Is there any software out there that automatically converts Black and White

[R.STEED]

video to colour? I've noticed that someone has uploaded a video of The Beatles playing in The Cavern in 1962 in colour https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ay-_skt-bh8 but it doesn't look very professional or real looking.
I mean, I heard somewhere that different shades of grey(ooh how kinky am I?!!) correspond to different colours and a good example of this can be seen in that colour converted footage of the second world war in 'WWII IN COLOUR' thats been shown on the BBC and 'WW1 in Colour' too.
Is there software that can do this kind of processing now?
Regards,
Richard Steed

[manono]

Is there software that can do this kind of processing now?

https://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?t=173364

Personally, I think those colorized war documentaries are an abomination. They claim they're in color, as if technicolor film stock was available in 1914, which is a lie. The term is 'colorized'. Restoration is one thing; falsely stating they're in color quite another. I was very disappointed in the BBC, which should know better.

[DB83]

Well I did not watch this series - my memories are of the 1965 series 'The Great War' which cries out for an affordable dvd release - but in fairness to the BBC the commentary does say 'due to computer technology' (via just watching one episode on yt).

Even so, I have gone on record in this forum that I despise Colorization even when it is well done.

[R.STEED]

No mate. That war footage was genuine colour conversion. I don't know how they converted it but it's true. Every different shade of grey really do have their own colour equivalent.
I did read somewhere that such a conversion program would require very complex algorithms but you would have thought that someone would have created such software by now.

[DB83]

Link to the Beatles ?

Guess you do not mean this one

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ejl-MEKvd90

[R.STEED]

Well I did not watch this series - my memories are of the 1965 series 'The Great War' which cries out for an affordable dvd release - but in fairness to the BBC the commentary does say 'due to computer technology' (via just watching one episode on yt).

Even so, I have gone on record in this forum that I despise Colorization even when it is well done.

If it was computer technology, then what exactly was the technology they used and if it was software, why didn't they say what it is and why doesnt anyone know about it?

[R.STEED]

Link to the Beatles ?

Guess you do not mean this one

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ejl-MEKvd90

No. These ones....... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DnarkbJReFk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ay-_skt-bh8

[DB83]

The technology has existed for years. If you do a 'Google' for 'colorization' you should turn up some artlcles on the technology.

IIRC I read somewhere that it involves a quite complex computer program and a great amount of manual work. Certainly not an automated process.

If you wanted to do something yourself then you need an NLE that supports 'rotoscoping'. And be prepared to 'color' each individual frame.

PS I found that Beatles clip now. 'Re-mastered' Ha !

[R.STEED]

The technology has existed for years. If you do a 'Google' for 'colorization' you should turn up some artlcles on the technology.

IIRC I read somewhere that it involves a quite complex computer program and a great amount of manual work. Certainly not an automated process.

If you wanted to do something yourself then you need an NLE that supports 'rotoscoping'. And be prepared to 'color' each individual frame.

PS I found that Beatles clip now. 'Re-mastered' Ha !

Whats an NLE?

[R.STEED]

There should have been someone out there by now who created a complex professional program that can do it automatically. You would have thought so wouldn't you?

[DB83]

Non Linear Editor. Eg Vegas

[DB83]

You might also wish to read this topic

https://forum.videohelp.com/threads/377167-Colorizing-black-white-movie

which does mention various tools available. If you have the time to use them.

[redwudz]

NLE = Non Linear Editor. From Wikipedia: A non-linear editing system (NLE) is a video (NLVE) or audio editing (NLAE) digital audio workstation (DAW) system that performs non-destructive editing on source material. The name is in contrast to 20th century methods of linear video editing and film editing.

A large improvement over scissors and glue for editing.

[raffriff42]

It's been talked about for a long long time...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colour_recovery

"Colour Recovery Working Group" (last activity 2011)
http://colour-recovery.wikispaces.com/

"The Doctor Who Restoration Team" (1992!)
http://www.impossiblethings.net/restorationteam/colouris.htm

[manono]

It's been talked about for a long long time...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colour_recovery

"Colour Recovery Working Group" (last activity 2011)
http://colour-recovery.wikispaces.com/

"The Doctor Who Restoration Team" (1992!)
http://www.impossiblethings.net/restorationteam/colouris.htm

As near as I can tell each of your links discusses recovering the color from sources originally shot in color. This is different from the OP's question about colorization of black and white sources, in spite of his wild claim that it "was genuine colour conversion" based on the shades of grey somehow holding information about what the colors should be.

[teodz1984]

There should have been someone out there by now who created a complex professional program that can do it automatically. You would have thought so wouldn't you?

Probably not?

[jagabo]

Every different shade of grey really do have their own colour equivalent.

No, they do not. If it was that simple there would be tons of software that does it.

[teodz1984]

Every different shade of grey really do have their own colour equivalent.

A greyscale image, by definition, has much less information than the colour image it was created from (one channel instead of three), and that mapping is not reversible (i.e. there is no way to tell whether a grey square started out red, blue or green).

Depending on the domain, you may be able to use a technique like what https://www.codeproject.com/Articles/31120/Image-Transformation-Grayscale-to-Color links to map particular grey values to a specific colour, but this relies very heavily on what the image represents, and it's unlikely to be easy to automate the process of picking the colour list.

[Bernix]

There are two ways. 1. Dad's army, which was filmed in color but only B&W recording survived. Here is the result. It contains color information even in B&W. But filmed as B&W cant be recover this way. And this is only Real color restoring method. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CjK-b4x9ZmQ
2. There are machine deep learning method. It can make color from B&W footage but quality now isnt best. It is based on many training images. It is good for sky, tree and watter and ground and faces.

