1950's Regular-8mm film to digital HD

[videoFred]

This is the deal: BigDog660 has a nice collection of regular-8mm family films, shot in the 1950's. And I am going to transfer his footage to digital. The quality of this footage is not to bad. But colors begin to fade out, and some scenes are under or over exposed. The film grain is pretty heavy, typical for the used stock in that period, and a regular-8 frame is very tiny of cource.

We are starting with the maximum resolution of my transfer camera: 1024 x 768. The original AVI files are in uncompressed RGB24 format, progressive, 8 bits, frame -by- frame. This means: one film frame = one AVI frame. Bigdog want the best quality possible and his end target is HD.

But let me first show a picture(downscaled for the Forum):
I have used my film restoring script of cource.



And now for the questions:

- Keeping in mind my originals are 1024 x 768 already, what HD format should I go for?
- Would it not be better to let the player or TV do the upscaling?

- Play speed of R8 film is between 16 and 18fps. The original AVI files are 18fps (or whatever) progressive.
What do you all suggest for the frame rate convertion?

- Is there any difference beween US HD and Europe HD? (Bigdog is in the USA)

All HD information in general is very welcome, I do not have any experience with HD and/or upscaling.


Thank you all in advance,
Fred.

[2Bdecided]

First, an obvious suggestion: for an archive of his films, provide something as close to the source as possible - either the "original" or the (wonderful!) AVIsynth script restored version of it. No upscaling, frame rate conversion etc.

Then, to provide a version to watch in HD, you can either downscale a little to 960x720 and pillarbox to 1280x720, or upscale to 1440x1080 and pillarbox to 1920x1080. (Assuming 4x3 source - is that what you have?). If you think that real resolution will be lost going down to 720p, go up to 1080 - but I suspect 720p is fine.

For 720p, I'd use simple frame duplication to get it up to 60p (actually 59.94). A decent encoder isn't going to waste bits encoding the duplicate frames, and it makes it BluRay compliant.

For 1080, you can either use an irregular pulldown pattern to go to 60i, or frame duplication to go to 30p (or even 24p). I think I'd just duplicate every frame and call it 30p or duplicate every second frame and call it 24p - pros and cons with either: 15p>30p = slower running and needs 60i encode for BluRay; 16p>24p = more stutter.


You've also demonstrated some nice frame rate conversion methods - 18fps looks very stuttery to the modern viewer - but whether you want to inflict this (sometimes) artefact-prone process on this footage is another matter.


My suggestion is 720p60. It might be the only version you need to provide - i.e. close enough to "archive" to negate the need for the archive version I suggested at the top!

Cheers,
David.

[smok3]

why 60p?

> 18*3
ans = 54
> 16*3
ans = 48

i would triplicate to get close to 50p in both cases (and call that assume 50fps). edit2: i wouldn't know how to predict what will this do to a built in LCD 'superflow' engines...
p.s. - If you later decide to do a standard DVD for example, then you could make 50i version easily.

edit; i would crop some and pillarbox some, so there is no need to resize;

AddBorders(128,0,128,0) # pad width 1280
crop (0,24,0,-24) # crop height 720 - you loose 48 pixels

[videoFred]

Hi David,

First, an obvious suggestion: for an archive of his films, provide something as close to the source as possible

Yes of cource. We will keep the (huge) originals as they are on portable HD.

Then, to provide a version to watch in HD, you can either downscale a little to 960x720 and pillarbox to 1280x720,

This is a very interesting option because I have to crop the stabilized clip anyhow. And pillarboxing is imho the best option to go from 4:3 to 16:9.

For 720p, I'd use simple frame duplication to get it up to 60p (actually 59.94). A decent encoder isn't going to waste bits encoding the duplicate frames, and it makes it BluRay compliant.

Wait a moment.... I can not set play speed (assumefps() )to 15, then changefps() to 60, can I? This would show the same frame 4 times!

