Is restoring and colorizing old films with Artificial Intelligence acceptable to historians?
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- Опубліковано 21 сер 2024
- The large majority of the viewers of this UA-cam channel (greatly) appreciate the results of meticulously and skillfully restoring old film footage. Especially A.I. colorization is found to be of significant added value because viewers can then get a better idea of what life was about a century ago and also come to realize that life never was in Black & White.
From an entertainment and even an educational perspective this enhancement work significantly adds to viewer appreciation, which is also reflected in the circa 98.5% appreciation score of this UA-cam channel (measured on the basis of "Likes" versus "Dislikes").
However, some historians are (very) critical about the restoration of old film footage by means of the use of modern Artificial Intelligence software.
Some renowned (online) film archives even refuse to touch old film. They would rather retain wobbly, blurry, faint, unsharp digital scans in their archives than even make the smallest attempt to realize some improvement in quality to please viewers who love to watch historic topics.
Historians claim that A.I. restoration negatively effects the historic value of old films or even destroys it. In this documentary we look at the many aspects of film restoration and try to seperate the wheat from the chaff.
Not all software enhancements are destructive by nature. Some in fact even bring out visual information that is hidden within the dark or over-exposed of many films. We try to identify the ethical boundaries of A.I. film restoration by providing insight in its possibilities and its limits.
Without revealing the outcome of our analyses, it can be stated here that the matter is far more complex than a simple rejection or acceptance of video A.I. enhancement and/or colorization.
In this film we refer to a very interesting Eye Films symposium about "restauration versus re-appropriation" which can be viewed here: • This is Film! 2021 | #...
The "Two Minute Papers" referred to is here: • Everybody Can Make Dee...
Watching both channels is highly recommended!
PS: If you don't like technical and/or analytical stuff then please do not watch this video. No need to click on the thumbs-down button. Just skip this upload and come back next time to view more historic footage. Thank you very much!
If you want to know more about the latest video colorization techniques then watch this video on my other channel: • New video colorization...
*If you want to know more about the latest video colorization techniques then watch this video on my other channel* : ua-cam.com/video/AZvFAsuo3G4/v-deo.html
*If you don't like technical and/or analytical stuff then please do not watch this video. No need to click on the thumbs-down button* .
Just skip this upload and come back next time to view more historic footage. Thank you very much.
*By all means DO SHARE YOUR VIEWS on this topic with us* ! Just to add that in no way are we deterred from continuing to use A.I. to enhance, restore and colorize old film footage. Nevertheless, it is always good to take a helicopter view to analyse all the ins- and outs, pro's and con's plus positive or negative opinions about the use of very new, ground breaking technologies.
Just to emphasize that the main point I am trying to make is that film archives, who are sitting on loads of great historic material, don't like or even refuse to enhance or restore old film simply because it would not be "historically correct". They just sit back, do nothing and in stead keep spreading low, even pathetic quality material on their websites. They don't seem to realize that the overall majority of "normal" viewers would love to see these films in the best possible quality. Purist historians are a minority but their attitude seems to block almost any film restoration project. At least channels like mine can try to fill these gaps.
Have you removed the new upload just asking . 🇬🇧👍
@@andrewdaley3081 Yes, I made a mistake by uploading the wrong version that did not have sound. The correct version about Berlin in 1936 has been released a moment ago.
@@Rick88888888 yes just watched is fantastic the difference after you have done you jiggery pokery. 🇬🇧👍😁
As long as the original films are preserved, enhancements are welcome. The originals are history. All history must be preserved for present and future generations.
What you said!!
Exactly, treat it as an interpretation.
Bingo! I have no problem with modifying a copy of anything.
Exactly!
Exactly, the simple answer is both! Keep the original for posterity but the film enhancement does make modern people connect more with the older films (makes the people seem more modern).
I've been here since before black and white sinking in some of that old Dutch feeling, but I think the AI coloring is wonderful and adds a lot more 'life' into the footage.
For historic preservation purposes, sure, I can see why some banal historians would want the originals, but those are well preserved as they are.
The historians rely on what they "think" might be the original. Many times, stories, photos, historical accounts are very much shaded by the teller and in fact may not be the truth. So I'm for enhanced films and photos. Many "accurate" histories are re-written as new information is gathered.
I too think AI upscaling, as well as the overall advancements in AI, are awesome. There'll be a HUGE market for colorized/60fps/4k/texture remasters of old films and animations, for extremely realistic figures of history to be 'spoken' to through very sophisticated AI such as GPT-3 for educational or recreational purposes, for homework and writing and art to be brainstormed with similar AI that can suggest possible answers, for spaces in games and films that could be in a sense auto-filled to free up man hours onto something else (though still requiring tweaking when complete)- the future really is happening sooner than we think. 10 years, can you imagine what would be possible then? How convincing and natural deep fakes and other ai-generated content will be?
@@FoxyNinetails "There'll be a HUGE market for colorized/60fps/4k/texture remasters of old films and animations." Oh, I sure hope not... Maybe for random clips of everyday life (although I still think a human should do the restoration over AI), but films (or more specifically movies) should never be colorized, frame interpolated, or have any sort of digital noise reduction applied to them. That destroys and tampers with the filmmakers' art.
