“de-pixelation”?

[Christina Rodriguez]

it all depends on the quality of the original video.

IF the video still are from full HD you can get some decent results…

But SD is a crap shoot. It isn’t going to result in nice print results… if the clip is for web, you may be able to use… (and since you mention “de-pixelation” I think it is SD… or bad lighting.

And just like you can’t up-res video and expect decent results… it doesn’t work with stills either. Whenever someone wants to enhance a sh!tty lo-res picture, I tell them you’ve watched too much CSI.

HOWEVER, if the video was interlaced, you can de-interlace…

I don’t know… maybe you can post a clip so we can see just how bad it is and what your client expects to do with these stills.

C.R.

[Andy Carroll]

Yeah I work for a small production company mainly doing CSPAN shoots and weddings and such, but we do a lot of transfers of older media to newer mediums.
The client stated he had jpegs he pulled off of a old laser dic. So I am assuming there’s not much I can do.

And the CSI thing is a daily occurrence here. People come in with 16mm film and want it on DVD in HD or want a still image pulled with an 8×10 photo printed from it, and I say the same thing, the stuff you see on TV isnt real.

Mac Pro – Mac OS X 10.5.8 – 2 x 3 GHz Quad-core Intel Xeon – 6 GB ram – 6 TB Raid Array
MacBook Pro – Mac OS X 10.6.4 – 2.8ghz Core 2 Duo – 4gb 1067mhz DDR3

[Christina Rodriguez]

It seems more feasible to pull something from a 16mm film… perhaps even HD since you can actually scan the film… (But quite expensive I imagine)…

C.R.

[Richard Harrington]

There is a COW podcast on this in Photoshop for Video series (short answer here)

1. Open and Deninterlae (only if interlaced)
2. Resize to square pixel size if format used nonsquare pixels
3. Resize double with image size command (using nearest neighbor method)
4. Sharpen
5. Adjust Levels

Richard M. Harrington, PMP

Author: From Still to Motion, Video Made on a Mac, Photoshop for Video, Understanding Adobe Photoshop, Final Cut Studio On the Spot and Motion Graphics with Adobe Creative Suite 5 Studio Techniques

[Darby Edelen]

[Christina Rodriguez] “It seems more feasible to pull something from a 16mm film… perhaps even HD since you can actually scan the film… (But quite expensive I imagine)…”

I was going to make the same comment 🙂 Although it also depends on how well the film has been stored. Properly shot and maintained 16mm should be better than DVD quality.

Darby Edelen