Converting to B&W

[grandsire02]

I have some old Laurel & Hardy .avi video clips that have been colorized. I would like to view them in their original B&W form however - what software can I use to convert back to B&W?

[Midzuki]

Avisynth!

http://avisynth.org.ru/docs/english/corefilters/greyscale.htm

+++++

[Baldrick]

Virtualdub! https://forum.videohelp.com/post1765259.html?highlight=virtualdub%20grayscale#1765259

[grandsire02]

Have downloaded Virtualdub but the help section doesn't have any operating instructions (which as a newbie I definitely need!). Any further guidance will be appreciated.

[grandsire02]

Sorry, please ignore my last posting - I didn't read the link properly!

[grandsire02]

I have now converted a couple of clips from colour to b&w form using Virtualdub 1.7.6, and using the settings advised in Post 176259 referred to earlier. The only problem is that the resutling output files are MEGA-big e.g. an input file of 181MB produced a b&w output file of 32.8GB, and I'm now nearly out of HD space! What's gone wrong?

[t0nee1]

Open file in VD,use the instructions as before,in the VIDEO setting check compression and use a xvid or Divx codec ,but they must first be installed of course..If their not installed you'll get the 32.8G output size ,cuz you picked uncompressed and saved....

[Cornucopia]

Any bitrate or "quality" savings you might think you're getting by encoding ONLY B&W are more than offset by the fact that your RE-encoding an already-compressed file.

Wouldn't it be simpler to just (temporarily) turn down the color/chroma on your monitor/TVset when you watch those clips? (From what I know of colorization, they would NOT have messed with the luminance.)

Scott