I feel that the enhancements really add to it. I adore how it brings everything to life, and makes it so much more real. Truth is, I might watch them without the enhancements ,but I wouldn't love them as much and, might lose interest in time. Please don't stop making the enhanced versions.
I love colorizing! It’s not like you’ve destroyed the black and white originals. People can enjoy both!
Good luck with finding the original black ad white version though.
In a sense it is destroying the originals because you're replacing the way films actually looked with a lie.
Exactly! Thank You.
@@UnchainedEruptionomfg no? It’s an art form. An art form that many good & noble people love & enjoy. It’s not like they are destroying original film & pawning their work off as original or something along those lines. I’ve personally never experienced that.
Unless someone intentionally tries to make the footage misleading in some way, say by deliberately miscoloring some important aspect of a scene (a flag, a logo, etc.) I don't think there should be concern. As others have mentioned, the original footage is still available. As long as that is the case, then more power to you and everyone else doing this near-magic on these fantastic old scenes!
Thanks for sharing the background technology of this process, very interesting, to me about as interesting as the final result. Dankjewel !!
Hi Rick, even though I know these types of videos probably get significantly less views than your standard uploads, I find them very interesting and informative. Thank you for taking time to give us some background on the topic and for sharing your own well-informed opinions. I appreciate your willingness to be aware of and open--mind to outside opinions on the value and veracity of your work.
Thank you very much
I love this Chanel. Please go on!
I think it helps modern day people connect more with the past. I frequently restore and colorize old family films, and can see peoples actual reactions to seeing their own family history.
Worst case is that the original is lost or buried among enhanced versions and then the twitter audience bases their understanding of events on some detail that an AI made up.
Historians should refer to the original only. As long as the original does not get tampered with, and the AI version is marked as such, there should be no discussion. If the goal of studying the images is historic understanding, then the original footage should be used.
Yes but only the AI version should be used in education. Enhanced visions feel closer and more real and connect better.
@@pavlerunner How can you use an edited version of something to be used in education, you've already tampered with it, you should only use a restored version of black and white footage without AI to teach.
@@Picskull Because it depends on what type of teaching you do. If you're teaching people to become historians or archeologists then yes. You're teaching them to research, understand and interpret real facts and evidence.
If you're teaching regular kids history, people who in the rest of their lives will rarely do anything with it. It's more important to make them feel history. To make them relate to and understand the people of the past and the lives they lived. Making them memorize facts is secondary for that purpose.
To that latter group we already show them reconstruction paintings and drawings, we make them visit restored historical sites, why not show them reconstructed footage that they can relate to way better. (as long as you keep to ethical guidelines and are always transparent about how the image is made)
As historical reconstructor myself, i'm often frustrated by the lack of interest traditional history teaching has bred in most people. Because of the obsessive focus on memorizing dates, and facts without putting any effort in making it relatable. It makes even the slightest curious kid absolutely bored and adverse to historical things.
It's important we learn to understand this difference in education. Both methods can and should live next to each other, it doesn't have to be one or the other. What's the use of a library full of historical facts if no one cares to read them?
If you educate a pupil about a castle, you show him both a current day ruin and a reconstructed painting. Neither are representative of the day, but both together gives us an idea of how it was.
Lastly, the original footage is already an flawed representation of the actual past. Obviously the past wasn't black and white. And thus, why consider the black and white version more correct than a colored one. both are just as incorrect.
My main point was you shouldn't alter something just because you're trying to make it relatable.
History is history, it doesn't need revisionism, footage of people at the time of the Victorian Era was taken in black and white, from large format wet and dry plate photography down to the emerging 35mm film format.
Your argument that it should be colourized or altered to make it more relatable is based on a flawed idea that we have to make things of interest to children rather than actually show them how things are in a different era.
Isn't History supposed to be about portraying in an accurate way how life was at the time, and how that life was recorded, which was in black and white, anything else is revisionism for the sake of "relatability".
No wonder people end up growing up so entitled these days, they're dictating to their own teachers how History is taught and and how History is seen.
@@Picskull I think you misunderstand the word alter. Alter means getting rid of the old thing and replacing it with the new thing. Yes you shouldn't do that.
Making additional content to explain the past is not altering. Since you are not getting rid and changing the existing evidence.
No one is replacing the old black and white footage in the archives with these AI coloured ones, the originals still exist and you can still look them up just the same.
Also maybe there is confusion about the term history. (maybe also language difference) in my language the translation of history means "the thing that happened" Books, pictures, paintings, etc aren't the actual history, they are just evidence of history. A black and white film is a flawed incomplete representation of what actually happened, as will any medium.
ANY recording is in it's nature flawed, and will always give an incorrect perception of what was recorded to the observer.
Showing a kid a black and white film DOESN'T show the kid what actually happened, it showed the kid what the camera recorded.
Case in point: many of us have a feeling that the past used to be black and white, sometimes we dream about the past in black and white. Because that is what we saw. We can reason it's not, but our experience of the evidence is that it's black and white.