Bernix

[Bernix]

You can try to colorize your b&w photo by deep learning here https://colorize.dev.kaisou.misosi.ru/?lang=en

Bernix

[R.STEED]

Every different shade of grey really do have their own colour equivalent.

No, they do not. If it was that simple there would be tons of software that does it.

I have to disagree with you on that. Every part of the grey scale DOES have it's own colour equivalent. Thats why the BBC were able to make a WWII IN COLOUR video series. The reason why there isnt any software out there at the moment is because such software takes extremelly complex programming that hasn't been invented yet. No one has created the right algorithms to do such a job.
Read this, it seems that someone beleives that in a few years such software will have been invented and available. https://petapixel.com/2016/08/15/watch-automatic-colorizing-bot-try-colorize-black-white-video/

[Bernix]

Hi,
you are wrong. Chroma spots are only in colored filmed material. It isnt true that each shade of gray represents specific (r,g,b) color. Check videos I posted.
To restore color of WWII is possible, because color film already exist (so there was chroma in videotape) do not exchange it with color TV, but it existed theoretically also..
Bernix

[R.STEED]

No. You're wrong. Very wrong. Can some back me up on this please? If you read that article from that link you'll see. No one could possibly have spent hours, days months and years manually swapping each shade of grey with a chosen colour to convert wwii footage to get this...https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FeOGgkZidsI
IT IS A FACT GODDAMN IT THAT EVERY SHADE OF GREY DOES REPRESENT A CERTAIN COLOUR. NOW PLEASE P*** OFF AND FACE THE FACTS.
It is a fact. Now go away.

[Bernix]

Calm yourself...
If you are right, so there isnt gray color. You can test it in any picture viewer. Open color image, desaturate it and move HUE. Each desaturate picture will look same.
Actually it was done original colors, then hue shift and desaturate both then. Result is bottom. Check if there are any difference in grayscaled images.

[Attachment 43391 - Click to enlarge]
Do you see the difference ?

Bernix

[andkar]

IT IS A FACT GODDAMN IT THAT EVERY SHADE OF GREY DOES REPRESENT A CERTAIN COLOUR. NOW PLEASE P*** OFF AND FACE THE FACTS.
It is a fact. Now go away.

You're wrong.

Just sayin'.

[Bernix]

There is another proof when using infinite groups. There are smaller infinite groups (gray shades) and bigger infinite groups (r,g,b shades). But my english isn't good to explain it properly. But you can easily undertand it.

[Cornucopia]

I'm not "just" saying.
That is so untrue it is actually insulting that you are trying to present it as a fact.
You don't seem to have a scientific grasp of color theory or human perception or the history of film. Just think about the shift in color sensitivities that occurred in the changeover from ortho to pan-chromatic b&w film - well documented.
Day-for-night. Infrared/UV use. Contrast-enhancing makeup.
Heck, just take any Munsell or other chipchart, convert it to grayscale and then try to bring back the correct hue, or grouping of hues, or trend in hues, and you'll easily see how ridiculous your statement is.
I'd blow off such a remark, but I don't want a bunch of newbies getting seriously sidetracked with altfact lies.

Scott

[R.STEED]

Calm yourself...
If you are right, so there isnt gray color. You can test it in any picture viewer. Open color image, desaturate it and move HUE. Each desaturate picture will look same.
Actually it was done original colors, then hue shift and desaturate both then. Result is bottom. Check if there are any difference in grayscaled images.

[Attachment 43391 - Click to enlarge]
Do you see the difference ?

Bernix

Thats just another way of bringing out the colours.
Like I've said. Why do you think the BBC did WW2 in colour? Becaseu each level of the greyscale has it's colour equivalent. It's now a fact that I'm right. Why try and contradict me on this?

[Bernix]

Because you are not right. In WWII, already existed color film material. And it was colorized. In our country we have colorized fairy tale, it was made by hand. You can use computer now, but colors are false. If you know which color has the see, uniforms, ships, tanks, so it is easily done use transparent color to luma. If you use one color on uniform it will create shade of color that uniform has because of gray shade. But computer cant tell this is this color and this is this color. Shade of grade cant exactly say this is blue, this is red etc. It needed human supervision. The picture I made is original bottom right, Hue shift (different color) bottom left. And the identical picture above is desaturated original and the second desaturated false colors. And they are identical. So it proves, that gray shade pixel are same from different color version.

In 50-60 colored manually

[jagabo]

IT IS A FACT GODDAMN IT THAT EVERY SHADE OF GREY DOES REPRESENT A CERTAIN COLOUR. NOW PLEASE P*** OFF AND FACE THE FACTS.
It is a fact. Now go away.

No, you are wrong. Every color leads to s shade of grey, but many different colors can lead to the same shade of grey. Programs that use the shade of grey also look at the context of the picture. They know thing like the sky is blue, grass is green, sky is more likely to appear at the top of the frame, grass is more likely to appear at the bottom of the frame -- then use that context to pick which colors to apply where. But a particular intensity of blue can lead to the exact same shade of grey as a particular intensity of green.

This can be seen with a simple thought experiment. Consider a white wall, brightly lit to full white at one edge of the screen, with the light dropping off to full black at the other edge of the screen. In between those two edges is every shade of grey. Say a green object maps to some shade of grey. No matter what shade of grey it maps to, it matches one of the shades of grey in the wall. Without context you don't know if a pixel of that grey shade should be grey or green.