Video Correction…

[Chris Wright]

try AE’s remove grain, it has many tweakable parameters. Also try Unsharp(I use track mattes in combination). reset the white balance with color finesse’s grey eyedrop.
Is the color flickering?

Once it’s mastered, use red giant’s instant hd to resize it to HD. Sure there’s more expensive ways, but start at the bottom and see if you’re satisfied from there.

https://technicolorsoftware.hostzi.com/

[Mike Moss]

Cool, ill try that. Thanks for the response.

Color flickers and bad pixelation…Looks almost like there are pixels missing. Think im S.O.L on that. 🙁

But ill give it whirl.

Ill see if i can post a single frame of the video so you can see what i mean.

[Chris Wright]

I wrote a free ae project that will fix really bad white balance flickering and exposure flickering. I wouldn’t know if it was possible to repair the bad pixelation without a screenshot. If it’s small, you can use cc wire removal. If it’s bigger, you can use timewarp. If it’s really big, you have to repair with roto as an artist.

ae cs3 auto repair flicker project (enable the top text layer and keep it around 25%)
https://forums.creativecow.net/thread/50/857931#857964

timewarp frame restorer
https://aescripts.com/pt_framerestorer/
use filter extreme, vector 100, smoothing 28

ae remove single specks
https://forums.creativecow.net/readpost/2/991990

https://technicolorsoftware.hostzi.com/

[Mike Moss]

Heres a couple shots of the video i said i would upload

take a look around the girl’s neck,face and the little pooch shes holding…
Is this possible to fix in AE?

[Chris Wright]

“Is this possible to fix in AE?”

anythings possible, only takes time and skill. What I would do is
first remove the flickering(exposure/wb), then see how well the timewarp script repairs the frames.

You can then take the fixed duplicated layers and even composite them over existed frames and feather them in.

For some bad spots that timewarp can’t repair, use the clone brush tool that lets you see adjacent frames you can fill holes in with.

Once you’ve repaired the holes, add unsharp and instant hd. I recommended unsharp last because I think it will be easier to match stuff later with a low contrast source.

You can also get some plugins that repair scratches
this one is free.
https://www.kenrockwell.com/tech/photoshop/polaroid-dust-filter.htm

this one costs a little but will save a lot of time
https://akvis.com/en/retoucher-tutorial/examples/portrait.php

https://technicolorsoftware.hostzi.com/

[Mike Moss]

Great!

Thank you so much for the insight and help.

I’ll see what i can come up with and keep you informed.

🙂

Happy Holidays

[Jim Arco]

Chris’ project files can be a real timesaver when working with lower-quality footage.

If, like me, you hadn’t ever used AE’s shy layers, you might be puzzled when Chris refers to more than one layer in the “auto repair flicker project.” Just hit the shy layer switch above the timeline and all the layers will appear.

Jim

[Jim Arco]

My guess would be VHS?

If that’s the case, you may need to use a noise reduction tool to help with the chroma noise. AEs Effects > Remove Grain works well, although a bit slow on even the best system.

Be careful with any sharpening since the original seems to have some edge-enhancement. There is also some ghosting to the right of the girl (and other objects) in the image that will become a lot more obvious if you try to sharpen the image.

Not sure what the anomoly around the neck area might be. If it only occurs on a few frames at a time, the “frame restorer” project should help.

I’ve worked with quite a bit of older footage and it ultimately comes down to how much time, effort, and skill can be devoted to it. It will probably never look as good as something shot with today’s technology but you can usually make it look quite a bit better.

Jim
Colorburst Video

[Jim Arco]

Mike,

After taking another look, you might also consider some shadow and highlight manipulation. The histogram of image 1 looks like “two mountains and a valley” meaning that both highlights and shadows are clipped – there is not much detail in either. Of course, we would expect that from a brightly lit beach scene.

I think you’ll start to bump into noise problems very quickly as you try to get any detail from the shadows. It’s a little hard to see from a single screen grab, but I’ve done a quick look in the attached image showing her neck area. Even this image shows some ‘junk’ near her neck – it almost looks like part of her earring.

Jim

[Jim Arco]

OOPs. I attached the wrong image. The neck and earring are a bit easier to see in this one.