Hi all,
A couple of weeks back I started bouncing around the forum in the various topics asking for advice on my first attempt at a restoration. Thank you to everyone who offered advice and experienced insight.
If anyone would care to take a gander...here are 2 links...
The first one offers some split screen before and after shots of the project:
https://youtu.be/7T2GDJNCVK4
The second one is a link to the completed film (and also generically explains what I did):
https://youtu.be/vvrUyt0MEG4
Constructive criticism is always welcomed. This was my first attempt at such a project, and I look forward to learning more and discovering new challenges ahead.
Thanks again!
--Joey
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Your results look extremely good. I have nothing to suggest. Were you using some of VideoFred's AVISynth scripts, or did you use something completely different? I was particularly impressed by the amount of detail you were able to coax out of the old film.
Last edited by johnmeyer; 26th May 2020 at 12:47. Reason: typo
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Thanks, John....
I did not use any scripts in particular. I used Hybrid to do the deinterlacing (Vapoursynth), and then used the Avisynth section within Hybrid to stabilize, degrain, and adjust the brightness and contrast. I just kinda played with all the parameters until I got something I liked. A lot of trial and error.
I didn't know how much of an effort in futility this would be, since my source was a (seemingly) crappily prepared DVD. Glad you liked he results.
Joe -
Why did it need deinterlacing? Do you have a sample from the source DVD?
Why 50fps? The frame interpolation looks godawful horrible. Every interpolated frame during movement shows blending. You didn't notice that?
I'd have slowed it to film speed so the video would be at the correct speed and audio at the correct pitch. -
manono,
You had me until you mentioned the audio track. At that point, I knew not to take you too seriously. The audio was rendered completely independent of the video and audio is my specialty. It's speed and pitch are perfect. -
Perhaps I am getting defensive too harshly (in spite of that bogus audio claim)....
I asked for constructive critical analysis, and I meant it. It's the only way to learn.
Here are 6 frames from the final rendering in a shot that has more movement than anywhere else in the film. Which are the interpolated ones, and where is the blending?
Thanks!
[Attachment 53527 - Click to enlarge]
[Attachment 53528 - Click to enlarge]
[Attachment 53529 - Click to enlarge]
[Attachment 53530 - Click to enlarge]
[Attachment 53531 - Click to enlarge]
[Attachment 53532 - Click to enlarge] -
It depends on what you mean by "perfect." What manono was referring to is that film was shot at 24 fps. For PAL countries, the way film is shown is to simply speed it up slightly to 25 fps, and let the audio pitch go up slightly (some producers do the pitch adjustment, now that this can be done easily). If your DVD was a 25 fps PAL DVD, or if it went through the process of being 25 fps, then the pitch on the DVD, compared to the audio on the original film, would be wrong and, if you actually didn't do anything to correct that pitch, it would not be the same as the original film, and therefore would not be "perfect."
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I corrected the pitch/speed....it was a tad sharp. Which makes sense as per your description, John.
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It's 25fps. How can it be perfect? And how do you know it's pitch corrected? They almost always aren't.
However, I owe you an apology about the interpolation accusation. Apparently, I was only looking at the source. Picture below. But why is it like that? How was it 'deinterlaced'? Do you know? Do you have a sample from the original DVD?
I was also surprised at the gain in clarity and sharpness. Now I think the source was made significantly worse so, in comparison, the restoration looks better.Last edited by manono; 26th May 2020 at 16:20.
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Thanks, manono...
I deinterlaced it in Hybrid using Vaporsynth / QTGMC, Top field first.
As for the pitch being perfect....I went by the music in the opening and closing credits.
It was just a tad sharp and I corrected the entire audio track accordingly. Music doesn't lie!
However...if the musicians were out of tune when they recorded it originally....well, at that point I would have to give up! -
QTGMC doesn't create blends like that unless you have a field-blended conversion. Which you don't. In the 480p version, all "Original DVD" frames are blended. What I suspect is that you have a field-shifted source which can be fixed with a simple TFM. Instead you bobbed it? But, for the third time, something cut from the source - perhaps the guy on his bike for a few seconds - will tell the tale.
