Film Restoration Using AVISynth and Vegas

This shows how old kinescopes can be restored. This is a short segment from a kinescope. The "before" shows the original footage. To get to the "after," I first removed all dust and dirt, using "despot." I then used motion-compensated denoising to remove film grain. Next, I used deshaker to get rid of film judder/gate weave. All these steps remove the obvious film artifacts. However, to restore the 60i video cadence (although this was actually shot in PAL), I used a motion-estimation script that converts 24p to 60i. I noise-reduced the audio. Finally, I adjusted the gamma using a custom color curve (in Vegas). Note: Since the 24p to 60i conversion sometimes creates ugly artifacts, I "masked in" the original 24p frames (which were upconverted using standard Vegas frame blending) to cover the artifacts.

Category:

Education

Tags:

• Vegas
• film
• restoration
• mvtools
• avisynth

[kacema70]

Fantastic! Which software did you use to remove the spots? I tried using Spot Remover function in Virtualdub and Despot (Film Fix) in Vegas but din´t work. Can you recommend a good software for this purpose? Thanks!

[johnmeyer77]

@kacema70 I use the RemoveDirt plugin in AVISynth. I used to use Despot, but it always removed buttons from people's shirts and other things that weren't dirt. I recommend you look at post 1237054 in the forum.doom9.org forum. YouTube doesn't let me provide a direct link via the comment section, but you can enter the above URL, and search on the post. This thread provides a tremendous amount of information on film restoration techniques.

[mikemcgee]

this show of the hermit hermits was probably color broadcasted too now that part wasnt restored 

[johnmeyer77]

@mikemcgee Actually, I watched a lot of TV back in the 1950s and 1960s and very few programs were broadcast in color until about 1965. By 1969, the majority were broadcast in color. This was in the USA. This particular show was broadcast in Australia. I don't know if they lagged in color broadcast or not. Bottom line: it was probably broadcast in B&W.

[KrazyKartoonKid]

Do u know how to import AVS scripts into VirtualDub?

[johnmeyer77]

-->Do u know how to import AVS scripts into VirtualDub?

You just open them.

VirtualDub treats an AVS file just like it was a video file.

[wado1942]

@mikemcgee I don't see any dot crawl, so it was probably B & W. That said, there's now software out there that will analyze dot crawl and assuming the the luminance is correct, will automatically restore the correct color!

[ade425mxy]

Astounding, You don't have any of the scripts on hand?

[bumtownv2]

@johnmeyer77 I'm from Australia and from what older people have told me, we didn't have colour TV until 1975 because our technicians didn't like the British system saying it was too faded.

[tb3193]

@mikemcgee Almost certainly a B&W original. Look at the black halos around highlights at around 1:20. These are an artifact of image orthicon camera tubes. By the time Hermans Hermits were on the scene, almost all color cameras used plumbicon tubes, which did not have this problem (although they did have some other issues).