Focusing a badly shot video

[HOGGER]

This may not be the appropriate forum for this question so please excuse may ignorance

So here goes I have an old home video shot on a vhs type of camcorder that was filmed with the auto focus switched off.

Now I have converted the video to mpeg with the use of Video-capture Device (ads instant DVD).

Does anyone know of any software that will allow me to refocus the movie?

Thanks for any help

[Video Dude]

It is hard to answer without a screenshot to see what it looks like.

You can't really refocus in software because the data is not there. If your camera did not capture the data, then it can't be recovered. If it is badly out of focus it it would be too blurred to recover the details.

You can try AviSynth filters.

[dionisos]

I never had read anything that did pass beyond your second sentence:
You can't really refocus in software because the data is not there

but i'v got pretty amazed when i read the last:
You can try AviSynth filters.

what do you mean?
sharpening those frames may come to get them more detailed?

i'm confused (so my terrible english)
please, write, explain, enlight more on it!
:)
cheers

[nicco]

No, you can not "post-refocus"a movie.

[Video Dude]

@dionisos

It sounds clear to me but I'll explain again...

If your camera was out of focus and did not record a clear picture, there is no way to recover it. This is due to the fact that the details that would make a clear picture simply are not there because the camera did not record them.

If the picture is slighty blurred a small amount, you could try to add a sharpening filter. It won't bring back the lost picture but it might fool the eye to make it look a little better.

[scharfis_brain]

actually, there are filters, that claim to refocus images.

they are called reconvolution or deconvolution filters.

but processing the images takes ages.

and I wasn't able to get one working, cause their handling was out of my abilities.

(GIMP-plugin etc.)

so better forget refocusing on video.

[hendrix]

or you can export to a tif sequence and use photozoom pro to try to clean up your footage but no guarentee...i use program to uprez to 720p or 1080p from DV and it looks great.

[BBugsBunny]

There is a way to refocus a video!

There is a port for Virtualdub for the folowing Gimp Plugin:
http://refocus-it.sourceforge.net/

There is a thread of the ported filter here:
http://forums.virtualdub.org/index.php?act=ST&f=7&t=168&hl=refocus&st=75

The filter can be downloaded here:
http://fcchandler.home.comcast.net/Refocus_YUV_Test.zip

I mainly use the filter to enhance the quality of old films an sharpening. It is a great filter but it's slow.

Try these settings as a start:

Radius: 1.80
Gauss: 0.00
Motion: 0.00
Motion Angle: 0.00
Lamdda: 150.00
Lambda Min: 70.00
Win Size: 5
Iteration: 1
Boundary: Mirror
Adaptive Smooth: yes

You don't need to put the yuv converters before and after the filter in the filter chain.

[nicco]

:eek: I'm really surprised! There is always something useful to know!:D

[hendrix]

that's cool

[dionisos]

thats not only cool
hehe
this is AMAZING!

[HOGGER]

Thanks very much for all replies and I'm glad that I'm not the only one who learned something from this post.

[jkwarras]

I've tried in the GIMP applying unsharp mask or refocus to out-of-focus digital camera pics. In the video world it should +- be the same. My advice: filters can make (or not) things better but they can't do miracles.

I've tried refocus and it gives me too much focus. I've surely to play more with it and find appropiate settings, but most of the time I've get oversharpening results: brings details back (by smart sharpening) but bring also back noise artifacts. If it doesn't bother you, try it.

With unsharp mask, it's the same thing. I use it a lot, so maybe I'm biased ;) but I like more the results. You have to tweak it and find appropiate settings, but again it'll not do miracles: detail enhancement will also bring some noise back.

As others have said, out-of-focus picture doesn't have the information, so it have to sharp what's already there (so it'll sharp blured image no more, no less). What refocus filter aims is to refocus a picture/image that was at some point in-focus (so the ifnromation was there) and was lost by digitalizing. At least that was I understand, someone correct me if I'm wrong.

[SeeMoreDigital]

Hi BBugsBunny,

Thanks for posting this information, it might prove very useful.

Are there any, before and after images we can see?


Cheers