adding color to a black & white video/film

[monks19]

Hi, i'm looking for a good PC software (of codecs) to help to color a black & white film in color. i already tried photoshop cs3/cs4, but the process is too slow and not effective, mostly beacause it's only image by image process without automatisation to help to boost it wiht the time.

thanks to help me.

[hech54]

Be prepared to be laughed off of the planet with that question.

[johns0]

If you can wait 10 years till software and hardware can do this process with a consumer computer then it wont be that tough to do,if you wanna do it now then .

[guns1inger]

It is not an insane request, and not the first (or last) time this question has been asked.

This is probably our best discussion on the topic, and if you read through to the end you will find links to software that can do this. However is not cheap, and I am still not convinced that is is worth the money - https://forum.videohelp.com/topic329345.html?highlight=legend

The other process discussed is Legend Film's proprietary process which is actually not bad on good source material, although it isn't as convincing on poor, washed out source.

There is no simple way for consumers to do this type of work. There are plugins for photoshop that do a pretty good job, but this brings you back to frame by frame work again, even if you use the extended features of CS4.

The other common suggestion is simply tint instead, which was a process used in the early 1900's, whereby scenes were given full screen tints to suggest mood. This can easily be done in virtualdub with Colormill.

[Supreme2k]

guns1inger, the "laugh" part was probably due to an (apparent) noob asking. Also, this:

If you can wait 10 years till software and hardware can do this process with a consumer computer then it wont be that tough to do,if you wanna do it now then .

[manono]

This can easily be done in virtualdub with Colormill.

Or in AviSynth. When a DVD has hopelessly blown-out whites, I will frequently tint it to make it look more decent:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Hp4Wy1ulaM

But I don't guess tinting is quite what monks19 had in mind.

[monks19]

no, what i want to do is replicate the color done by the technicolor process for the silent film the phantom of the opera (1925) for other scenes. that's what i'm looking for.

any other (intelligent) suggestions ?

[manono]

But only one of two 2-strip technicolor scenes survive. That's what you want to do for the entire movie? I don't think there's any way for ordinary folks like us to be able to do that. There was also quite a lot of tinting and a bit of hand painting. Here are some shots from the 1929 reissue mostly, pics you're probably familiar with but which others might not be:

http://www.dvdbeaver.com/film/DVDReviews16/phantom_of_the_opera_DVD_review.htm

[monks19]

yes i know about that, i don't want to do this for the entire movie, but just the scenes filmed in tecnicolor and hand painted that didn't survive, since the photoplay/milestone is all f***d up by a bad transfer, all the scenes that survived and were hand painted or filmed in technicolor were not restored/recreated (most of them survived in black & white but color refferences still exists today), and since two versions survived of the film (with different editing and supplemental scenes), the real 1925 that survived only in 16 mm could have been easily restored with other/better scenes and and most of it's original color array )technicolor, tinting, hand painting...).

that's what i want to do, recreating the technicolor and hand paintint scenes. so my question is still active: does any software, codecs or combinaison of softwares (ex.: with photoshop) can han help me to do the job ? i know it's a really tedious one, but still...

thanks to answer

[guns1inger]

Aside from this : http://www.fdshows.com/film-colorization.html rather expensive suite, you have to do it by hand. In which case CS4 Extended and one of the still colourisation plugins is your cheapest option. It is simply not a service available to us mortals at a reasonable cost.

[johns0]

I did a rough calculation and it will take you around 6 months to restore 7 minutes of film handpainting each frame,thats giving you 30 minutes for each frame to work with.

[guns1inger]

The only other suggestion I can make, because you have specifically said you want to re-create the technicolor 2 strip process, would be to experiment with using multiple copies of the clip, trying different tints and different overlay methods in avisynth to see if you can get something that works.

This might help get you started : http://www.digitalartform.com/archives/2009/03/technicolor_2-s.html

However you have a fundamental issue form the outset, which is you don't have the right information on your source material.

The so-called two strip process used a red and green filters on the incoming image to record two images per frame. These were then projected back through two lens with appropriate red and green filters that aligned on the screen. What is important about this ? What you have is one image that is, although black and white, missing the red tones, and one missing the green.

What you have is a black and white source image that has all tones intact. This makes mixing to a colour output very difficult.

[manono]

...since the photoplay/milestone is all f***d up by a bad transfer

Among your other problems, if Photoplay was involved then it's almost certainly a bad PAL2NTSC field-blended conversion. Your first step, in my opinion, would be to unblend it. Here's where AviSynth comes in, as it's the only software in existence capable of unblending it. If you'd like to upload a small clip - 10 seconds or so showing movement - you could receive advice about how to unblend it to its native framerate (which may or may not be 24fps).