Also, the whites are often blown out. Even the blacks are crushed in places, especially during the fades and the black columns on the sides (why add the black columns?). If you were to put on:
ColorYUV(Analyze=True).Limiter(Show="Luma")
You'd get something like the below picture (green marks blown out whites, red the crushed blacks). Apparently, you added the black bars before messing with the brightness and contrast. The text doesn't much matter. -
I find that interesting. Do you have perfect pitch? Did you use a pitch pipe or a perfectly tuned instrument to tell? How do you know you got it right?
The reason I ask is that one can adjust the pitch by a ratio of 24/25 down when you have a PAL source and want to convert it to film. PAL audio is roughly 4% higher, or roughly a semitone too high. And WAV editors or such programs as BeSweet or eac3to can fix those things quite easily. -
I can answer some of the questions. For pitch, if there is music, you can assume the conductor tuned the orchestra and you can correct your pitch based on comparing the notes on the soundtrack to reference tones. It's pretty easy to do because the 25/24, while close to a semitone, is not going to produce notes that are perfectly "on-key."
As for motion interpolation, after manono made that comment I went back and looked. I can state with absolute certainty that no motion interpolation was used. How can I say that? Because a horizontal pan across a picket fence is the most difficult torture test there is for testing motion interpolation. Those vertical members will break and warp no matter what algorithms you use, and no matter what tuning you use. I saw zero morphing or distortions.
The real problem is the blending that was in the original but, if you look at the OP's "after", his software did a rather brilliant job of extracting some semblance of the original un-blended frame. Very cool stuff, IMHO. -
I did not Bob it. I selected "Even," and de-selected Bob....
If you can recommend a piece of software that will cut the VOB file in that spot, I will post tomorrow.
I did not add the black columns....I simply rendered the frames within a 1920x1080 format. I don't have any specific reason why I did that...perhaps I thought it would just be more YouTube firendly that way.But I agree...I could not get the Blacks and Whites to my satisfaction with my limited knowledge.
No - the Brightness and Contrast were done before I even messed with interpolation or uprezing the frames...as was suggested here on this forum a few weeks ago.
Yes, I do. But as I mentioned previously...the audio realm is my field of expertise, and it is very easy to "tune" a musical recording to where it should be. If you compare the opening music from mine to an unrestored version on YouTube, you will hear a "wobble" a few bars in (they clearly had the same print). I was able to fix that quite easily, where a few years ago that would be impossible. Right tools for the right job...
Ugh...those are bogus pieces of software, IMO. I use Sound Forge as my WAV editor, and Pro Tools, and/or Sonar Professional (depending on the project) for recording along with the Mercury VST Bundle from Waves.
I used DAIN for that. I'm glad you think it did a good job!Last edited by Joey Bagodonuts; 26th May 2020 at 17:58.
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Take a look at my first picture. Look in front of the bike. You'll see the fence is dissolved into a blur. Something was done to it. Was it just QTGMC? Maybe it was in the source? But the fence is broken in lots of places. I'll include a pic.
It's pretty easy to do because the 25/24, while close to a semitone, is not going to produce notes that are perfectly "on-key."
The real problem is the blending that was in the original... -
Open the 'picket fence' VOB in DGIndex. Scroll to the bike rider and use the [ and ] buttons to isolate 10 seconds or less. Then File->Save project and demux video. Please make the resulting M2V video file available.
With your perfect pitch, can you tell if pitch corrected audio I've created from PAL sources might be accurate or not? -
[QUOTE=manono;2584582] If there is clearly audible music in it...then yes I can
And I will post the bicycle shot tommorow....
That is interesting...because if you look at the frames I posted above those artifacts (the blending) are not present. Maybe I botched the encoding?Last edited by Joey Bagodonuts; 26th May 2020 at 18:56.
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The 2 pics I took aren't any of the frame pictures you included. But those aren't blends in that first pic. Blurring, I think. Maybe YouTube's reencoding of the restoration demo did it.
Okay, I'll link first to a song video in one of my channels. The second link will be to a PAL version similar to what I started with. Although it was an NTSC DVD I worked on, it was made from a PAL master and the 'effective' framerate of that NTSC DVD was 25fps. So, the song went from its original 24fps film speed to PAL's 25fps, and in my upload back to 23.976fps.
https://youtu.be/9mQFiQYLpBk
https://youtu.be/cQjXKdyp_wM
Mine was really made at 23.976fps but I doubt you can tell the difference between 23.976fps and 24fps. Can you? -
OK - well....in both videos the music is in between B and C.
I HAVE to assume that the intended original key, especially based on the instrumentation, is C.