You've also demonstrated some nice frame rate conversion methods - 18fps looks very stuttery to the modern viewer - but whether you want to inflict this (sometimes) artefact-prone process on this footage is another matter.

This means interpolation: MVFlowFps() with possible artefacts indeed.


Thank you for the input David,
Fred.

[videoFred]

Hello Smok3,

i would triplicate to get close to 50p in both cases (and call that assume 50fps). edit2: i wouldn't know how to predict what will this do to a built in LCD 'superflow' engines...

I could use assumefps(16.6666) followed by changefps(50)... But that will look awful on computer...

edit; i would crop some and pillarbox some, so there is no need to resize;

AddBorders(128,0,128,0) # pad width 1280
crop (0,24,0,-24) # crop height 720 - you loose 48 pixels

That's a very good hint but I must crop my source first because of the stabilising....

Fred.

[smok3]

a. right, so basically i assume you are resizing anyway?
b. I guess the proper deshaker can be forced to greater output resolution?
c. could you do a deshaking/stabilizing and frame recomposing at the same step? - in that case i would just fill the entire 1280x720 - assuming the amateurish composing of the original that is, example;

[videoFred]

Originally Posted by smok3

a. right, so basically i assume you are resizing anyway?

Only if I have to!

b. I guess the proper deshaker can be forced to greater output resolution?

I'm using Depan().. It has a 'zoom' option but I have never used it. It's not resizing but at least there will be no need to crop afterwards (if it works).

in that case i would just fill the entire 1280x720 - assuming the amateurish composing of the original that is, example:

That looks pretty good to me.
Strange how the aspect ratio makes it look like it was made in 2009!

Fred.

[2Bdecided]

I think cropping 4x3 material to 16x9 is a really bad idea. You lose content, and in this case you lose resolution (and you have none to spare!). You'd also have to do it manually - just because the interesting part is that the bottom of this frame doesn't mean it stays there - in the next shot the same cropping will probably remove everyone's head.

Note that cropping the source to get 16x9 is completely out-of-favour on BluRay - they're releasing lots of content strictly in the original aspect ratio, including 4x3 (1.33:1), 1.37:1, 1.66:1, and 1.85:1. None of these formats is 16x9, so they pillar box it. This is the opposite to the attitude on many broadcasts and some DVDs which try to avoid black bars at all costs.

Why 60p? Because the user is in America, so 50i is no use to them. 54, 48, etc etc are not BluRau compatible, and it would be silly to make an HD version that wasn't ready to drop onto BluRay.

For 60p, I would just do assumefps(16) (or whatever - it doesn't have to result in a simple pattern - go for the correct speed if 15fps is visibly slow) changefps("ntsc_double").

Yes, 4 duplicate frames. It doesn't matter at all if you're going to encode x264 (which I'm guessing you, or someone, will).

Hope this helps.

Cheers,
David.

[2Bdecided]

btw, isn't that frame quite black crushed? Maybe it's my monitor! There's a lot of shadow detail that I can only see my increasing the gamma.

Cheers,
David.

[videoFred]

The blacks are pretty OK, but I have set the gamma a bit to low.
But it looks fine on my Dell monitor....

Fred.

[smok3]

Ok, then there is reason for 60p (i missed the us part somehow...)

Any professionaly done production should stay in the original aspect, i agree (seems to be not the case here).

Depan or any other stabilizer must resize (zoom in, out, rotate, etc), so if you output to something big enough to later manually shot-by-shot fill the 1280x720, then i would pick that in this case.

[2Bdecided]

On UK TV (e.g. the BBC) we rarely get 4x3 as-is these days when there's been an opportunity to mess it up. Entire 4x3 programmes are usually repeated as-is, but whenever the footage is re-used or edited, even if there's a compilation consisting entirely of 4x3 content, it's almost always presented in 14x9 or 16x9 SD.