Lastly, what do you actually want to teach a kid by showing a film like this? Just the fact that camera's back then recorded black and white? Seems like a boring fact (to anyone but a photographer) compared to what is actually the subject of those films.
I'd rather teach kids how people walked in the streets, what cars drove, what boats came buy, how people interacted, how they were dressed, how busy the streets wore, what the atmosphere was at the time. Those things are INFINITELY more useful and important to a kid than the fact that film used to have no color.
Again, as long as you are transparent about what you are showing, using colored films can only ever be beneficial to a kids education of history.
Let these tool developments continue. Just make sure you keep the original, and a copy of every step along the way. Great job!
Love your content and look forward to more! Useful in showing my kids the past where our roots came from too 👍🏼thank you
Great video Rick, any restoration has got to be a good thing, preserving old footage for future generations to watch, personally I think it's amazing 👌👍😀
What a great video, thanks so much for your effort to inform us viewers and your critical analysis!
Thank you very much. It has been on my mind for a long time to make this video. One of the main driving forces to make it are the objections by the Dutch film archive "Beeld En Geluid" against using A.I. for film restoration. Hopefully it will be food for further thought and change of attitude.
Wij genieten enorm van jouw films,het geeft een zeer "heldere"blik in het verleden en hoe de mensen leefden.Iedereen heeft wel ergens een mening over. Ga zo door Rick en maak ons bewust van historie.Thx
Wonderful to hear your voice, Rick. Much love from Rotterdam.
As long as the original is retained it is great.
What are they complaining about?
The issues around Deep Fakes is completely different there the idea is to deceive, what you are doing is enhancing and making footage more accessible especially to youngsters who switch off at B&W.
I like it. It makes it look like you’re actually there instead of learning about something that doesn’t exist anymore.
Beautiful work. The restoration of the films can never replace the value of the original tapes, but they are a valuable tool to better appreciate the past.
Met veel interesse deze video bekeken. Als Amsterdammer spreken mij natuurlijk de Amsterdamse films het meeste aan. De stabiele beelden en de toevoeging van kleur zijn een grote meerwaarde. Deze wijze voorop u deze films verbeterd hebt is in mijn opinie bewonderenswaardig. Ga zo door . . .
You are doing a wonderful job!
Please continue, don’t let the political correct ones ruin your work.
Nothing about this is about “the political correct ones”. Don’t let the knee jerk reactions ruin your work.
Boris was extremely accurate 🤣
It certainly captured his "gormless" look.
I find that stabilizing film, reducing the flicker. removing grain and colorizing adds so much to old film that makes it look amazing if the film scan or transfer is of high quality (4k)
Restoration is not wrong as long as the original image remains unchanged.
In colors does indeed give a different view of the film, but whether they are the original colors is also not certain.
I think the technique is fantastic.
Rick, bedankt voor al je werk en zeker deze ophelderende video kan ik waarderen. Toevallig volgde ik Two Minute Papers ook al! Ik sta er vaak verstelt van. Je Engels is overigens ook buitengewoon goed, chapeau. Ik ben blij dat er mensen de vraag stellen of iets ethisch wel de juiste kant op gaat. Dat gezegd hebbende; alle punten die jij maakt klinken mij heel juist in de oren en je lijkt me ook iemand die liefde heeft voor historie. Hopelijk krijg je geen ongegronde tegengas want ook ik ben erg blij met jou producties.
The animated photo of Boris Johnson 8:44 looks just like a normal video closeup of him...😆
This is a fantastic video. Really enjoyed hearing you explain the process and the ethics behind restoration.
Keep up the great work. 😁👍
Thank you very much!
Thank you for theze great films. No need to take in consideration the opinions of historians that don't appreciate your skillfully restored films. Just keep up the good work.
I like the enhancing and colorizing because it makes things more approachable. We should keep the originals for the historians, but encourage making things for the mass market so that people get interested in history
Some documents such as those pertaining to WWI and WWII can be rapidly scanned, translated photos enhanced and colorized to facilitate the study of these documents. This does not alter the original. A future historian could potentially study documents that would have required several people who spoke different languages although an AI can make a mistake with human languages as the translation could depend on the context that a word is used. One exception would be the film "Citizen Kane" whose creator expressed his wishes that his work not be colorized.
It all needs to be digitized anyway. After that is done, anything goes. The historians can study the wobbly black and white and us regular folks can enjoy the nice colour job.
Most AI colorizations are not nice... they give everything a horrible shade of brown and blue. Upscaling often uses low-resolution sources plucked from UA-cam or archive.org, instead of using An actual HD or 4K scan. Because of this (using 360p/720p) sources, it often looks terrible without reason.
Actually real historians should probably see both. The motion stabilization and interpolation can bring out details that will be completely missed in the original, even though they clearly are there, and might be important to historical interpretation of the video, area, or period. I have noticed this a number of times where watching some AI version of a film and then doing a frame by frame comparison with the original, I realize the AI brought out some important detail of the original that my eyes glossed over, even while staring at a single still frame of the original. But having seen the (usually distorted) version in the AI, I can then easily pick out the detail in the original.