The 1st of the 2 clips is considerably more flat (ie: slower) than the first clip. I'd say by about 1/2 of a semitone (ie: a quarter-tone).
I would hazard a guess based on these clips then that they are BOTH running slow, but the 2nd one is closer to where it needs to be. -
You say slow but the 2nd one is 25fps and the first one runs at film speed. So, you're not using 'slow' to mean film speed, but the audio?
The first one is a quarter-tone flat and the second one also flat, but less so?
Okay, thanks for looking. Back onto the subject. Personally, I see no need to interpolate to 50fps. This is a restoration, or it's claimed to be. Now, if you're only experimenting with what the software can do, that's one thing. Then it might be labeled an experiment and not a restoration. That's how one learns - by experimentation and reading how others have approached the same thing. Good.
I think your software must work in RGB but it wasn't brought back to YV12 properly. That might explain the illegal values for the blacks and whites. But that's more pdr's and jagabo's specialty, I think. Not mine as all my work is done in AviSynth and, except when capturing VHS tapes, all in YV12. -
I download an MP3 audio version of the two video clips. I then stretched one to match the other. The stretch ratio for 25/24 is 1.041666667. The stretch ratio to make the two audio tracks match is 1.049377865. These two do not match exactly. Since I am not an expert in film to PAL conversions, I don't know what else might have been done. So this may not have been done by simply speeding up the film version. (BTW, even adding a 1000/1001 correction doesn't make the two numbers agree.
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That won't work. I didn't get mine from the other one and then work on it. Mine has a higher framecount than the other one so stretching to make the lengths match isn't the way to go. Notice that I let the applause go on longer than the other one did. I may have started a frame or two earlier as well, not sure.
But, the two sound very different to me, besides the other one playing noticeably faster. The other one sounds noticeably higher pitched to me. And I don't have perfect pitch and am in no way a musician. -
I didn't stretch them until the lengths matched because that is the wrong way to do the job. Instead, I lined up the waveforms at the start, and then stretched the faster one until the waveforms matched. Since there are edited slightly differently, the waveforms diverge at a few points, which is another reason stretching until the lengths match won't work. However, as long as I have a long enough section to line up, it is actually quite a precise way to figure out the exact degree of speed up/slow down.
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I strongly disagree....this is 1931 we are talking about, not 1831. And my studies of the early film composers would not support that proclamation when speaking of AMERICAN films.
By the 1920s, A440 was the standard in America. So unless you are looking to distinctively be different for whatever odd artistic purpose, it was 440. Especially when an equal temperament instrument is playing in the arrangement...ie: a piano...as the soundtrack in this movie had.
These movies were made cheaply and quickly, and music at that time was the last thing they were thinking about. There is no reason to think that anyone would put that kind of effort into writing and recording music at A432 or something similar.Last edited by Joey Bagodonuts; 27th May 2020 at 07:49.
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I am saying they are flat....should not have used the term "slow." But, as you know in the analog world, that would be synonymous if it was originally recorded at the proper tuning (I see no reason why it wouldn't be, and there is no logical reason to assume otherwise). If you adjusted the audio track to match the proper frame rate and speed of the film, then the pitch to speed ratio you used was a little off.
Generally speaking, yes. At this point we are nearing microtuning. They both lie between B and C (a semitone apart), but one of them is closer to B and the other is closer to C...if that makes any sense.
I would be EXTREMELY surprised if the original key was B, given the instrumentation of the music, the type of music it is, and the rarity of such music being in a difficult performance key for those particular instruments. I'd put hard money on the proper pitch of the track being in C. -
Finally...here are the 2 frames that resemble most closely the frame that monono referenced above with that funky picket fence issue. I don't see the same from the individual frames here...so I either botched up the final render, or it's a YouTube thing....
[Attachment 53539 - Click to enlarge]
[Attachment 53540 - Click to enlarge] -
The original is 25p content; it's just "out of phase" . You can use TFM to match the fields .
It looks like the "original" comparison on YT used frame blending for the 25p=>50p conversion (ConvertFPS in avsiynth would cause blending, ChangeFPS would use duplicates; or the "default" setting in most NLE's would be frame blending too) . But likely that's what the problem is on youtube with the "original" side
Those two are from the "original" frames . The frame inbetween those two should have those interpolation (edge morphing artifact) errors.
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