How to restore old VCD to high definition

[rainman7]

Hi everyone,

I am new here and need some help on restoring an old vcd,
I have an old movie that were made back in 1996 and it means a lot to me, it is in vcd format
I recently watched it again on my laptop and I realize I can't even see people's faces clearly anymore
Just wondering if there is any method out there to convert this vcd into high definition video
Hoping there would be a free software that I can use maybe
I am not professional, just a college kid, so I wouldn't be able to afford expensive method to restore the file
Any suggestions would be really appreciated, thanks in advance

[Baldrick]

No.

[Cornucopia]

?? Can't see the faces clearly anymore?

When you last saw it clearly, were they in VCD format then? If so, is the disc still playable as a VCD? Then there shouldn't be any loss.
If it isn't playable, maybe the disc has gotten scratched up to the point of many errors, in which case it may be lost for good (Try ISOBuster, etc).
WHen you say it's in VCD format, explain what you think that means - is it actually ON the VCD disc still? How are you playing that, and through what display? More info please.

AFA making it HD rez, forget it. There's no HD to restore. Even if you had a pristine original VCD, that's 352x240, while HD is 1920x1080, or almost 25x the resolution!! You can't just make that up out of nothing. At best, you'd be using some smart interpolation resize algorithm. But there's not enough bits in between the made-up bits to give you anything but fuzzy images and/or artifacts. Best to stick with VCD resolution and let the TV scale it, as it's a waste of your time otherwise.

Scott

[zoobie]

a turd to Hors D'oeuvre

[rainman7]

Hey Scott, thanks for the detailed reply, sorry for the lack of info,
The disc is a VCD, and it is still playable, I look it up and the file itself is a DAT file.
I am just watching it on my laptop using media player classic after installing a codec pack
Would different video player makes a difference?

[Cornucopia]

.DAT is the VCD name for the pointer to the MPEG video stream/track. To correctly extract/rip the track from disc to HardDrive, use ISOBuster, VCDGear or VCDEasy, as any of these 3 support VCD's Mode2Form2Tracks (which is how a VCD MPEG track is stored) and they have procedures for removing the M2F2 headers correctly.

The result will be a clean MPG1 file (*.MPG).
Mpeg1 is nearly UNIVERSAL in that you shouldn't need to ever add MPEG1 codecs to ANY Windows install - they are installed with EVERY version of Windows from W95 onward.

Different players MAY make use of different versions of MPG1 codec, so there could be quality differences. However, NONE should be so bad that you can't see faces anymore. Plus, not counting the aforementioned possibility of the disc going bad (which it sounds like it isn't) or the player/codec/display being sub-optimal, the quality won't be getting WORSE than it started out. A digital copy SHOULD be bit-identical.

Which MIGHT lead one to want to try a different player, or codec, or display. BTW, does your laptop have a real high-rez display setting? And are you watching it full-screen? If so, try setting your display to 640x480 first (or output to a lower-rez CRT) and then watch. You might be surprised.

Scott

[AlanHK]

The disc is a VCD, and it is still playable, I look it up and the file itself is a DAT file.

First, best to extract the MPEG1 file from the VCD, rather than just doing a file copy as a DAT.

Use VCDGear, for example.


Then, you can try some filters to upscale the video.
This may be slow, but it gives a better result than upscaling on the fly.

It won't give you the magical "CSI zoom and enhance" though.

I've used an Avisynth script like the following to do this (on a particularly crummy source), but you'd have to spend some time to get up to speed on this.

DirectShowSource("018.mpg")
# MPEG1 4:3 29.97 fps 352x240 MP2
ConvertToYV12()
SSRC(48000,false)
Telecide().Decimate(5)

#reduce chroma bleed
fft3dfilter(sigma=10.0,plane=3,degrid=1, dehalo=10.0) 

#Enlarge and sharpen
LSFmod(strength=180, dest_x=688, dest_y=448, defaults="fast")
AddBorders(16,16,16,16)

You can then reencode using this as a source. The size I used here, 720x480, is what I need for MPEG2 DVD. You could make AVI or MKV with whatever size you wanted.