Cave paintings, the 1st documentaries, were usually in color. An educated guess is better than a shade of grey.
Hi, I’m Dutch but have lived in the USA for the past 30 yrs. I was born in Soest and I was very pleasantly surprised that you used images of the Soester Natuurbad in the first two minutes, which does not exist anymore (now there’s a hotel there 😢). I swam there a lot as a kid and teenager with my friends. Nice to see it again, and thank you for using that!! 😀👍🧡
Interesting!
Very good to address this topic and shed a light on the several views vs the pros and cons.
As long as it does not change what was originally on the film. It certainly brings the past closer. As long as it's the intention to improve the original i see no problem. If science wants to study films let them study the original. Love your channel btw.
The most humans who grew up with color television have difficulties with watching black and white movies, like me
Colorizing those video's make the video's more alive and specially with old war footage colorizing make them more easy to watch and understand what the video's are showing
Your channel does a great job with this!
I used to work at Colorization in Toronto as a ‘tracker’. Anyone else? Interesting video. I think the process today, using AI with human augmented correction can be very valuable.
I for one prefer watching both colourised and stabilised historical footage
Thank you for all truly thought-provoking analysis. Much more to what you do than meets the eye.
Fantastic work as always, and really good insight into the problem. Thank you!
I love it and watch all of them more than once. It gives you a feeling as if you are in a time machine and wish you can import yourself to those times. You wsh you could talk to the people and experience their moments knowing that they do not not exist anymore. Excellemt and I could careless about the ways and means to create these stunning images. Thank you very much for the creators and hope you continue your excellent presentations of periods now gone forever.
I remember hearing or reading somewhere that after Steven Spielberg made the movie "schlindler's List" in black and white, his father said something like "I was there and it happened in color".
As long as the original and authentic media is saved and public, anything afterwards is fair game. Colorization, and audio additions are fine as long as new research updates the media to make it more authentic. And image stabilization and speed adjustement makes it as if you were there.
Awesome work ...... So many old b/w films NEED this! Love it, brings life to history... it was never b/w.
enhancement is the next step in education and preservation of history.
That analysis was excellent. Thank you.
Glad you liked it!
The issue surely is labelling? If you take old footage and process it, then it should be a requirement that you make it crystal clear, via bookended captions and metadata, that this has been done and that what the viewer sees is a representation of the original which may have key differences. If the film is just a basic cleaned up version of the original, then that too should be labelled as such. Footage which is purely AI hallucinated (as in your examples here of Abraham Lincoln and Enrico Caruso etc) should be clearly labelled "AI Generated". It somewhat akin to the old "What you are about to see is a dramatisation of..." versus "This is actual footage of..." captioning. Of course there will always be edge cases and grey areas to deal with.
I like it when short fragments of original footage are added to a restored film. This way you can see what the effect is and continue to add value to the original. Naturally, all original images must be preserved and accessible for the sake of their historical value.
I think having AI doing colorization and restoration is a wonderful idea!!!! Imagine how much more films we can quickly preserve before these films get lost forever. However, the original, unedited version should still be kept for future reference.
It's important to always keep the original in it's highest possible quality archived and available and regard all enhanced versions as a temporary means to view the content. Technology changes so fast that the best results now are outdated a year from now. In the future these AI restorations can probably be applied in real-time on the original footage as if you were using some filter in your video player and parts can be switched on/off on demand. For historians there should be no problem as the original source footage should be archived to study. Enhanced content is great to offer a feel of an period in time beyond choppy grainy images that relates more to the present. And as new technologies become available old material could look better and better.
I agree
It brings these old films to life. Thanks.
This is a very well thought out and important video. Thank you for making it.
A few random points that occur to me:
1. The original footage should never be destroyed, and should whenever possible be easily available to the researcher (or even the casual viewer) for comparison. Of course if the new work is based on copyrighted original footage the byzantine copyright laws of various countries may make access to the original impossible for a viewer of the new work. But if the new work in based on a freely available older work, there should be some method easily accessible from the new work's sideband information to find the original work(s).
An example of this occurred on an old film you recently enhanced. The frame interpolation tends to lose fine detail. In this case, the overhead wires, support structures, and sometimes even the support poles for the streetcar power wires were lost. In fact even the trolley poles on the streetcars were lost in all but a few frames. This led to some deluded soul claiming that the 100 year old streetcars were powered by some magical "Tesla batteries" that the oil interests had suppressed. Argument of fact with this individual proved useless, and I was unable to point him to the original footage that would have clearly shown the wires, as there was no citation of this footage in the video description.
2. Motion stabilization and frame rate enhancement (combined) is generally a good thing for all the reasons you stated in the video. Currently though it has some drawbacks. One is the loss of fine detail mentioned above. Another is along the lines of creating fantasies: the AI software will pick some detail (such as part of a face) from a single frame, and then use that fragment of an image unchanged through possibly many seconds if subsequent motion frames. At full speed this can look OK, but it can also look strange. Since the detail the AI captures can be part of both the foreground and background of the image, this can result in inappropriate bits of background being pasted into other locations in subsequent frames. A third problem is that the AI may see a sign with wording that is readable in many frames, but pick an enhanced (and unreadable) version of some blurred frame, and replace the readable text in subsequent frames. I see this frequently when film from a moving video passes a road sign or billboard.
