Colour enhancement of old home movies

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Bluebeary

Newbie Location: Maple Ridge, British Columbia, Canada Joined: Dec 15, 2014 19:34 Messages: 6 Offline

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Apr 24, 2015 18:05

Many years ago I took my parents old 8 mm movie film from the 1950's - 1970's, projected it onto a white wall and filmed everything with my 12 pound VHS video camera as an anniversary gift for them. Now, with all this new technology available, I want to re-record everything onto DVD before the tapes deteriorate to the point where they are unuseable.

I have recorded all the old VHS tapes into my computer using PowerDirector13 and find the colours faded and washed out and the images themselves are quite "soft" (as in not sharp).

What would be the best way, if at all possible, to enhance the colours from almost black and white to a more normal colouration and/or improve the sharpness of the images without making them too grainy?

I've searched the help files and the forum comments and havent found exactly what I'm looking for. The posts I think might help are usually about the function not working!

Does anyone have any advice on whaere I should start?

Many thanks/Larry

Carl312

Senior Contributor Location: Texas, USA Joined: Mar 16, 2010 20:11 Messages: 9090 Offline

Apr 24, 2015 18:47

Quote: Many years ago I took my parents old 8 mm movie film from the 1950's - 1970's, projected it onto a white wall and filmed everything with my 12 pound VHS video camera as an anniversary gift for them. Now, with all this new technology available, I want to re-record everything onto DVD before the tapes deteriorate to the point where they are unuseable.

I have recorded all the old VHS tapes into my computer using PowerDirector13 and find the colours faded and washed out and the images themselves are quite "soft" (as in not sharp).

What would be the best way, if at all possible, to enhance the colours from almost black and white to a more normal colouration and/or improve the sharpness of the images without making them too grainy?

I've searched the help files and the forum comments and havent found exactly what I'm looking for. The posts I think might help are usually about the function not working!

Does anyone have any advice on whaere I should start?

Many thanks/Larry

Video Tape is Standard Definition, so they will not be real sharp. You have a second generation recording. First generation was the film.

As to how to improve the color, you put one video on the timeline, Select it > Fix/Enhance on top of timelline. Check Color Adjustment. play with the Saturation slider to increase the color level. If you need to adjust the tint, use Hue.

Produce (disable Hardware Acceleration for best results) after you are happy with the color.

Making color adjustments will make the time to produce fairly long. PD has to modifiy every frame. Carl312: Windows 10 64-bit 8 GB RAM,AMD Phenom II X4 965 3.4 GHz,ATI Radeon HD 5770 1GB,240GB SSD,two 1TB HDs.