Video restoration seems to be getting more and more popular, as companies/studios are digging into their archives and wanting to upscale projects for modern screens.
I did some tests a few months ago for someone that may want more of this work done in the future (Mostly music videos that are a single PAL/Interlaced source QT).
I’ve experimented with a blend of Topaz Video Enhance AI, Resolve and Flame to come up with some surprisingly good results.
I find that “interlaced” is often used as a catch all for things that simply have a 3:2 pulldown. Technically it is interlaced video, but a pair of fields can usually be found that represent an entire frame of the original film. The first thing I do when I am trying to restore such a piece is to try to convert it back to the original frame rate by re-pairing the proper fields into progressive frames. Video restoration is much like any other: tedious and detailed.
I tested with Topaz also, and indeed, results are frankly good, speaking in resolution terms. Frame interpolation is other matter. Is not hard get realy high upscale ratios with same apparence . Last version of video topaz has an special algorithm for deintrelace.
You just really have to play with the settings in Topaz to figure out the best mixture for each source. It seems to do fine when you add subtle adjustments.
I saw they added a few de-interlace options with v2.0.0. I haven’t been able to get it to really work though, at least with the source I have now. Have had better luck doing the de-interlacing in either Flame or Resolve and then popping that file into Topaz for the upscale.
Above all, the last thing I said was the most important.
My use of the term “frame rate” was probably not the best descriptor. What I mean to say is that the first thing I try to do is make a singular corresponding frame for each frame that was originally captured. Once you have done your best to achieve that, then you need to make an educated guess as to what the original frame rate would be and how to efficiently convert it to the frame rate you are displaying at. For my part, I have only done this for short form work, so if I need to spend a few hours for a few dozen frames, it’s not such a big deal. If I were to need to do it for hours worth of material, I would be inclined to find a more automated way.
In your particular case, if I were to deinterlace the clip with interpolate, and found that every fourth frame was a repeat, I would (I’m doing this from memory, I may have the numbers a bit wrong) TW the clip to 133%, which should throw out every fourth frame, then adjust the phase of the time warp so that the frame it removed was the repeated one. But that’s just an assumption, since I don’t have it in front of me.
Once a clip is broken down into a single digital frame for each captured frame, then all of the processes mentioned by the OP work at their best.
I used flame to deinterlace the footage. But honestly, Resolve seemed to have better results sometimes. I then ran the footage through Topaz. Brought it back into flame for some cleanup work.
This obviously varies, but there wasn’t too much once I dialed in the look with Topaz. If possible, I would try and get your hands on the source footage and experiment with Topaz/flame/resolve yourself rather than just getting the Topaz render.
Each video I’ve been tasked with has been immensely different and required multiple passes in Topaz to see what worked and what didn’t, there’s not a plug and play setting. They were also music videos, so much shorter than what it sounds like you’re dealing with.
If you only have access to the Topaz render and you’re seeing artifacts and lines break, I wonder what mlTimewarp tool might do? Just set it to 0%? Might clean some of that up? I did some paint work on the videos I worked on months ago, before I was aware of that time warp tool so I never tested it out in that scenario, but I know it works like a charm otherwise.
The mltimewarp is just a python script you install, it’s not included with an update. Pretty simple to install - there’s a thread somewhere on this forum