3. A couple of decades back I was sitting around at a Hollywood SMPTE section meeting having a discussion with a couple of other people. They were arguing vehemently against colorization as being historically inaccurate. Of course 20 years ago a lot of colorization was awful, so there was some reason to complain. I argued that it served a useful purpose of making old movies more accessible to modern audiences that had not developed the learned ability to easily watch B&W footage and enjoy the process. This still didn't do much to convince them against their argument. At the time of this discussion, there was a lot of interest in professional circles for 3D movies. As devil's advocate, I asked them to ponder this question: In say 30 years, all the movie houses will be showing movies in 3D, and the home television will also. Everything new will be shot in 3D, including the nightly news. Everyone will be used to seeing things in 3D, and seeing a "flat" picture will seem unnatural. What then will they say about people that want to not only colorize old B&W footage, but convert it into 3D so that new viewers will find it acceptable? They did not have a good answer to this scenario.
4. One point that you missed in your discussion was sound. From casual observation of UA-cam comments in channels that do historical film preservation, modern viewers are very uncomfortable with silent video, often claiming that "the soundtrack is missing", or accusing the poster of censoring the video by deliberately removing the soundtrack. Of course you do a very good job of adding appropriate music to your restored (if that is the correct word) videos. Guy Jones does an excellent job of putting realistic stereo sound effects on the motion stabilized videos he posts from time to time. This should also be a concern for historians, since historically non-original sounds have been added to make the image seem acceptably real to the modern audience.
5. Real historians should probably see both the enhanced version and the original version. The motion stabilization and interpolation can bring out details that will be completely missed in the original, even though they clearly are there, and might be important to historical interpretation of the video, area, or period. I have noticed this a number of times where watching some AI version of a film and then doing a frame by frame comparison with the original, I realize the AI brought out some important detail of the original that my eyes glossed over, even while staring at a single still frame of the original. But having seen the (usually distorted) version in the AI, I can then easily pick out the detail in the original.
6. On your point that film archives sit on old stuff and put it out in the worst possible resolution if they put out anything at all, I think this is related to copyright (and money), to a belief that people wanting to view the stuff should show up at the archive in person during business hours (with an appropriate "researchers id card"), and also to the belief that non-researchers do not deserve access to the pristine images. They would most likely never do colorization or AI, and perhaps should not, but they should at least release more than tiny clips of longer works, and in resolutions greater than 320x200, or perhaps the exceedingly generous 640x400 formats.
Thanks for the feedback.
1. Agreed, but I think I already replied to that person that these details were not there in the original in the first place. 2. Motion-stabilisation never removes details. It's just the frame X and Y offsets that are changed. Frame interpolation is also not often destructive. 3. Attempts to introduce 3D in the home have already failed twice in the past 10 years. It is great for gaming, VR and in the cinema, but for the rest it so far has not taken off at all.
I can tell you that I still sometimes have mixed feelings towards the colorization results. Outdoor scenes look great, but indoor often not and it even totally failes when large groups of people occupy the screen. 4. Good point, but I am sorry that I totally disagree with the work that Guy Jones does with the sound. If that isn't changing history then I don't know what is. Such added sounds are as Fake as can be and are also very distracting, especially if not done properly. Better add nice, appropriate music is my opinion. These fake sounds also become very boring after listening to horse hooves, fake horns etc. for more than 30 seconds. 5. Indeed! Especially histogram filters can bring out many hidden details (but do often cause artefacts). 6. True. My opinion is that ideally copyright should never apply more than 50 years after the original release and governments should fully sponsor film archives in stead of the current practice of them ruining great footage with time tickers, banners, watermarks and other stuff in order to protect copyright. They should at minimum become not for profit companies.
@@Rick88888888 I'll respectfully disagree with you that motion stabilization (or perhaps something associated with it) removes fine details. I've done frame comparisons of original and AI stabilized/enhanced images, and in many cases seen things that render as lines only a few pixels wide disappear completely in the rendered footage. It is my assumption that the enhancement is treating these as film scratches or dirt rather than part of the original image. (I do not know the actual reason, never having looked at the actual software. But I've seen dirt/scratch removal algorithms take out picture items, especially if they are thin and near vertical.)
On sounds rather than music, certainly the added sounds are no more accurate than color rendering, though is done very well they don't necessarily have to be less accurate than the color. They are certainly non-historical, as is much of the color. But from the viewpoint of the normal viewer rather than the historian, they is no reason not to use them _if done well_. You are probably aware that much movie footage is often shot silent, or the original sound discarded, and the sound effects almost all generated in post. This is really the same thing, except applied to something that originally had no integral sound (or the integral sound was lost.)
If done badly the sound can be extremely annoying. I just watched a NASSPROD clip and immediately muted the sound. It's my personal opinion (and I guess we differ, which is fine) that Guy does an above average job of post sound, and I usually (there are exceptions) do not find it annoying there. I will agree with you that in general appropriate music is the much better choice, especially since reasonably correct post sound effects are really hard to do at all well.
