available. If not available, one may start with the DVD rip, but probably and unfortunately the damage is already on the DVD, like over-denoised, wobbling (lack of TBC), progressive encoded VHS video (?), etc.

[DB83]

And where is the 1440p version to rate ?

Music is cool tho.

[michaelh99]

I wonder where did you get 720i ?

Sorry, I assume you're referring to my mis-use of "720"
I thought of that in the middle of the night but wasn't going to get out of bed to correct it.

It's a bad habit I formed from using Vegas for years, which tends more often to refer to resolution using the horizontal pixel count rather than vertical.

I've just tried to change the title. We'll see if it sticks.

[michaelh99]

And where is the 1440p version to rate ?

Same response as my last to bwaak?

Music is cool tho.

If it makes you want to move your feet, you might be a dancer!

[michaelh99]

Huh. Probably garbage in - garbage out. But one should start from scratch with the VHS tape if available. If not available, one may start with the DVD rip, but probably and unfortunately the damage is already on the DVD, like over-denoised, wobbling (lack of TBC), progressive encoded VHS video (?), etc.

Unfortunately I never had the source so I can't re-rip it from VHS and it has most of the problems you list.

I knew I wasn't going to get a movie-magic 4k ultra clear results and I also didn't have infinite time to try a bunch of new tools (spring is coming and there's work to do outside) so my expectations weren't very high.

[DB83]

OK.

But my Q. remains. Where is the 960p version to rate. Those YT vids are 480 and no higher. And YT is no yardstick for an evaluation of quality. Upload the original as an attachment here (and the 480i version for a full comparison)

[michaelh99]

OK.

But my Q. remains. Where is the 960p version to rate. Those YT vids are 480 and no higher. And YT is no yardstick for an evaluation of quality. Upload the original as an attachment here (and the 480i version for a full comparison)

Ugh. I didn't realize that YT was limiting it in this case. I'm familiar with how YT screws with uploads and how to get around some of the limitations but apparently brain farted when it came to this video.

The first link does go as high as 720 though you'll have to select it.

I'll work to get them uploaded here in a bit...

[michaelh99]

Just attached a clip of the original and final

Original is VTS_03_1-no-deinterlace.mov (259.56 MB)

"restored" Clare Figure 2 before and after.mov (100.39 MB)

[poisondeathray]

One thing you could improve is double rate deinterlace to 59.94p . For dancing, sports etc... the motion will be more smooth. If you upload 720p or higher, this enables 59.94p on YT as well . Right now you're discarding 1/2 the information

[themaster1]

Barely watchable is my verdict, can't see nothing on the faces, the clothes, blurry mess but not surprised when one starts from mpegs. Better exposition now yes (far from perfection). And yet, i've seen worse over the years.

[DB83]

One thing. Not that it will probably help.

Your first sample is NOT native from the DVD - atleast dvd-video that is. It has already been re-encoded with, possibly, a lower bitrate than the original. But then the dvd might not have been 'brilliant' in the first place. Mediainfo does get things wrong but it reports 'interlaced' with the original as 'progressive'

[Sharc]

Unfortunately I never had the source so I can't re-rip it from VHS and it has most of the problems you list.

That's a pity. Usually one can expect much better quality from a decent VHS rip. The damage is already on the DVD it seems.

[michaelh99]

One thing you could improve is double rate deinterlace to 59.94p . For dancing, sports etc... the motion will be more smooth. If you upload 720p or higher, this enables 59.94p on YT as well . Right now you're discarding 1/2 the information

I gave that a shot and can convince myself there's a small visual difference. Decided to play around with a few other virtualdub filters and went with the following:

Input				Output 					filter 
720k (YUV420) 		720x480 (YUV422) (8:9) (59.9 fps) 		deinterlace (mode: yadif, double-BFF) 
720x480 (YUV422) 	720x480 (RGBA32) (8:9) (59.9 fps) 		temporal smoother (10)

[michaelh99]

Barely watchable is my verdict, can't see nothing on the faces, the clothes, blurry mess but not surprised when one starts from mpegs. Better exposition now yes (far from perfection). And yet, i've seen worse over the years.

exposition?

[lordsmurf]

Still a lot of timing wiggle.

Is it improved? Yes.
Is it good quality? No. But that's not your fault.

[michaelh99]

Still a lot of timing wiggle.

Is it improved? Yes.
Is it good quality? No. But that's not your fault.

Yah, really makes me wish I had a tape and player so I could start fresh.