Desperate plea for help unblurring video

[Loni]

I have an older video camera that uses a hard drive, pre-HD. I shot video of an important event the other night. Someone stepped in front of the camera and without turning it off, I used the hand crank on the tripod to raise the camera above their head. From there on (about 30 minutes) the entire video is consistently blurry. Is there anything I can do to un-blur it?? This video was not for my personal use - I am letting a number of people down. PLEASE HELP ME!

[JVRaines]

There are a number of sharpening filters in Avisynth. It would be a trial-and-error effort and lens focus problems can be hard to fix.

[johnmeyer]

If it is out of focus, there is nothing you can do. Even NASA couldn't fix the out of focus Hubble telescope, and had to send up astronauts to fix the optics.

[Loni]

Thank you both for your response. Very disappointed indeed. But I appreciate the humor, johnmeyer. Before I give up on this, I thought I'd upload a screenshot of the paused video to see if HOW blurry it was would make any difference. Granted, it is a motion shot, but parts of the background are stationary. We were hoping to use pieces of this video on a website and Facebook page. Thank you again for your input.

[poisondeathray]

It would be more helpful to post an actual video sample.

If your video is not HD, the screenshot suddenly became larger than SD ? So how was it scaled ? The method of scaling affects the sharpness or bluriness

Also how was it processed in terms of deinterlacing - for example, if you blend deinterlace it will become more blurry

You said it was on a tripod, but was there constant camera motion ? The reason I'm asking is there are 2 general categories of deconvolution filters, one is for out of focus, one is for directional motion blur. The latter can usually be improved on more than the former. (But don't get your hopes up - real life is nothing like CSI the TV show)

[Loni]

Sorry for the delay... you don't want to know... The video camera was a really good 800.00 Sony Hard Disk Drive one at the time (2005/2006), but High Definition cameras were thousands of dollars back then, if there even were any around then for the consumer. This is just a copy of the raw video burned to a DVD, through a Sony accessory made for the camera series. The video plays the same when attached to the PC, straight from the camera. I did no editing to the video at all, except to make this clip (which also converted the mpeg to avi). The tripod was stationary, I did do some panning, but there is no difference in video quality when I panned, or when my hands were off the camera completely (as was the case just before the board break). Thanks!

[poisondeathray]

The problem is this has been incorrectly processed and letterboxed, encoded using DivX compression. The fields are damaged

Do you have the original, original clip? Because this isn't from the camera directly

If you have the original, original MPEG clip from the camera, you can use mpg2cut2 to cut a section without altering the characteristics
https://www.videohelp.com/software/Mpg2Cut2

[Loni]

That clip was over the filesize limit for this forum, so I am uploading a smaller one that is within the limits but exhibits the same problem. Takes a long time to upload (only at 7% now). My apologies.

[Loni]

I copied the file from the camera to my hard drive (for fear I'd damage the original!), then used your suggested app (Mpg2Cut2) to create this clip. Can't thank you enough. This app is much better than the other one I scrambled for to create the first clip. The other, long clip uploading directly from the camera is still uploading. I will leave it alone in case what I have done (copying file to computer first) could have negated the results.

[Loni]

The clip I posted before was from a 1GB file (over limit), so this is a different one, being uploaded directly from the camera connected to the computer, but the problem is the same.

[ajk]

@Loni

There is something funky going on with the video, it's not (just) out of focus. The entire image has a vertical wobble to it. I have attached a de-interlaced and slowed down clip, which demonstrates the effect.

Can't really imagine any way to truly fix this, but perhaps some improvements can be made. The audio, at least, is good so maybe a passable video could come out of it for web viewing.

Would be interesting to know what actually caused the problem, so you won't run into it in the future. Maybe the camcorder has some kind of image stabilization feature that went crazy? The effect reminds me of how video shot on motorbikes etc. using rolling shutter cameras looks, but obviously there should be no shaking going on with a stationary tripod...

[Loni]

THANK YOU for taking the time to do that! After uploading the videos, I held my breath and shot some more video to see if I killed the video camera. I did. It was recording when I cranked it up on the tripod, I'm thinking I permanently damaged the hard drive. I don't think I can take another blow tonight, so I will test recording to a memory card tomorrow. The hard drive records 9 hours of video. I have a whopping 2GB memory card for it. So depressed... Thank you all so much for the help, input, and incredibly fast responses!

[smrpix]

It's a well-known issue with Sony cameras from that era. The image stabilization overheats and produces this jittery image. there's nothing you can do about it on the production side. Even turning off stabilization doesn't help.

You didn't kill it, but it's dead.

As for making tests, the camera may work fine for half an hour and then it will kick in. Or it might be 10 minutes. It will happen. All of the cameras this happens to are long out of warranty. Time to replace it.

[ajk]

@Loni

I tried a quick fix using AviSynth, can't get rid of the jello effect but at least the image wouldn't be quite as twitchy. Maybe with audio a video like this would be better than nothing, up to you of course.

It might be possible to reduce the waviness further, but it'd require some pretty involved work and double exposure look would still remain.

[Loni]

Good to know - thanks for your input. I can't help but believe that it wasn't the cranking up while recording that did it (final straw?), even though it may have been doomed and long overdue. I have health issues, no insurance, can't afford a doctor's visit, and can no longer work. My only income is from selling my personal belongings. It's a struggle week to week just to buy food and pay cut-to-the-bone bills, and I often have to skip meals to do so. My heat and AC have been off for a year (in Florida). My car and home are falling down around me. No way I can afford a new camera, even a used eBay bargain. At least a video camera isn't a necessity. I just feel horrid for letting everyone down. I will try to focus on being grateful that I still have a roof over my head and it doesn't leak... for now. Thanks again everyone. You have no idea how much I appreciate everyone's help and input.

[johnmeyer]

OK, there is nothing wrong with the focus. However, it sure doesn't look like video that came directly from the camera. What is the exact model number of the camera? Knowing that, I can check for issues that might cause these field problems.

If someone gave me this video, without telling me it came direct from the camera, I would say that it looks like a 2nd or 3rd generation video that had been badly converted, either from one frame rate to another, or one resolution to another, or both.

Didée's old script in the doom9.org forum addresses the problem I think you have. It doesn't make it look any sharper, but it completely eliminates the field warmping. The result looks better, although it is now progressive.

Deblending again, need some help

[Loni]

Yeah, M2U00946.MPG was uploaded directly from the camera. It's a Sony DCR-SR300. Wow Doom9.org. That's one I haven't heard of in like 10 years!! You guys are really something trying to help me out so much!!