One of the areas we don't talk about much is some of the basic restoration and cleaning up required prior to converting, so I thought I'd make up for that with a little look at the pre-conversion restoration work I undertook on "The Cocoanuts" prior to the 2D to 3D Conversion. I would never claim to be an expert in film restoration, but there's certain pre-conversion tasks we can undertake to make the 3d conversion a more visually pleasing stereoscopic experience.
In terms of 2D to 3D conversion there's some debate about the overall effect of excessive grain, personally I find using a mild grain reduction pass on the footage generally helps although in some cases a somewhat more aggressive approach is required. During a 2D to 3D conversion grain, which normally be different from one view to the other, would be identical in both eyes thus making it a more prominent feature and also potentially creating a depth layer of noise. Neither of these results are ideal, so compromise is required.
In some cases grain is reintroduced separately to each eye in order to mimic filmed stereoscopic grain or the grain is reduced but not completely removed which retains some of the films original look without creating an overly "plastic" looking result. Hopefully viewers will be accepting of this compromise.
The existing footage for The Cocoanuts being nearly 100 years old means that there are some extremely poor quality sequences (like the shot above) that are near impossible to improve but in general large sections of the film are very good looking for a film of this age.
The general approach here was to reduce the grain then to undertake a tasteful detailing pass using contemporary AI enhancement tools. These can sometimes be excessive, and can generate grotesque results when applied too aggressively so a fair amount of experimentation was required for each sequence to get the best results without it going into freakish nightmare territory. In most cases we are looking for subtle improvements as these will appear most natural and will enhance the overall detail of the frame.
For example, in the shot below, the detail overall is enhanced with the outfits clearly showing sharper detailing than on the original source materials. This is not random detail generated that did not exist, it is simply enhancing the fine detail which was already visible but without traditional oversharpening artefacts.
The final results shown here delivered a more detailed and clean picture overall, which by the very fact of having higher levels of detail helps in our perception of the stereoscopic image. Once again considering the age of this film, looking at the final results I do believe you could almost believe it wa shot yesterday.
If you'd like to get a copy of The Marx Brothers in The Cocoanuts, or any of our handcrafted 3D converted titles, please head over to our store now.
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