VV5 Plugin for redoing old movies?

janmcn wrote on 11/21/2004, 4:57 AM

We are currently taking old movie footage off VHS tapes, editing them, and putting them onto DVDs via VV5. Is there any plugin that will quickly help in recoloring, removing artifacts, etc. or do we have to use the various filters on VV5 and tediously do it all. Much of the old movie footage (from the 40's and 50's) has faded a lot and has a lot of spots, splotches, etc.
Thanks...
Jan McN

Comments

Spot|DSE wrote on 11/21/2004, 7:38 AM

Shameless plug here: Ultimate S has some pre-coloring presets already chained.
end shameless plug.

There is nothing available that can see the information in your video frame, so there is no "auto color correction" sort of plugin. If a good deal of your footage has the same problems, it's a good idea to build a preset chain for that footage. For instance, older VHS tends to jump to red.
John Meyer wrote a great restoration tutorial, and I used that as a springboard to build my own "restoration recipe" that is stored as a chain of presets. (Which in part is what made it into Ultimate S)

http://mediasoftware.sonypictures.com/forums//ShowMessage.asp?ForumID=4&MessageID=218869

johnmeyer wrote on 11/21/2004, 9:31 AM

The link Spot provided is to my workflow from a year ago. I've progressed a long way since then, and I've dropped doing multiple captures of the same tape because it just wasn't time-effective (even though it does help a lot for the "snow" noise).

Do a search on my user name and either the word AVISynth or Virtualdub and you will come up with more recent posts.

However, if your VHS tape truly have film on them, then you need to find out how that film was transferred to video. If it was done by a transfer house, then was it done by just pointing the camera at the screen, or was it done frame-by-frame. If it was done frame-by-frame, and then a pulldown was applied, you absolutely must remove that pulldown before you attempt any restoration. Is this sound film? If it is, then there are all sorts of ways to remove the pulldown. Once you remove the pulldown, you now have 24 fps progressive footage. There are all sorts of tools that can remove dust spots, flicker, hot spots (due to the hot spot from the condensor in some projectors), scratches, and more. The color fading you can improve in Vegas using several instances of the color corrector. Old film should always be cleaned before transferring, but even cleaned film still has dust, and the dust removal techniques I've been using are absolutely amazing.

The key to all this is finding out what type of film is on your VHS tapes (8mm, Super8, 16mm or 35mm) and whether it is silent or sound (different frame rates) and how it was transferred.