From Wikipedia:

Quote:Color grading is the process of altering and enhancing the color of a motion picture, video image, or still image either electronically, photo-chemically or digitally. The photo-chemical process is also referred to as color timing and is typically performed at a photographic laboratory.

Lately, my memory lacks more than ever... don't know if it's due to my age, stress, or something else... the fact is, I promise to do a thing, and I mean to mantain the promise, but I forgot to do that thing... or, I make a thing, and I must let a person know what I did, discovering some time later I forgot to tell it to that person, even if I was sure I did it... so, I keep remember I'm forgetting something, but can't remember what!

So, to whom it may concern: my apologies for everything! If you think I'm still forgetting something - a project to finish, a capture to make, a file to find, everything - don't worry, even if you have sent one previously, send another PM to remind me what I have to do...

Why I haven't addressed this message to the persons interested? Well, I can't remember who they are all!

Multi-image or multi-frame super resolution (SR) is a technique used to restore detail, while upscaling low resolution images or video frames. Although SR can be applied to native low resolution images or video frames, here we will focus on the case where a high resolution source has been downscaled to a low resolution, as is the case for commercial DVDs.
We will start with an example of a single image. When you downscale a high resolution image to a lower resolution you lose information. Each pixel in the low resolution image becomes a weighted average of a number of frames in the high resolution image. When we upscale the low resolution image to the resolution of the high resolution image the lost information does not magically reappear. The result is a blurry image that lacks detail, as can be seen in the following example. Here the resolution has first been reduced by a factor of two, and than upscaled to the original size.

http://screenshotcomparison.com/comparison/125890

The information about the stripes on the girl's pants and scarf has obviously been lost as a consequence of the downscale. However, if we have multiple images with subpixel shifts much of this information can be retrieved. This effect can be simulated by shifting the high resolution image in multiple directions by one pixel. Each of these shifted images is then downscaled and upscaled in the same way as before. If we then align, average, and deblur these shifted images, we obtain the following result:

http://screenshotcomparison.com/comparison/125895

As you can see much of the original detail has been retrieved.
We have seen that it is possible to obtain a high resolution image by combining multiple low resolution images. The same principle can be applied to video. Video can be viewed as a set of shifted images. By aligning very similar objects in multiple frames, averaging the pixel information, and deblurring, the resolution of a video can be increased. In practise this is of course quite complicated, but the basic concept is the same as the above example for a single image.
An example using the bluray for Star Wars can be seen in the following screenshot comparisons. As before the video has first been downscaled by a factor of two, and then upscaled using SR.

Simple upscale versus SR:

http://screenshotcomparison.com/comparison/125527

The methods used for image and video super resolution have been extensively described in scientific literature. Just type in (video) super resolution in Google Scholar, if you're interested. Commercial software is also available at a reasonable price. As a Virtualdub and Avisynth user I have found that for video upscaling the best performing option at this point is the Infognition software (standalone, Virtualdub plugin, Avisynth plugin). Why don't you try it out?

i've finished the restoration/re-creation of the theatrical trailer of mad max beyond thunderdome

you can check it out on youtube



i had to make a few subtle changes due to missing frames/footage and use of alternate angles in the trailer.
everything was done to honor the original intend. though, i did change the opening logo to the much cooler
1970's warner bros logo  :cool:

enjoy  

the trailer was edited in final cut pro x

Hey,

I need to get a Laserdisc player in order to rip video and audio out of NTSC Laserdisc (I am from Poland, so PAL here). What player should I get? How much will it cost me? Or maybe someone can do this for me? I'll send you the Laserdisc, and afterwards you'd resend it to me.

Hey,

I am making a composite cut of Jackie Chan movie (Uncut DVD and German HDTV broadcast). I'll upscale the DVD using SuperResolution and other filters (do you guys suggest any?), but I would like to know what tool you suggest to use to make one movie out of these.

Do we have any users here who are capable of capturing HD video from Netflix, Amazon, Hulu, etc? There often are movies there available in HD which have not been released on Blu-ray. It could be very useful to capture them in 1080p, especially since they don't always stay up for very long. I've already missed a few which I wish had been captured. Any interest in this?

Have you noticed that it's 2015, and still no official BD release of "The Abyss", even if it should have been out last year?

Well, Doctor Sapirstein preceded me with his double project:
http://originaltrilogy.com/forum/topic.c...opic/16302
sadly, he retired it when he heard about the BD release, but it never happened, and, even if it will happen, maybe we have to wait a lot (how much, is too much) of time... the interesting fact is he made two versions, one was an upscaling of the NTSC DVD, while the other was done using an HDTV broadcast as source.

Even if they were technically good, now they could be improved; the upscale could benefit from both Super Resolution and PaNup technique (yes, I know PAL quality is not that good, but it will be eventually used with a lower percentage); the HDTV used was upscaled from a Japanese 720p source, then cropped to 2.7:1 to get rid of the TV logo and subtitles; now the Cinemax HDTV is available, with a greater quality, but unfortunately it has the so-called "Cameronized" color regrade, and it's "only" the theatrical version...

So, there is room for improvements IMHO; I'd leave out completely the upscaled DVD, and I'd use the Cinemax HDTV to reconstruct the Special Edition, while the added parts will be taken from other HDTV that, albeit of lower quality in comparison to the former, are always better than any DVD upscale.

Well, what do you think guys? And gals, too, of course!

Lately I recorded some HDTV movies from italian FTA DVB channels; even if bit rate is not that high - around 7-8mbps, but with spikes up to around 14mbps - they are quite good; of course, in comparison with BD, they retain no grain at all, but tiny details are well preserved, much better than what I supposed...

The only problem is they have all a slight magenta blanket applied to them; if watched alone, it is not that much noticeable, but when compared directly with the BD, this becomes clear, even if not so nasty.

I guess which could be the problem, and if you noted the same with the HDTV broadcasts of your country.

Haven't seen this yet but was wondering what people around here thought of it. Worth going to the theater or wait for Blu-ray?