@@lwilton Thank you very much for your response. Just to say I have been restoring old film for more than 15 years now. The tools of the trade have gotten much better in the last two years. Indeed A.I. can be tricky, but with Deshaker stabilisation software I have never had any issues. It is by far the best stabilizer. The results are rock solid and hardly ever destructive.
As long as you don't take credit for the filming, and do it respectfully, especially knowing the limitations of the technology. Its not true colour, its "helping colour". Helping people to see what it could have been like - your imagination can fill in the rest. Look forward to seeing more.
Thank you so much for your efforts
I believe restoration/perservation is different than remastering. I certainly welcome the first two cause it's a reflection of how that piece of art looked at best and not modifying elements in it that already existed.
No, please. B & W actually ADDS a flavor, emphasizing more than just a historical background personna to a documentary and those PEOPLE CONTA8NED THEREIN.
We lived our lives in basic black, clothing mostly drab for the masses, our cars were black in the beginning production years. Our photo albums were B & W the first hundred years or so.
B&W puts a stamp of validity on WW War Doc7mentaries, right and wrong, us and them, tyranny and freedom, YES EVEN black and white were/was more clear.
Just preserve the originals.
Colorized prints are welcome of course.
Thank for listening.
Good work !!!
The main reason for me watching these video's, is *because* they are restored/colorized.
Black & White footage gives me a bit of a "distance" feeling, which causes me losing all interest in watching it, I know, it sounds very strange but it's true.
"At what level of accuracy will historians start to accept the output of colorization as suitably correct?" My guess would be none. There will probably always be some assumptions made about the b&w footage. If the colorized footage is labeled clearly as "approximate color as of December 2023," that may be the most one can hope for. The march of unearthing new facts about history goes on, so the colors used have the potential to shift as new data is unearthed. Just as you would not want an old history book, with inaccurate facts, to continue to be printed and sold, a historian would not want 12 different color versions of a piece of footage to be forever roaming around the internet. It would become another endless stream of fact-checking for someone. I very much enjoy seeing cleaned, stabilized, colorized pieces of footage. Having tried some of these techniques myself for old family video transfers, I applaud all the effort it takes to make this happen. Still, I have to remind myself that it is not the actual :"footage", so as to not fall into that trap.
Zeer verhelderd en leerrijk voor iedereen en ook voor zogenaamde historici.
Fascinating , thank you
They don’t want people to see how beautiful the past was
Very interesting, thank you.
Personally, I don't mind, as those enhanced films are for my entertainment.
I find the keeping safe of the original films more important than creating an "enhanced copy".
To ensure proper working with the films, a marking for processed material is necessary, and should be included in the results.
Thank you for your work, and the information of the background discussions.
All my films are marked with "[A.I. enhanced & colorized]" in the title and what has been done with software to enhance is always meticulously described in the description, plus a reference to the source is provided. The handling of the original footage is not my responsibility.
By the way, if it would be my responsibility, I would start a crowfunding to buy the rights to as many historic films as possible. Subsequently I would open up all these dusty archives and re-scan every old film with modern scanners, digitally restore everything and then publish all this historic material for free on UA-cam, without banners, logo's, watermarks and other "crap". I would most certainly not do it the way companies like "Huntley Film Archives" a.o. spoil and ruïn their material.
I just subscribed. I think you're doing a great service. Thank you!
Oh, what a fascinating video, thank you for taking the time to make it, but in reference to AI learning (to accurately reflect the context correctly), I suppose it needs to be given a thorough walk-through of the whole of Human history as far back as the earliest films eh ? Whew !
CARUSO Geweldig!!! Bedankt mijnheer.
For me, as long as the original and the restored are kept together in the archives and readily available, (I don't mean split screen) then fine. Then historians have a choice. I much prefer the detail of the enhanced version.
Enhancing is good as long as the original is respected. If not, it should be mentioned. Your films are great to watch.
I think original b&w footage also doesn't capture things 100% accurately , so it always has been just an impression of what something looked like.
Quite true. B&W films are a simplification of reality, due to lack of having something better at that point in time.
Thank you for this thoughtful exploration.
I agree, as long as its not taking to Peter Jackson levels of restoration where it modifies history to the persons liking, this kind of historical restoration and colorization should be standard.
I think your AI is brilliant. Certainly got me looking at more history. Dont think i will look at any BW film again after discovering yours and a few others brilliant work. Brings the past up to the present. Thanks
It's wonderful to watch , bringing it to life.keep it up.
Glad you enjoy it!
The 'historians' can go watch the original nearly unwatchable (in many cases) footage if they so desire.
It's not like you are destroying old footage never to be seen again.
If it was unwatchable in black and white then it would be unwatchable in color.
@@capscaps04
They're not just 'colorized'.
Or don't you pay attention.
Great to enhance film: viewers can decide to watch both black and white or color.
I'm no engineer. Just a hobbyist photographer and history appreciator. There should be a new video format that preserves the original inside the enhanced version, just like PNG images does for raw photo data. Would be a bigger file for sure, but if the original would be zipped and needed to be unzipped by some software to read it, maybe it would be acceptable?
