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.
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 attempt to generate a tasteful detailing pass using 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.
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 3D. 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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