Around 35 years ago, my father had all his Super 8mm footage "professionally" transferred to VHS video cassette. The quality wasn't great but I always assumed that this was mainly due to the original Super 8mm source film combined with the inferior VHS medium. Specifically, the video suggested that the Super 8mm film was badly scratched leaving white streaks on almost all of the footage when transferred to VHS.
Around 10 years ago, I digitized the VHS video but undertook no restoration of any kind.
More recently, a friend loaned me his Wolverine and I managed to track down the original Super 8mm reels in my sister's attic. After looking at the subsequent video files produced by the Wolverine I was shocked to see that the scratches apparent on the VHS copy were no longer evident on the new capture. At first I questioned if the Wolverine had magically repaired the scratching but was told that apart from sharpness and exposure settings, the Wolverine did no other processing. A close look at the film also revealed no obvious scratching!
So where might this apparent scratching on the VHS copy come from?
I've included a snapshot for comparison but you can see the actual footage of both versions here on the links below:
VHS version: https://youtu.be/OFWPVwJ9Pfo?si=ynYz2PmNoZwJsXKQ&t=3
Wolverine version: https://youtu.be/tnZ3EKd08O8?si=r-7FFCXZO1qqHhET&t=125
Note that the Wolverine version has also undergone Topaz Video AI enhancement but that process did not remove any scratches. Even the raw Wolverine capture has no scratches as shown in the VHS version.
Around 10 years ago, I digitized the VHS video but undertook no restoration of any kind.
More recently, a friend loaned me his Wolverine and I managed to track down the original Super 8mm reels in my sister's attic. After looking at the subsequent video files produced by the Wolverine I was shocked to see that the scratches apparent on the VHS copy were no longer evident on the new capture. At first I questioned if the Wolverine had magically repaired the scratching but was told that apart from sharpness and exposure settings, the Wolverine did no other processing. A close look at the film also revealed no obvious scratching!
So where might this apparent scratching on the VHS copy come from?
I've included a snapshot for comparison but you can see the actual footage of both versions here on the links below:
VHS version: https://youtu.be/OFWPVwJ9Pfo?si=ynYz2PmNoZwJsXKQ&t=3
Wolverine version: https://youtu.be/tnZ3EKd08O8?si=r-7FFCXZO1qqHhET&t=125
Note that the Wolverine version has also undergone Topaz Video AI enhancement but that process did not remove any scratches. Even the raw Wolverine capture has no scratches as shown in the VHS version.
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