As mentioned earlier, the tinting can also be accomplished fairly easily in AviSynth. I have no idea how you'll re-create the handpainted parts and the 2-color technicolor parts without having to do them frame-by-frame in something like Photoshop.

[monks19]

Aside from this : http://www.fdshows.com/film-colorization.html rather expensive suite, you have to do it by hand. In which case CS4 Extended and one of the still colourisation plugins is your cheapest option. It is simply not a service available to us mortals at a reasonable cost.

is there any trial version of this ? i would like to give it a shot

Among your other problems, if Photoplay was involved then it's almost certainly a bad PAL2NTSC field-blended conversion. Your first step, in my opinion, would be to unblend it. Here's where AviSynth comes in, as it's the only software in existence capable of unblending it. If you'd like to upload a small clip - 10 seconds or so showing movement - you could receive advice about how to unblend it to its native framerate (which may or may not be 24fps).

i'm new to avisynth, i've never use it. maybe you can show me, manono, i'll post a clip on the photoplay version, but again, it's not just this version i want to do.

by the way, any "guides for dummys" about avisynth ? because i installed it on my PC bu i can't open it, unless maybe i have to open it with anoter software ?

thanks for the help, guys, keep going

[redwudz]

AVISynth? Start here: http://avisynth.org/mediawiki/Main_Page

AVISynth is a 'command line' program, but there are plenty of programs or GUIs that can use it.

[manono]

Yeah, you create text files which can be opened in most encoders and players just as you'd open a regular video. It frameserves the video into the encoder. It is also used to filter the source in many different ways. If you can learn it for this project, what you learn can be applied to any other movie restoration projects later on.

With a sample of your source I, and many other people around here, can show you how to filter (unblend, tint, clean up, etc.) your movie. AviSynth does have a learning curve, though. But I've seen a number of the Photoplay/Milestone DVD releases and as I said, they're always blended garbage. I read a claim by Milestone Film's Denis Doros once that this was the only way to do the conversion, which is just utter nonsense.

[guns1inger]

Aside from this : http://www.fdshows.com/film-colorization.html rather expensive suite, you have to do it by hand. In which case CS4 Extended and one of the still colourisation plugins is your cheapest option. It is simply not a service available to us mortals at a reasonable cost.

is there any trial version of this ? i would like to give it a shot

Go to the site and have a look. From what I could see, unless you were serious about handing over your 4500 Euros, they weren't that interested in talking to you. If you have a look at the online brochure, it also still appears to be a pretty manual process.

There is no software out there, anywhere, that has a magic "Make Colour" button. I have a couple of Legend's DVD, and one of them has a doco on the colouring process. It is prett= manually intensive, starting with a careful restoration of the source before any colourising begins.

[monks19]

Hi manono and all, here's a sample of one of the milestone "garbage". it's in a winrar file. keep me informed.

link: http://www.megaupload.com/?d=YHI24670

(it's a mpg file)

[guns1inger]

Hi manono and all, here's a sample of one of the milestone "garbage". it's in a winrar file. keep me informed.

link: http://www.megaupload.com/?d=YHI24670

(it's a mpg file)

From MegaUpload - "Unfortunately the link you have click is not available"

[johns0]

Hi manono and all, here's a sample of one of the milestone "garbage". it's in a winrar file. keep me informed.

link: http://www.megaupload.com/?d=YHI24670

(it's a mpg file)

From MegaUpload - "Unfortunately the link you have click is not available"

Link worked for me and i downloaded the file,nice colorization,lots of red though.

[manono]

Yeah, I got it OK also. It looks to me like it was created by idiots. If I were you, I'd search for a PAL DVD of this film, but even that may be no good if the blending is in the PAL source, as implied by one of these reviews:

There's a visual drawback to this otherwise splendid transfer, in that for all the action, frames are badly distributed on video. This causes the ballerinas, for instance, to look as if they each have four legs when they dance. As this restoration was done in the UK,I have to think that we're watching a conversion transfer from a PAL master where 24 fps were already redistributed across 25 fps, then re-redistributed back to 30 for NTSC. I've seen the same flaw on things like Criterion's M and it's very frustrating. With sync sound an issue for the disc-makers, it's difficult to make any judgments or point any fingers. I wish I could say I quickly adjusted to the subtle blurring and strobing, but no.

