Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2020/03/05/footage-of-new-york-city-in-19.html
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the frame rate increase is amazing. the colorization has quite a ways to go. i would say that is something an automatic program just cant do, and that it must be done manually to be done right… but this deep learning stuff is pretty impressive and who knows. maybe it could work better.
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Cool stuff- thanks for sharing! This makes “old-timey” stuff seem more real and less far-away.
A little disturbed to realize that one of my first thoughts upon watching this was “everyone seen in this film is now dead”.
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I don’t understand how you can increase the framerate and resolution. Does the software generate extra frames of what it would expect the “missing” 60FPS frames to be? Are they just yelling “Enhance!” through a really sweet stereo setup?
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That young girl in the front of the car looks about how my kids look when I drive that slow.
plus ça change…
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This really gives me Bioshock Infinite vibes
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The algorithm is impressive, but I was surprised it wasn’t better at removing dust and scratches from the film. It seems to me that dark dust specks that only appear for a single frame would be among the easiest things for software to detect and correct when enhancing old films.
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Under the McCoy Act of 1909: Immigrants who wanted citizenship had to stay out of their apartments at least four hours a day and walk around in the streets with hats on.
-Johnny Dangerously
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Three things:
- I weep for the decline of the hat as a fashion item.
- I now see why the original nickname was “Brooklyn Trolley Dodgers”. Jesus man, get out of the way before you get smooshed!
- My man-brain was like “oooh, she’s cute” in a few places before my logic-brain chimed in and advised me that everyone I was looking at had been dead for at least 50 years.
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Sort of. The software is basically making what user hopes is ‘informed’ guessing about what the missing information is. It has to do that with the color. The ‘real’ color is lost, so you have to make some guesses based on what you know about stuff at the time, and the spectral response of the film if you know anything about that.
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so… many… great… hats and moustaches! interesting, this must have been filmed in the summer, and straw boaters were in vogue. i also like that this was back when pedestrians ruled the roads, and cars had to deal with the foot traffic.
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Deckard and his Esper wasn’t as crazy as us nerds always thought! Except maybe that the details he saw in his enhanced photos were created by a generative adversarial network and had no basis in reality.
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Very impressive. But… Am I the only one annoyed by the fake sounds? This needs better sound editing and/or a technician with access to a better sound-effects library.
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I agree, though I like it better than the the completely silent version.
Get a skilled foley artist and this could go even one step better. Then add a linguist who could fill in some period correct background dialog…that would be seriously impressive.
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At 6:19 there appears to be a white man and a black man holding hands while walking across the Williamsburg bridge. Thoughts?
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Looks like boys, not men.
For those that have not seen it, “They Shall Not Grow Old” is a fantastic demonstration of what is possible. I was fortunate enough to catch it in the theater in 3D, and it was an amazing experience. Still on HBO if you have it.
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Very normal for the time; even among older men.
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Having spent a fair amount of time in the city, I was mainly focused on which buildings might still be there. I recognized a few obvious ones, like the Flatiron Building, the Met Life Tower, and what I assume was St. Patrick’s Cathedral. But I’m assuming quite a few of the nondescript buildings survived, too.
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It is like seeing a hand-tinted photo come to life.
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