Modern Editing Software Used to Improve Film Footage from the Early 1900s

Film footage from the early 1900’s, when hand-cranked cameras were all the technology available, aren’t exactly high-quality. Choppy, jumpy, and sped-up, the people in these films look anything but natural.

One YouTuber, however, has taken it upon himself to enhance some footage from this time period and, in the process, produced something much closer to today’s standards of clarity and stability.

The source of the above film is debated, but general consensus is that some of it was shot in Cork, Ireland and all of it may have originated from the work of the Mitchell and Kenyon film company. Wherever it came from, YouTuber and videographer Rick88888888 from Leidschendam, The Netherlands has taken today’s editing software to it and made it somewhat eerily more realistic.

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The magic was performed in part using motion stabilization and frame interpolation software. The motion stabilization took the normally choppy video and steadied it, while the frame interpolation took the frame rate from 18fps to the standard 24fps while filling in the resulting extra frames. Rick then applied video enhancing software to upscale the old footage to “HD quality,” although the software can only do so much.

The nature of this sort of thing is that it won’t come out perfect. Parts of the video look as strange as any old video, while others show their subjects moving so naturally you forget you’re watching footage shot around the year 1900. But even though it’s not perfect, we were still quite impressed, and we think you will be too.

(via Imaging Resource)

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