Video Drop-out or DVD Error...?

Jay Gladwell wrote on 6/6/2006, 7:55 AM

This is a video I am "fixing" for a new client. It was shot by another production company.

I have a screen grab here of what appears to me to be video drop-out. There are several of these throughout the 38-minute program. Each lasts from two to three frames and there is an audible, scratchy "pop" accompanying each one.

The problem is I do not have access to the original master tape (the client is so angry and fed up with the original production house that he refuses to contact them), all I have is a DVD, I'm wondering if it might be an error on the DVD itself.

Are there any "tell-tail" signs to differentiate between video drop-out and an error on a DVD?

Thanks!

Comments

Spot|DSE wrote on 6/6/2006, 8:06 AM

That image is pretty well a textbook dropout.
About all you can do is grab the frame before and frame after, combine to make a new frame.

Jay Gladwell wrote on 6/6/2006, 8:13 AM

Thanks, Douglas, that's exactly what I was thinking. My question is, will the jump be any more or less worse that the drop-out? I guess the only way to find out is to try.

I took care of the "pops" without any problems. Oddly enough, they were only the the right channel. The sound from the left channel seemed to covere the correction.

johnmeyer wrote on 6/6/2006, 10:06 AM

Yes, that's a DV dropout.

How much time do you have? I restore video, and if I were faced with this, and there were less than a dozen to deal with, there are several ways I would deal with it.

1. If the motion is slow, repeat one of the adjacent frames. I think this is what Spot is suggesting. This is very often amazingly unobtrusive. I ought to write a script for this. Might be useful.

2. Use Motionperfect to synthesize a new frame. This program has a "mend" feature which can sythesize a new intermediate frame, given the information from adjacent frames.

3. Export the bad frame, and the two adjacent frames. Put them on three layers in your photo editing program. Line up one of the good frames so it matches as closely as possible the spatial relationships with the bad frame. Then, simply "paint away" the bad sections of the bad frame, so the good frame portions show through. Use feathering on your erase tool to make the cutouts unobtrusive.

Finally, if Sony is reading this, I will once again make my pitch that you should invest in Motion Estimation technology as an editing tool. This is the technology used in MPEG-2 encoding, and is at the heart of products like MotionPerfect. With this technology, you could offer amazing slow motion, but you could also provide "one-click" fixes for bad frames. Want to get rid of the frame where someone fired a still camera flash? Click, it's gone. Want to fix a frame that contains a dropout? Click it's gone.

One-Click fix. Pretty neat.