That was fascinating. Ethics are a factor that I didn’t consider and I was sorry to hear about Peter Jackson’s adaptations to his film . However after listening to your presentation, I have to agree that preserving the historic detail through AI enhancement should be the first and only consideration. The original footage should always remain intact for historical purposes. However it is my opinion that enhancing historical details of the prints not only adds to the depth of information of the film but in my case the meaning and the relatability to the people and the settings of that particular time and place.
May I say well done and great work :) loving what your doing here and keep up the good work. I will be checking out all of the videos as I find this fascinating :)
Much appreciated!
First thank you very much for this incredible work. For the first time I look at those old films with a lot of interest and emotion. They are not boring and I enjoy all of them.
Now to answer your question on the "acceptability", in my humble opinion we can split the public in a simple way into two categories:
The first category are made of professionals like historians of our civilization but also those that study the history and techniques of photography and film. For them maybe touching the original film apart from having an identical copy for preservation would be unacceptable. Maybe the historians studying the human civilizations would accept the bare minimum to have the existing information that cannot be seen to become visible and be revealed but no more that that.
The second and most common category is made of viewers like me who look at the film just to travel in time and have the pleasure and emotion to feel connected to that past which can be also part of the viewers personal past. Many of the very old original films when viewed as is, in stock mode, just do not create much of an emotion, they feel as if they were coming from another dimension, with humans that are not real humans but kind of puppets ore some artificial beings. We can do an analogy about sophisticated humanoid robots that try to resemble as much as possible to humans and human faces but where our brain says it's something wrong and is even completely unpleasant. This is called the Uncanny Valley phenomenon. Those old unrestored films depict a world that is in the Uncanny Valley. With your work you have taken that past world out of the Uncanny Valley. This is why you got such a success in terms of audience. Your films become believable to us. We could be in there. Your film of Lausanne (an excerpt) was aired on the Swiss television during the evening news.
To arise that emotion and feel that these are images from our same world, they need to be "restored" to a quality to whom our eyes of today are used to have. Our eyes are trained on perfect high resolution images on digital screens with excellent contrast, high dynamic range, color depth, and luminosity. This means that all the techniques that we can possibly apply to have stable, clean, color images and running at the natural speed in a stable mode, should be used. Improving lighting, contrast, sharpness is also very important too.
This being said and for the future I am sure that we can go much more further in "restoration" level. One thing is to "restore" the information that exists, but I am even for going further where missing information is also added. This is not "restoration" but I would say "reconstruction". If a film surface scratch has deleted let's say some parts of an object, it is possible fill that missing pixels either by what is adjacent or from what we know of the object or by having those elements maybe visible some frames later maybe not exactly in the same aspect but allowing us to make a realistic reconstruction. This can go much improve even further the visual quality of the film. There is a limit however to this as we must not "invent" a complete object that just does not exist. "Reconstruction" means that maybe some parts of the picture will not be authentic but if this makes it more "lookable" as long as the fundamental elements of the scene and what the global information ("semantic" message) it conveys is not changed I am fine with it. Not to say that this kind of reconstruction work can be enormously time consuming as it probably cannot be automated by AI, and really is a frame per frame work.
Many people don't like change! Those people don't have to watch corrected film! As long as the original film kan still be found why complain? I only recently have seen colour restored and motion restored films and it was like a new window opening up. I don't want to be fobbed off with alterations but then there has to be a certain amount of trust.
Let's put it another way:- the paintings of John Constable or of Koekoek look almost real and that's why people like them yet they are purely fantasy with a tree from here and a house from there and some children from somewhere else. Are the same historians grumpy about those?
I'm very glad to see what people of this (and other) channels are doing to recreate the views of the past in a way which is pleasurable to watch.
Thank you very much. These are my thoughts too!
My initial feelings of adding color to these historic images was negative however enhancing and the addition of color has rejuvenated huge interest by younger generations which only helps in the respect of preservation and appreciation of life in the past.
Quite true! That's why I make these videos.
@@Rick88888888 Kudos!!
No, not at all, as two separate digitalized film files of the same titles can be found so we got choices to watch it the way it was intended or to see the ancient world in color. And sharpening and denoising also could benefit some historians when it comes to clues they may have missed before.
Indeed
Some nice work there. I think this actually 2 different things that people get mixed up - restoring and then what you do with that restored footage. When footage is restored, it shouldn't be altered in any way as you need that original starting point. But once you have that restore footage, whatever you do with it is up to you and what you want to use it for. For the general public, I have no issues with colorization, stabilization, etc as long as people know it was done - this version can not replace the original as the only version there is, the original version can't get lost to time. I'm from the Star Wars generation - I have no issue with Lucas making his changes because it is his film however I have issues with the original version not also being restored and available because that is what was originally released and was known for years. I think in any restoration, you need to take care of the original and it shouldn't be just about what you can do with the restored version.
