Are there any effects in Premiere Pro or After Effects that can be used to remove tape drop-outs?

[carolcarlo]

I work with a lot of live concert video that was originally recorded years ago with camcorders using 8mm and Hi-8 analog video cassettes.

Most tapes have held up well but some developed drop-outs which are now visible of course in the digitized file versions.  I'm looking for tools within Premiere Pro - or perhaps After Effects (haven't worked with AE so not familiar with its capabilities) that would automatically remove or filter out the annoying little frequent white horizontal flashes that are the visual artifact caused by physical drop-outs in the original tapes.

 I found an effect called "dust and scratches" within the folder labeled "Obsolete" effects that helps some, but even at the lowest setting (radius = 1) it seems to cause some blurriness or lessen the sharpness of the picture in the process. 

   I checked with an Adobe support rep and he suggested using HandBrake on the .AVI files I made originally when by ingesting the tapes into Premiere Pro from the camcorder, to transcode them into "web optimized" MP4s.  Then import those into Premiere Pro to use as my source files for editing.

    This defnitely did improve the picture some including reducing the amount of drop-outs, although there are some still visible, especially against parts of the video with mainly black screen. 

    But I still want to find out if there is any effect or other tool to get rid of or further reduce the rest of the drop-out artifacts.

I'm surprised that despite searching I haven't found anyt discussion of this topic here in the Premiere Pro Forum nor in the Premiere Pro User Guide!   It's a pretty common issue when working with source material originally recorded on old analog magentic tape formats, whether video or audio.

[Richard van den Boogaard]

You could try the Morph cut effect.

Delete the segments that show the drop out. Join the two clips together - you now have a visible jump cut. Use the Morph cut effect to let PPro heal the jump. It takes quite a bit of time and resources, but it may work.

Hope it helps.

[Peru Bob]

Do you have B-roll that you can cut to at those spots?

[Richard M Knight]

I had to repair 6 half hour music videeos master on Betacam full of one line dropouts. I ended up copying the faulty lines from previous frames manually, it took forever!

[chrisw44157881]

you may want to lookup digital restoration tools. AE has some basic ones like clone stamp or keyed frame offset. It may be possible the same way scratches are removed from film could be used for digital lines.

if the lines are thin enough, then AE's cc simple wire removal effect may work.

if the flash takes up the majority of the screen, try the AE plugin for frame restorer. It build a new frame by comparing motion estimation of the two ajoining frames. aescripts.com/pt_framerestorer/

[salvo34]

on a strictly aesthetic level I personally wouldn't get obsessed about fixing old stuff. the audience will know it's old stuff, and part of the charm of old stuff is that it, well... gets old.

does cher want to look sexy and 20 years old when on stage at 90 ?   it's kinda stupid to get crazed about it.