Rescuing video frame capture images?

[nzo]

Hi all,
I have a bunch of archival VHS and SVHS analog video tapes with some great footage on them. When I capture individual frames from the footage as jpgs, the results are understandably poor, given the original resolution of the cam etc. with wall-to-wall jpg jaggies.

I've included an example shot.

Is there any way, via pshop or other means, that I can improve this type of image? Are there edge-smoothers, or pixel algorithms that will 'fill' any missing jaggies by using next door pixels...that sort of thing?

Thanks and appreciation

John

http://i58.photobucket.com/albums/g2...m2-cropped.jpg

[mistermonday]

John, welcome to RP. The image has been greatly compressed and as a result the colors have been distorted and much of the detail lost. It becomes more of an art than a science to manufacture replacement data. Consider a moest improvement to what you have by:
1. Running a good noise filter, like Noiseware, to primarily smooth out the color noise and soften the image a little.
2. Try some High Pass or Hi Radius Low Amount Sharpening to add some contrast back in.
3. Display / print the image at a small size

There may be some plugins or programs around which might help certain images but I have not found any magic ones which will manufacture info that has been lost or never captured adequiately.
Regards, Murray

[philbach]

Well the image is "blown out" on the girl's face with luminosity levels at 255. So if possible when copying the frame use a lower value. Since that's the way it probably was on the film there is little you can do initially. I lowered the highlights to around 240 and colorized the blown out areas. In addition I used Neat image to remove the grain and finally increased the saturation by using levels and the black eyedropper on the black part of the sweater.

[Cassidy]

Is this an 'on the fly' screen capture? I find that recording a passage as a movie onto the hard drive and then using an editor such as premiere or studio, allows you to grab a frame shot without the blur, even if it is the next frame which is almost identical.

[des151]

Hi John,
This is my attempt at your frame capture.
Ray

[Jerryb]

Hi John,
first I am just a novice and the people here a lot better than me on cleaning up a picture but a couple of things noticed that may help
1. I noticed the picture said crop is this the orginal frame or was the orginal cropped and then enlarged? that process alone give you problems....
2. when I snag fram off a video, what I generally do is enlarge it, it used a combination of changing the dpi/ppi to 300 (for my hp) and then increase the resolution... it generally give me good results... i have more room to do future editing and printing is better....
3. the program you are snagging the from ... if you have a choice on format don't save in jpg... save in bmp or tif or png but not jpg... saving in jpg you end up with a lot artifacts and depending on the compression loose details ie; fine lines sharpness, etc... now if the program doesn't give you any choice on the format, many video editor programs will allow you to change the compression for jpg's so pick a very low compression.... your picture has about a 97% compression, to me that very high.... the snagged frame you want at a much lower compression... for example... a bmp picture of clouds.... say very nice... saving that in jpg at 97% . the cloud edges becomes blurry , color shifts also you get a fair about of pixalation and that just by using jpg alone... for get about whatever other issues with a vhs video tape... smile...

well those are my thought Ihope there helpfull, the experts are much superior than as far cleaning a picture.... good uck

Originally Posted by nzo

Hi all,
I have a bunch of archival VHS and SVHS analog video tapes with some great footage on them. When I capture individual frames from the footage as jpgs, the results are understandably poor, given the original resolution of the cam etc. with wall-to-wall jpg jaggies.

I've included an example shot.

Is there any way, via pshop or other means, that I can improve this type of image? Are there edge-smoothers, or pixel algorithms that will 'fill' any missing jaggies by using next door pixels...that sort of thing?

Thanks and appreciation

John

http://i58.photobucket.com/albums/g2...m2-cropped.jpg

[nzo]

Thank you all for your very helpful input and your attempts at reviving the terrible jpg Here's what I've been doing so far:

To get the VHS footage from the VHS player to the HD, I used a Canopus ADVC-100 converter/digitizer that creates an AVI file which is fairly close to the original tape in quality. Having done that bit, the movie clip is fair game for anything I care to try.

So far I had only tried a dedicated frame-grabber utility that allowed me to freeze the clip wherever I wanted and take a snapshot. Pretty basic stuff with no bells and whistles. My example pic was created this way and as you could see, not so hot.

I've been experimenting some more and was able to obtain much better results by frame-grabbing directly in Vegas, my video editor, and saving the grab as a PNG, as JerryB suggested.

I'll bring the PNGs into photoshop and play around a bit more

So it's gone from hopeless to not so hopeless

John

[Jerryb]

hi,
your quite welcome and it sounds like your making good progress ....

just a couple of additonal info for future reference...
1. defintiely saving the video in avi a good choice that a non compressed format.....
note: mpg is a compressed format and y ou can loose quality just like jpg's...

2. might want to experiment a little... recording your vhs to your editor program and let the editor program save the file in it own propriatary format whenyou do your editing or frame grabbing..... I think results be just a little bit better and you can always save the final results of your recording as avi or mpg later on....

anyway.... have fun.. smiling.... and good luck

Originally Posted by nzo

Thank you all for your very helpful input and your attempts at reviving the terrible jpg Here's what I've been doing so far:

To get the VHS footage from the VHS player to the HD, I used a Canopus ADVC-100 converter/digitizer that creates an AVI file which is fairly close to the original tape in quality. Having done that bit, the movie clip is fair game for anything I care to try.

So far I had only tried a dedicated frame-grabber utility that allowed me to freeze the clip wherever I wanted and take a snapshot. Pretty basic stuff with no bells and whistles. My example pic was created this way and as you could see, not so hot.

I've been experimenting some more and was able to obtain much better results by frame-grabbing directly in Vegas, my video editor, and saving the grab as a PNG, as JerryB suggested.

I'll bring the PNGs into photoshop and play around a bit more

So it's gone from hopeless to not so hopeless

John

[yggit]

John
Contact me at jeff.mills1@hotmail.com
I have been working with film to dital video for some time and have been using photoshop since the early 90's.
I need some info from you before I can offer some advise

Regards
Jeff

[TommyO]

John,
I would agree with the others, and I like your new approach.
It sounds like it could be hard to determine what your frame grabber was doing with the jpeg settings during its conversion. It could have been your problem.

You are not going to get good resolution in the frames from the originals. The originals simply do not contain it. Early cameras had to do a lot of processing to get the analog data onto tape. The resolution of any digital frames resulting from an analog to digital conversion is not going to be that great; the AVI format is as good as it gets in the consumer world.

You have many filters at your disposal without buying a third party utility. The "reduce noise" filter in PS is a very good but subtle filter. The nice thing about it, it allows you to reduce noise of 3 different types in one shot, as well as maintain edge detail. Again, it's very subtle and will not reduce noise as quickly as a third party utility. But, from my look that may be all you need.

Don't forget, you can always apply a mask and paint in the effect where you want it; or paint it out (reverse it).

Best of luck !