Both qualified as a historian and a marine engineer in steam (I did my undergraduate thesis on steam tugs). I showed the Rotterdam dock/steam tugs video to some tug skippers and marine engineers - They were blown away and we saw a lot of extra detail like the current catching the extra underwater area of the semi-submerged dock and the tugs struggling to pull the dock around before it would have swept into the bridge supports.
Excellent channel, thanks a lot for those footage
Syracy late to the game but anything that causes interest of the new generation into old history is never a bad thing. As long as some type of disclosure is made saying film is stabilized and/or colorized. Original is available at link below. That way they can get the benefit of seeing the original and what has been done to keep history alive.
ME as a gamer, I also like my old games to be in original state, but I also like it when they are remastered, I see this as the same, as long as the movie is being preserved, and presented well its fine, but I can also understand the purists, they would hate this. I am all for it, because this allows me to show this to my kids in a better presentation..
If you don't like the digital restoration, just watch the original.
The originals would never be harmed anyway.. as the film would have to be digitized so you have the original film somewhere. Also presumably proper enhancement procedure would have you making a copy of the original Digital version... (which that original copy should be of the highest quality etc). Anyway.. As long as you are clearly informing the public that the enhancement is via AI (which kind of would be obvious at this point because that is the direction we are heading) i see no problem. WHY? because as others have said .. the colorization and stabilization and clean up of this old footage is AMAZING when done well!. I love it when folks add sound to it as well. I think that it does bring history of life and make it more real. Folks freak out about colorization for some reason.. I LOVE Black and white and old photos.. but I really love the colorization too. It makes the people in the images become real... and not static. This is very important when teaching history.
The very first screen adaptation of Ian Fleming's iconic character James Bond was in 1954, when the anthology TV show _Climax!_ broadcasted a live version of Casino Royale, starring Barry Nelson as American secret agent "Jimmy Bond" and Peter Lorre as the villain Le Chiffre. This obviously predates Sean Connery's 1962 debut in _Dr. No_ by 8 years. The episode is available here on UA-cam, but the quality is not great, and it is also is black & white. If anyone with the skills is looking for a neat restoration project, the very first James Bond adaptation might be a good job for you.
Sorry, but that is copyrighted, so I won't touch it!
@@Rick88888888 Ah, that's understandable.
I have felt that seeing the AI applied to your films has made the people and the places more relatable. "Wow they look just like people" Sometimes I even slow down the speed of your films at really capture the feelings on peoples faces. In regards to still photos, if it weren't for AI repairing/filling in damaged areas I would not have the ability to see what my ancestors(Dutch) faces looked like. In other regards, we use digital music thereby losing the full range of sound. So........
I think the restoration can potentially have not just entertainment, but even historical value, actually. Maybe not yet, but when the algorithms can "hallucinate" details not present in the footage but likely present in reality -at a high degree of accuracy- it could reveal perspectives not available in the original footage. And I also think the emotional resonance that some footage may have is not completely independent of its historical value, since even historians are subject to emotions sometimes ;). The emotional response can shape some aspects of one's interpretation (not all aspects, obviously, as historians can make use of scientific methods).
It's not like the original footage is a perfect reflection of reality either though. So I think they, ultimately, can compliment each other in the long run. Just make sure that the AI is viewed critically so as to not mislead.
Overall, I think AI has incredible potential in the study of history, and I think it may be our best bet for reconstructing the past world.
love the colorization,as long as the original is still available to view i cant see the problem.
As long as it's not done the way Turner Classics did then it's fine,. They exaggerated some much that some of the actors looked blue. In this case, there's verisimilitude: he's trying to get to the natural colors.
That's called the 'zombie' effect.
Keep up the good work
incredible that AI can bring Boris Johnson back to life!
I just wanted to cite Two Minute Papers but then Rick did it himself. Even the mechanism for in between frames is even more advanced now without artifacts
Yes, but it doesn't seem that these Two Minute Paper A.I. software tools are easily available. If you know where and how, then please let us all know!
@@Rick88888888 I am not sure but will give it a few Googles. What software are you using for stabilization?
Very nice video, subscribed. I'm not necessarily against colorization but the AIs I know exist don't really produce some good results... I've done it in the past, though I've had to change many details to make it better, and every time I watch a "coloured film of the past" I can't help but notice the horrible colours... Hope this can change in the future.
You don't need to generate frames (they can be really low quality)
The correct way to do it is just variable framerate, or static framerate average. You don't have to use 24/30/60 and create errors or stutters. You can even get variable framerate monitors, but the video player can be a lot better (chooses a more accurate time rate) than a preset duplicate frame.
Incorrect. Everything you are suggesting is wrong, sorry! Using Interpolation software is the way to go. The recreated in-between frames can be of excellent quality when using the latest (A.I.) technology. Playing about with frame rates will change the playback speed, most certainly on UA-cam which only supports fixed standard frame rates. Duplicating or removing frames indeed causes stutter.
On the funny side anything done to poor old Boris Johnson has to be an improvement.
08:08 The Barak Obama photo restoration 😂😂😂😂 that de-blurring software simply went.... *I did it my way!*
.... Because that smile, 😁 my friend, is Sinatra's smile, 😆😂😂😂🤣🤣🤣🤣