How would I go about restoring a part of this video?

[bershyboi]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fjao4W3HN38

3:10 - 3:40 is my main focus. I have a 6950XT so performance is fine. I want to do the best restoration possible and am willing to spend hours if necessary. I understand it may not be much of an improvement due to the lack of quality in the source material and I would also like to ask if it is progressive or that weird prog interlaced footage, I am not good at differentiating. How would I go about restoring a part of this video? Many thanks.

[Subtitles]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fjao4W3HN38

3:10 - 3:40 is my main focus. I have a 6950XT so performance is fine. I want to do the best restoration possible and am willing to spend hours if necessary. I understand it may not be much of an improvement due to the lack of quality in the source material and I would also like to ask if it is progressive or that weird prog interlaced footage, I am not good at differentiating. How would I go about restoring a part of this video? Many thanks.

The video quality is terrible so how much improvement can you expect after spending many many hours on restoration?
Your better option is to look for the same video with much better quality or if you can't find it, then look for another speech by Saddam Hussein (he was known to give lengthy speeches when he was in office) and replace the audio with the one that you have which is of good quality. Perhaps you can find some relevant footage in the BBC archives or from other countries like the USA or Iraq.

[bershyboi]

It's more than just about his speech, this is a documentary from Iraq which was looted and lost in the archive. Al-Arabyia and OR Archive managed to get the original tapes as they managed to use enhanced footage from this documentary in their own. But apart from their unofficial possesion, this is the only copy of Saheb Haddeds documentary containing key moments like that, and iraqi combat footage. I know the quality is horrendous and filled with watermark, its gone greenish because it's been left in the sun, its wobbly, poorly uploaded and compressed and probably was originally interlaced on a crappy iraqi vhs recorded from when it played on tv, left for years, and then sold out in the sun.

Regardless, i am open to all solutions, even generative diffusion ideas, just even getting a decent 420p or 720p would be enough ( i am willing to pay for tools)

I do appreciate the advice but this is exclusive and not on other areas.

What may be of use is that we have samples of already done restoration...

https://x.com/xumas_iq/status/1668372444703236099
This thread written by another iraqi summarises the issue. You can also search "Looting of iraqi archive" on google, there is some news articles about it.

Issue is they only restored clips of the footage and not the whole doc.

How much time of sample comparisons do we need to make it possibly useful for a baseline ai model or something?

[bershyboi]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fjao4W3HN38

3:10 - 3:40 is my main focus. I have a 6950XT so performance is fine. I want to do the best restoration possible and am willing to spend hours if necessary. I understand it may not be much of an improvement due to the lack of quality in the source material and I would also like to ask if it is progressive or that weird prog interlaced footage, I am not good at differentiating. How would I go about restoring a part of this video? Many thanks.

The video quality is terrible so how much improvement can you expect after spending many many hours on restoration?
Your better option is to look for the same video with much better quality or if you can't find it, then look for another speech by Saddam Hussein (he was known to give lengthy speeches when he was in office) and replace the audio with the one that you have which is of good quality. Perhaps you can find some relevant footage in the BBC archives or from other countries like the USA or Iraq.

Also I have looked very wide and far in arabic and english for it. This is the only copy of parts.

[Selur]

playing round: https://pastebin.com/nsVgvrav
Maybe write to Baghdad TV (https://tvbaghdad.tv/) and ask whether they still have a better version and are willing to share a copy of it,...? (or if they can name the production company so one can ask them?)

[bershyboi]

playing round: https://pastebin.com/nsVgvrav
Maybe write to Baghdad TV (https://tvbaghdad.tv/) and ask whether they still have a better version and are willing to share a copy of it,...? (or if they can name the production company so one can ask them?)

I will ask TV baghdad but its unlikely if they even did that they would share it. Iraqs modern gov doesnt like media from this era. The production company? it was a documentary directed by saheb haddad, presuambly state funded.

Also the enhancment you did is very good for fixing the artifact and coloring thank you but it still leaves the question of AI upscaling to introduce some more detail.

[Subtitles]

As your main focus is the part from 3:10 - 3:40, how about using a good quality still image of Saddam Hussein making a speech and include the audio section in his speech for this section?
I found this still image from Getty as an example. It is very expensive but perhaps you can find copyright free similar image.
https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/iraqi-army-general-and-politician-saddam...?adppopup=true
Restoration will never get you the quality that this photo has.

[Selur]

Haven't seen a good ai tool which can actually add decent details,... HAVC might be able to help with coloring, with some reference image, but I haven't enough experience with it to suggest anything.

[bershyboi]

Haven't seen a good ai tool which can actually add decent details,... HAVC might be able to help with coloring, with some reference image, but I haven't enough experience with it to suggest anything.

With a reference image for detail or for color? Thank you for help regardless

[bershyboi]

As your main focus is the part from 3:10 - 3:40, how about using a good quality still image of Saddam Hussein making a speech and include the audio section in his speech for this section?
I found this still image from Getty as an example. It is very expensive but perhaps you can find copyright free similar image.
https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/iraqi-army-general-and-politician-saddam...?adppopup=true
Restoration will never get you the quality that this photo has.

The main focus as in the demo bit i would like to first try to restore, i would like to restore more of this low quality footage.
The documentary is very historical in many ways. Secondly, I understand restoration will not get this to 4K, but i think some quality improvement is surely possible, I will add linux as a dualboot in the future and mess around with a stable diffusion model i saw eventually. (STAR restoration)

[bershyboi]

playing round: https://pastebin.com/nsVgvrav
Maybe write to Baghdad TV (https://tvbaghdad.tv/) and ask whether they still have a better version and are willing to share a copy of it,...? (or if they can name the production company so one can ask them?)

What software is this python script being ran on? is there a way for me to replicate it on my own machine free of charge?

[Selur]

I used Hybrid to create and execute the script.
Note that
a. BasicVSR++ and HAVC require a newer NVIDIA graphic card and the torch-addon for Hybrid.
b. Hybrid assumes you know what you are doing, so it might not be easy to use if you don't.

Cu Selur

[bershyboi]

I used Hybrid to create and execute the script.
Note that
a. BasicVSR++ and HAVC require a newer NVIDIA graphic card and the torch-addon for Hybrid.
b. Hybrid assumes you know what you are doing, so it might not be easy to use if you don't.

Cu Selur

I am willing to learn on my own but do you have any way to replicate this on an AMD card?

[Selur]

Sadly, afaik., there is no real alternative for BasicVSR++ and HAVC for non-NVIDIA cards.

Cu Selur