Sometimes it looks OK (though the picture looks undesirably soft), but sometimes it looks horrible. Then again, in the case of professional productions, the original framing was usually "good" (not so most amateur footage), and I'm not a typical person when it comes to watching video (picky picky picky!).

If you're going to crop it to 16x9 scene by scene, what do you do what you come to a nicely framed 4x3 filling shot? Make a mess, that's what.

With SD, people are free to zoom and crop, stretch, or keep the OAR, as they choose on their TVs. So give them 4x3 and let them mess it up themselves. With HD via HDMI, these format switching facilities are often absent, so they'll have to watch what you provide.


The obvious answer (!) is to ask BigDog660 what they want: black bars, or cropped footage.

Cheers,
David.

[tedkunich]

Originally Posted by videoFred

And now for the questions:

- Keeping in mind my originals are 1024 x 768 already, what HD format should I go for?
- Would it not be better to let the player or TV do the upscaling?

I have had very good results with pillar boxing the results to play on my 50" screen - so far I have played just the avi file through my media player, not burned to DVD. I prefer the original aspect ratio vs a cropped image.

T

[SeeMoreDigital]

Standard 8mm film offers a visible size of 4.8 x 3.5mm, which equates to an movie aspect ratio of 1.371:1. This is slightly wider than 1.333:1 (ie: 4:3).

So if you were capturing at 768 pixels high, your width should have been 1056 (1053 is the exact) pixels, instead of 1024

[Alex-Kid]

My choice is: 720p24 pillar boxed

You need to add 1 frame for every 3 to get 24 fps. It can be done by blending (ConvertFPS, maybe not desired) or by interpolation (MVFlowFPS). The latter may introduce some artifacts, but I think you must give it a try (specially with MVTools2 → MFlowFPS at slowest/highest quality setting). You will lose "originality" (just 1 of 4 frames will be same as source) but will eventually gain smoothiness and preserve film look.

18 fps footage is harder to work, huh!

[2Bdecided]

videoFred,

Can you post a clip? Rather than talk about it, I'd like to try the various frame rate options.

Cheers,
David.

[videoFred]

I will post a clip as soon as possible, David. I do this in my free time and I have lots of other work to do now.

Thank you for the interest in my work!

Fred.

[2Bdecided]

Hey, ditto, no rush!

[*.mp4 guy]

It should be possible to encode at 16fps (or close to it) and get the "correct" frame rate via soft pulldown flags, like how 3:2 pulldown is handled.

[bigdog660]

Hey Guys,

While cropping would look quite nice on wide screen monitors, I am afraid too much of the picture would be lost. Given it's amateur film and the camera is all over the place (off center from the subject), I think pillarbox is the best.

You lose content, and in this case you lose resolution (and you have none to spare!). You'd also have to do it manually - just because the interesting part is that the bottom of this frame doesn't mean it stays there - in the next shot the same cropping will probably remove everyone's head.

Exactly! This is also why I prefer 1080p over 720p.

The was some mention of 50i, but I'm in the States, so I guess we need to make that 60i; however, I would like to avoid interlacing like the plague if we can. These films will be authored to BD (and resized and authored to DVD), so I believe I need 23.976, not 24.00, 25.00 or 29.976 fps. Please correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't 24.00 fps used in AVCHD only? 25.00 is pal, and 29.976 is telecine (I'm also wanting to avoid this).

@SeeMoreDigital, Isn't true though that BD has to be 1920x1080 or 1280x720, so we can not use an "oddball" frame size? Using your calculation, we'd need to upsize to 1480x1080 to keep 1.371:1. I guess it could be done with pillarbox?

The only problem with your calculations is videoFred's camera maxes out at 1024x768, so there is no way to keep the 1.371:1 aspect ratio unless he can capture at 1024x746 and then upsize at a ratio of 1.45 to obtain 1480x1080.

@videoFred, from what I've searched on the web, the original film rate is 18fps.