to Improve Black & White Films

[Ezad]

Hello

I am soon to start work on improving these black white films. I have over 100 black and white films recorded in the 1970s. Attached to show what most of the material looks like is a capture, included here.
I plan to use these tools as I work:
Brightness & Contrast
Luma Curve
Gamma Correction
Adjust using - Shadow/Highlight and ProAmp

Is there another tool I can use to improve upon these black & white films?

Thanks!

[Ann Bens]

Looks like the image come from a dvd.

Best is to convert them to DV avi instead of mp4 for better source material to edit.

[FlyingFourFun]

look at Topaz Video Enhance AI as part of your workflow.  You will still have to use premier and all the color correction etc as per normal.  But the Topaz software can make some notable differences to the video quality, even if you end up keeping it in the lower res standard definitions.  I did all my family videos (almost six hundred of them over the last 6 months in my spare time between other projects.)  and they all came out genuinely nice, they didn't even look as good as the sample you provided as they were started as Digital video in 3gp formal in some cases.

[chrisw44157881]

@Ann Bens  DV avi? only one I'm aware of is the old DV codec one with low bitrate.

@Ezad Anyways, if it is DVD and you have no other masters or better quality, you're left with mpeg2 interlaced video which means you'll wants a really good de-interlacer(if going youtube. QTGMC is the best one short of hardware encoders.)

If you don't want to enlarge it, you'll pass through the fields from import to export, but:

If you want to "enlarge", then you'd want to deinterlace first with QTGMC or you're leaving the resizing to Premiere. and Premiere can't technically resize until it deinterlaces. It's a catch 22.

I've heard good things about Topaz Video Enhance AI.( dunno if they still do de-interlacing but the old Topaz deinterlacer was at least as good as QTGMC.

You could do some unsharp with luma mattes on the shadows/highlights to only add detail to mid-tones.

(I'd add alpha mattes to it as well to fine-tune)

You could use "multiply mode mattes" to get really nice 32bpc luma adjustments.

-but whatever you do, don't capture in interframe, as it doesn't handle motion compressed in real time very well (you'll see artifacts). Use intraframe with max native resolution of media (and 10 bits if film to handle dynamic range)

[Ann Bens]

Looking at the screenshot this is probably CS6. No prores or cineform.

Topaz is only good (IMO) when the source material is any good to begin with. In this case its probably not.

DV avi (DVCAM) is 25 Mb/s. You consider that low? I don't think so, as the dvd files are much lesser +/- 8 Mb/s.

With DV avi you have a (all most) lossless codec for easy editing.

And deinterlacing with QTGMC (with avisynth/VD?) is for most users somewhat complicated.