Can you combine an identical color and black & white cli

[rijir2001]

This might sound crazy. And probably can't be done. But can something like this be done?

Assume you have two identical video clips. Except one is very low generation high quality but in black and white (due to a SECAM to PAL conversion). And the other clip is about 3rd generation or so lesser quality but in color (also PAL). Can the color signal only be somehow extraced from the color clip and merged in some way with the b&w clip to create a composite clip? Also assume that I can match the clips frame by frame.

Let me down easy if this just sounds really ridiculous.

[Forum Troll]

What you are trying to do cannot be done.

[dcsos]

Its the kind of thing that Hollywood companies hired people to do in the seventies and eighties to COLOR b&w films. The thought was that if you could assign the collors, intelligent software could "paint it on the scenes" automatically. Millions of dollars later, most of us turn off the color information on these electrically painted films....Not only because the originals weren't "meant to be" color, but because automatic painting looks unreal.
Now if you went in and painted it by hand frame by frame...but thats crazy!

[rijir2001]

There is actually a company out there now that colorizes films and they truely look real. their first job was to do some 3 Stooges shorts. And seriously they look like they were shot in color.

But with my issue I am not "colorizing" from scratch. I want to "merge" to signals basically to get the best of both worlds (clear picture from a b&w source with decent color from another source). And I must stress here that these are 2 identical clips from SECAM sources. One has color and one doesn't. It would have been great if I could have gotten the high quality one in color but that didn't happen.

And please no more mention of film colorization. That isn't what my question is about. I don't want this to turn into a debate about that.

[gadgetguy]

You could try using the overlay option in Ulead Video Studio and experiment with the transparency levels to get the best combination of clarity/color info. Once combined you could try to further enhance the colors.

[Noahtuck]

Its the kind of thing that Hollywood companies hired people to do in the seventies and eighties to COLOR b&w films. The thought was that if you could assign the collors, intelligent software could "paint it on the scenes" automatically. Millions of dollars later, most of us turn off the color information on these electrically painted films....Not only because the originals weren't "meant to be" color, but because automatic painting looks unreal.
Now if you went in and painted it by hand frame by frame...but thats crazy!

Yeah, isn't that what Ted Turner started doing a looooong time ago
They even did a skit about it on "In Living Color" years back, mocking him about "Colorizing" old black & white movies..... which also in my opinion sucked!!!

And the frame by frame painting
20 years later :P

You could try using the overlay option in Ulead Video Studio and experiment with the transparency levels to get the best combination of clarity/color info. Once combined you could try to further enhance the colors.

But it would be interesting to see if the overlay could be done or something to that effect and see how well it came out.

[manono]

You handy with AviSynth? Although I've never done it myself, I'm pretty sure you can do exactly what you want fairly easily using the Overlay command and Chroma Mode:

http://www.avisynth.org/Overlay

It looks to me that if done right, you'll wind up with the quality and detail of the B+W clip, with the color from the color clip overlayed on it.

[rijir2001]

Never used AviSynth. But I will have to check it out. As you described it is what I was thinking. It didn't seem impossible. I just can't emagine too many people confronted with this senario as I am.

Thanks!!

[rijir2001]

Since my original post I have come across this item. It looks like what I was trying to do has actually been done "officially" by a studio in a restoration project. Interesting read:

http://www.purpleville.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk/rtwebsite/colouris.htm