How do I clean up old Super8 footage?

[drgonzo62]

Hi,

I’ve been trying to clean some old S8 footage that my dad shot many years ago
and that he had transferred to DVD. As far as I can tell it was a straight telecine
transfer in PAL at 25FPS to tape and than dumped to DVD.
I’ve been trying to get rid of some of the dirt with DeSpot, but it hasn’t worked
out well so far.
Here’s a sample of a few seconds of the footage. It's only about 1MB:
http://www.kaysievert.com/ftp/dirt_test.divx

First off, I’m very confused by the structure of the video.

I’ve loaded a .vob through DGindex into VirtualDubMod.
Now, when I step through the frames, in the beginning it seems that every third
frame is an interlaced frame, but later on it looks like every other frame is interlaced.
I expected every other frame to be interlaced and not every third one. What gives?

Secondly, because it’s interlaced video, cleaning it with DeSpot has proven to be very
difficult, since a dirt spot appears on 2 frames instead of just one, which throws off every
spot remover I’ve tried so far.

I’ve got about an hour worth of footage, so cleaning it by hand frame by frame would
take me a lifetime.

Could someone give me a tip on how to deal with this? I’d really appreciate it.

[Fizick]

You must firstly try restore original about 18 fps progressive film somehow. But there is no perfect way to do it.

[drgonzo62]

You must firstly try restore original about 18 fps progressive film somehow. But there is no perfect way to do it.Thank you, Fizick.
That makes sense. The footage should have been transferred at 18fps
instead of 25fps (I'm guessing that this is how it was done).

Do you know of a way to convert the footage back to 18fps, even if it's
not perfect?

I'm guessing that ChangeFPS(18) will not do the trick?

[Pookie]

Fizick - Did you forget about your own filter? ;)

http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?p=565985#post565985

[Fizick]

Getdups can not be used here (it need in special capture).
So, you must try telecide-decimate and similar (it was the way I started long time ago), may be Crestore, deblend, etc,

[drgonzo62]

Thanks, Fizick!

I've used your DeScratch filter on the footage and it works really well!

I also played around with deComb's telecide() and decimate(), but
I'm not really getting anywhere with it.

The problem is that I just can't turn every frame into a progressive
frame, so I'm still getting duplicate frames with spots than being
on both frames.
I've tried to use decimate() to get rid of these duplicated frames,
but that doesn't seem to work that well, as I'm still having duplicates.

Any ideas?

[Backwoods]

Looks like every 3rd frame is blended. You can try getting rid of those and see how it plays.

[drgonzo62]

Looks like every 3rd frame is blended. You can try getting rid of those and see how it plays.I wish this pattern would stay the same throughout,
but it doesn't.
Propably has to do with the film being transferred at something
like 18fps to 25fps PAL video to maintain the original film speed.

[Backwoods]

I guess the film was transfered overseas, considering you live in CA. Not like it matters because recovering the original 18fps from 25 or 30fps is a pain no matter how you slice it.

Do you still have the original film?

[drgonzo62]

I guess the film was transfered overseas, considering you live in CA. Not like it matters because recovering the original 18fps from 25 or 30fps is a pain no matter how you slice it.

Do you still have the original film?Yes, my parents had it transferred over in europe and still have the
original. Along with several more hours that haven't been
transferred yet.. :eek:

They spend 150 bucks on the transfer, so I'm gonna have to
work with what I got.


That boy is yours truly, btw.. :)

http://www.kaysievert.com/cpg144/albums/userpics/10001/sample.jpg

[Chainmax]

I don't have much to contribute except recommending you to use the TIVTC package (and maybe CRestore or CDeblend?) rather than the Decomb package. Also, you might want to try contacting rfmmars, he does these kinds of things for a living.

[drgonzo62]

Thanks to some additional help in this thread,
http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?t=116039

I was able to convert my footage to 16.85fps progressive frame!
This will make working with it a lot easier.

First I'm gonna run it through Fizick's deScratch, and than I'll tackle
the spot/dirt issue.

Since some of this stuff has a lot of motion in it, this is going to be a challange.

Are there any recommendations for dirt/spot removers that can
handle a lot of motion and preserve actual detail?