S01E01 Sketch 1 Remastered

[switchopens]

I finally finished restoring the very first sketch.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qnQFCWSlBwo

Comparison clip : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uGxk2qRfUf8 (changes every 10 seconds so you can see the difference)

I really cannot emphasise just how difficult it was to get rid of the ghosting in the original clip, it legitimately took me weeks and weeks of trial and error to get it to this quality.

It's not perfect (I'll never get rid of the ghosting completely), but hopefully it will make it more enjoyable to watch =)

[servese43]

Wow! You've done an amazing job at removing the ghosting! I really mean it. That's fantastic! If I could offer one critique though, I think you should probably leave the colours as-is. Other than that it's absolutely miraculous how good of a job you've done with the ghosting!

[servese43]

Also are you working from the original DVDs or from the torrents? Could also make a subtle difference in the quality of the end result.

[switchopens]

Thank you, I very much appreciate it! It feels very rewarding to know that all the hard work has made someone happy.

And I appreciate the feedback. I wasn't quite sure about the colouring; I felt that the orange-ish hue in the original seemed a little weird to me and opted for a more natural tone instead, but changing the colour does make it look a little washed out. Maybe I could have another stab at it, and find a happy medium.

And this was from the original DVD's. Was the quality of the torrent episodes better or worse?

[servese43]

The torrents are worse quality. They're just the DVDs re-encoded to avi files. The reason why I don't recommend changing the colour is because it is a subjective thing and more of an artistic choice than anything. While things like ghosting are technical errors that can corrected, colour is a very subjective thing and is super difficult to get right. Large studios often mess up colouring stuff (a quick google search and you'll be able to find some people on forums who aren't happy with the colours on the blu-ray release of the star wars films.) While the colours of the original tape are quite dull and definitely different from those of the show as it was originally recorded, you could be doing more harm than good by "correcting" the colours. Anyway that being said I quite like how the colours look in the colour corrected version. I reckon it'd probably be best to release two versions; one that's had its colours changed, and one that has had its colours left as-is (but still has the ghosting removed amongst other enhancements.)

Also just one more thing, in the future maybe could you de-interlace the video so that you keep the whole 50 frames? I know it's quite common practice to halve the frame rate to 25fps, but it makes the motion look a lot less smooth and is effectively throwing out half the information. To get the full 50 frames you want to use Yadif 2x/Yadif Bob/Yadif=1 depending on what program you're using, or QTGMC. Anyway yeah quite a small thing.

Sorry about the wall of text there. Finally, just curious, what program did you use to remove the ghosting?

[switchopens]

That's totally understandable. I'm not an expert by any means when it comes to restoring videos, this was just a little project that I thought would be fun to try.

And I will post another video without the colours corrected in the next few days.

I think I just used Handbrake to digitise the episodes onto my computer, and at the time I didn't really pay any attention to the frame rate. Sorry, I wish it was something I had thought about, but I really am an amateur at this. My new(ish) computer doesn't even have a DVD drive so I'll have to find some solution to that.

And the program was TMPGEnc, but its deghosting option is only available in versions 2 and 5, and they've stopped support for all versions before version 6 so you can't buy it, you only get 14 days to use a trial version and then it's gone forever, plus you get stuck with an annoying watermark that was a challenge to get rid of. I'm trying to find a solution to this as well, as I'm not entirely satisfied with how the deghosting went on some other clips.

Having said that, I didn't make the mistake of deghosting ONLY this clip.

If all goes to plan, I should have another remastered clip (possibly two) ready to go in the next couple of weeks.

[switchopens]

Actually I just realised that it can't have been Handbrake that I used to do the conversion, I must have mixed that up with another program. It's been a couple of years since I did it, and I can't remember now. Sorry.

[servese43]

Don't worry mate you've still done an amazing job restoring it.

[switchopens]

Thank you, I really do appreciate it.