Enhancing Old Videos

[MJK1250]

Please forgive an old Boomer with very limited experience in video processing and editing and if I’ve come to the wrong forum I’d be grateful if anyone could send me to a better starting point for my problems and questions.
Apologies for the length of this post but I’m trying to compress a 50 year odyssey into something that might help me to solve a major family issue. Around 70 years ago my father took videos (we called them home movies back then) in 35 millimeter, 8 millimeter and possibly Super 8 millimeter. As a child I can remember watching them on a portable screen through an old projector in the living room many years ago. When he passed away the old film was passed down to me and languished in a box for 50 years. When my children and now grandchildren asked me if I had any old videos of me as a child or their grandparents I decided to see if any of the old film could be restored (around 2003). I downloaded a program called VCL Media Player and was able to convert the files to VHS format which was the dominant media of the day and everyone had a VHS player (God, I miss the old Blockbuster days). Not too much later DVD’s became the dominant format for movies and I sent all my old VHS tapes to a video processing lab to have them convert everything to DVD’s – very expensive but worth it to me if I could then provide my family with DVD’s that would last forever. Some of the videos were more recent which I had taken using a camcorder the size of a Buick and they came back fine. However, the older stuff was not very good and the audio – if there even was any on the 70 year old videos, although you can see people’s mouths moving – was lost which was not really critical to me since I at least had the video portions.
Fast forward to last week when I had a conversation with a cousin who asked me if I had any old movies of her parents and grandparents since nobody in the entire family had any and she would love to be able to show them to her children. The original source film and the Converted VHS tapes are long gone but I do have the files that I received from the video lab. There are 10 videos each about 3 minutes long that I’d like to send to her. So I had heard about some new programs that can enhance old videos using AI and spent 20 or so hours going down the rabbit hole online and am now more confused than ever. Topaz looked like it was way over my head and costs $299 which is also over my budget for the ten videos. The HitPaw Video Enhancer looks fairly simple to use and is priced at $42 for one month which should be long enough for me to improve my old videos but some of the reviews say it’s great and others say it’s a scam. Tried the free version but it only gives you about 45 frames to review. I don’t need to know about codecs, transcoding, deinterlacing rewrapping etc. I am just hoping I can improve the existing videos as some of them are fuzzy, overexposed, or noisy. It would be nice to colorize the ones that are B/W and recover any audio if possible but also not critical.
What I’d love to be able to do is send my cousin two enhanced video discs (one to play on a DVD player and one to play on her laptop computer – I have Verbatim DVD-R discs but would purchase other kinds if necessary).The videos play fine on my Windows 10 Pro 64 bit system with an Intel core i5-6600 graphics card but I don’t know if they are running through Windows Media Player or the VLC Player and I don’t care as long as they play. From what I’ve read, I need to convert the MPG files to MPEG2 in order for them to play on a DVD player. No idea what they need to be to play on a laptop. And, I don’t know if I should convert them to MPEG2 before I run them through an AI Video Enhancing program or do it after with the new enhanced videos.
The video files I have are MPG files with the following:
Video
Frame width -353
Frame height – 480
Data rate – 6450 kbps
Total bitrate – 6736 kbps
Frame rate – 29.97 Frame/second
Audio
Bit rate – 256 kbs
Channels 2 (stereo)
Audio sample rate – 48.000
I’m not an idiot; just an old guy who still thinks cell phones are magic but I do realizes that if the original material was not very good it probably can’t be improved much but I’d sure like to try so I’d be very appreciative if any of you have suggestions or recommendations on how to proceed. I don’t need the technical jargon just plain-speak if possible. Sort of like when my auto mechanic tells me “Well, the Ramastent isn’t synching with the Forbus to the Decometer on the Framostat” and because I trust him I tell him to just fix it. Thanks for reading this far and I hope to hear back from any of you on this forum.
Gratefully
MJK

[TreeTops]

Too much to read but I did get this part and quoted it for you.

"convert everything to DVD’s – very expensive but worth it to me if I could then provide my family with DVD’s that would last forever."

Don't do that. DVD's will not last forever and most new laptops do not have DVD drives anymore. Just send your stuff out to a company that does this type of work for lots of money and ask for files that your kids can put on their phones to view.

[rrats]

if you have the 8mm tapes, find a place to scan them in. even the shittiest digital only scan is better than ultra old vhs telecine converted to early digital video.

My grandad did that and while the video has some flickering issues it's miles better than the VHS transfer

[Bwaak]

my father took videos (we called them home movies back then) in 35 millimeter, 8 millimeter and possibly Super 8 millimeter.

Home movies in 35-mm? Movies, not photos? Nice.

The original source film and the Converted VHS tapes are long gone but I do have the files that I received from the video lab.

Too bad, otherwise you would be able to scan them using modern tech.

I already posted this link, but will post again, as I like what this guy is doing, and you can see what can be done with old film.

This is his 8-mm scanner: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yStZmqdWDLA
This is his 35-mm scanner: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7vDdyifbLkc

There are 10 videos each about 3 minutes long that I’d like to send to her.

Anyone who would be able to tackle your files will likely ask for a sample. You can upload up to 500 MB right on this forum.