http://www.dvdtalk.com/dvdsavant/s966phan.html

Only one objectionable element pokes us in the eye. The transfer is rife with motion-blur. Right from the beginning, dancing ballerinas' legs cloud to transparency, and even a character turning his head or opening a door creates a distinct blurring effect. It's certainly not a showstopper (other viewers will undoubtedly be less forgiving), but it is at least a distraction. This being a restoration mastered in the U.K., I at first presumed that the blurring points to a frame-rate problem common in PAL-to-NTSC conversions. However, another explanation comes from a first-hand source, Dennis Doros of Milestone Films. Over at hometheaterforum.com, Doros is quoted to report that the blurring has nothing to do with PAL or the restoration process. Photoplay did their frames-per-second speed corrections for this transfer some years ago, when it was accomplished via tape-to-tape after the conversion from film. This is what caused the motion blur. With today's transfer equipment, the blurring would not occur. For Milestone it posed a tradeoff between the blurring and the superior restoration work Photoplay had accomplished.

http://www.dvdjournal.com/reviews/p/phantomoftheopera_ue.shtml

Bear in mind that there are some frame rate issues that render some of the sequences (the opening ballet performance) a bit blurry,

http://www.digitallyobsessed.com/displaylegacy.php?ID=5232

It has what might appear to be ghosting but I can only assume this has to do with frame rate conversion.

http://www.dvdbeaver.com/film/DVDReviews16/phantom_of_the_opera_DVD_review.htm

Here's one that (wrongly) attributes the problems to the digital cleanup:

However, there is plenty of evidence of the use of computer-aided digital clean-up of the video transfer, which is intended to remove dust, speckling and emulsion scratches from the transfer by digitally comparing a frame with dust or damage to patch the areas of the image that are different from preceding and following frames. The indiscriminate over-use of the digital process here results in the optical removal of arms, legs and other swiftly moving objects from frame to frame, the featureless blurring of moderately moving objects, and image strobing in slower moving objects. The effect is so pronounced in the transfer of the 1929 version on this disc that it negatively distracts the viewer with its odd and unnatural replication of movement. It is not known to us whether this digital retouching was introduced by Photoplay Productions, the producers of this video edition, or by Milestone Film & Video, the American publishers of this DVD. The horrid digital artifacts produced by this process severely compromises a home video edition that promised in advance to live up to its packaging touting it as “The Ultimate Edition.”

http://www.silentera.com/DVD/phantomoftheOperaDVD.html

And a zinger that pulls no punches:

The Milestone R1 DVD, however, is beset by problems that make it unwatchable. Various factors (Milestone engineers give people double-talk about the reasons) resulted in two dire problems. [1] it runs slower, not normally a problem when dealing with silent films, but the synchronized Davis score also runs slow and is therefore a semitone *low*! Generally PAL-to-NTSC transfers run a semitone *high* so I am at a loss to explain this particular aberration. [2] Even worse, the transfer introduces motion blur: any movement has a multi-ghosting appearance, and even still frames are blurred. No other transfer has this ghastly problem. It is shocking that Milestone thought something so awful was acceptable.

http://www.sexgoremutants.co.uk/phantselet.html

Maybe you've seen those reviews. You can't help but notice the "blurring" when watching the movie. It's all over that sample. Unfortunately, this one is worse - much worse - than are the other Milestone DVDs made from European restorations in that the blending can't be undone, or can only be partially undone. Ordinarily it's the fields that are blended. In each pair of fields one might be blended and the other unblended one can be used to recreate a "clean" frame. Here the damned thing was deinterlaced and the whole frame is blended - both fields blended equally - and this kind of damage can't be entirely undone.

To make the conversion from the PAL source it was first slowed to from PAL's 25fps to 24fps. I'm fairly certain about that, and if correct that would explain the low pitched audio as mentioned by the last review linked because they would have had to slow the audio as well, to keep it in synch. Then a duplicate frame was added after every 4th frame to bring it up to 30fps (29.97fps) (instead of the normal 3:2 pulldown being applied). Then it was encoded as progressive CBR using a bitrate of 4200. Whenever there's movement the picture breaks up into blocks. This thing is a real disaster. I remember watching it once on TCM and noticing the 4-armed and 4-legged ballerinas and just shaking my head. I remember thinking I wanted no part of it. Now that I've seen a sample, I'm glad I didn't buy it or even rent it from NetFlix. I suggest you back away from it as well.

[liquid217]

You might check this out. Post #10 has some interesting software you can play around with:
http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?t=91344

It appears to be open source, so some adventurous person could adapt it as a virtualdub or avisynth plugin. The color mask could be difficult to produce for video though (every frame would have to have a color markup).

[kashif khan]

i did some black and white clips to colorize through adobe after effects this is my link

https://vimeo.com/112181789