EP048: Dealing With Archival Pt 1

00:00:00:03 - 00:00:15:09
Robbie
Everybody, welcome back to another installment of The Offset Podcast. And this week we're beginning a two part series on dealing with archival sources. Stay tuned.

00:00:15:11 - 00:00:35:09
Joey
Support for this episode comes from Flanders Scientific. You can catch the team at BSC Expo in London February 13th and 14th, 2026. Just head over to Booth 206. Head to the show for a closer look at FSI reference monitoring, broadcast and post workflows and exciting new products. You can learn more at FlandersScientific.com.

00:00:35:11 - 00:00:43:19
Robbie
All right. Hey there everybody. Welcome back to another episode of The Offset Podcast. With me, as always, is my partner in crime, Joey D’Anna. How are you doing, Joey?

00:00:43:21 - 00:00:45:14
Joey
Good. Hey, everybody.

00:00:45:16 - 00:01:09:16
Robbie
So, Joey, this week I want to talk about dealing with archival sources. And I thought we kind of break this up into two separate kind of episodes because knowing us, we're going to pontificate about a lot of this stuff, kind of first treat, kind of a general picture and dealing with film archival. And then in part two, we'll dive into some more some, some more specifics about dealing with, video sources and some of the unique challenges there.

00:01:09:16 - 00:01:28:22
Robbie
So kind of breaking this up into two different bits. Just as a reminder, we are still running our, our viewer and audience survey. You can find that right here at the link on the page. We're going to keep that open for about another week. Two weeks. We have received, a few dozen, you know, replies to that survey.

00:01:28:22 - 00:01:51:05
Robbie
And they're been awesome. They're really helping us, sort of shape, what the rest of 2026 is going to look like, and we're we're excited to start rolling out some of those new initiatives pretty soon. But if you do have a chance to, to fill out a survey, we really appreciate it, as always. If wherever you're listening to the show, whether it be on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, YouTube or whatever, do us a favor and like and subscribe.

00:01:51:07 - 00:02:08:08
Robbie
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00:02:08:10 - 00:02:27:13
Robbie
To check out our full library of shows as well as the show notes. And things like that. All right. So let's dive into it. Man. This is, like this is something that I think that archival it's one of those things that people kind of just go, oh yeah, it's archival. We'll just throw it into the show or the film or whatever.

00:02:27:13 - 00:02:49:22
Robbie
And everything will be all right. And I think, you know, you have this interesting analogy, about archival and specifically when it comes to like things like interlaced and it's a bit to paraphrase it and correct me if I'm wrong when you're summing you up here, it's basically something like, no kids TV didn't look that bad back when that aired, right?

00:02:49:22 - 00:03:10:23
Robbie
Like, you know, those kind of that kind of thing. And I think that's an overwhelming theme for this show, is that you get an archival source and you sort of just assume, hey, that's what it is, right? And that's not always the case. Like, there are there are steps that could have been mistaken, but there's also fixes that can be employed to try to get that footage to look its best.

00:03:10:23 - 00:03:11:18
Robbie
Right.

00:03:11:20 - 00:03:35:09
Joey
Yeah. And the reason I really wanted to do this episode is because I see it all the time. I come from a documentary background and a kind of nonfiction TV background. You've done a whole gigantic amount of documentary work yourself. So we are kind of we've been deep in the documentary world for a long time, you know, from got 20 years.

00:03:35:09 - 00:04:08:14
Joey
Each of us basically. And I really feel like and I hate to say this, the way archival or historical sources has been treated in more and more documentaries that I'm seeing, and I'm including really prestige high budget, expensive documentaries on major streaming services, major networks. I feel like the archival sources are not being treated with the care and respect that they deserve, and they're not being presented in the highest fidelity way possible.

00:04:08:14 - 00:04:48:23
Joey
And I think a lot of that, a lot of it is not out of laziness or lack of budget or even lack of the ability to get the best possible source or conversion of them, which of course, that's always a possibility. But I think a lot of people out there, especially, you know, I don't want to pick on the younger guys, but people that weren't there for when these sources and these technologies were new don't necessarily understand everything that went into making the image from something like an interlaced camera or a telescope or a film scan or any of these kind of things that we now just get as a file and drop in our

00:04:48:23 - 00:05:14:09
Joey
timeline and just assume, hey, it is what it is. This is about as good as it's going to look. We're going to move on in most cases where, you know, you're kind of default, what you're seeing on the screen might not be the be all, end all of not only the original, but what the source that you have, even if it's been through transcode and captures and things like that, what is available in that source for you to put on the screen.

00:05:14:09 - 00:05:41:13
Joey
So as finishers, as editors, as colorists, I think if you're going to be in the documentary space, there are a million different things that we can talk about and kind of help and explain where you really can get more out of this footage, and that's good for everyone. It's good for your clients, it's good for the viewer. I think we need as a community and as an industry to go back to a higher level of quality.

00:05:41:13 - 00:05:51:04
Joey
When we do our documentaries, when it comes to these archive sources stuff, it's yeah, I it's just a pet peeve of mine. I see it in these prestige docs and I'm like, guys, what are you doing?

00:05:51:04 - 00:06:14:07
Robbie
Yeah, I, I, I generally I think I generally agree, I will say that we have all watched films, documentaries, etc., that the, the crappiness of archival is sometimes an advantage. Right? It it's, you know, it can be a storytelling tool to kind of separate that content from the normal documentary or, you know, acquired stuff that somebody shot.

00:06:14:07 - 00:06:30:02
Robbie
Right? I get that right. Like, hey, we don't want to make this too look too good. It's archival. We don't want it to get people confused about what's, you know, the stuff we shot versus the stuff that's old. But in a general sense, I do agree with you that I think that too many people just go, it's archival.

00:06:30:02 - 00:06:48:08
Robbie
It is what it is. You know, that phrase and just, you know, kind of just, you know, cut it in. And this even applies, by the way, I think, to, and we're going to do a whole nother episode here pretty soon on dealing with, kind of like film restoration kind of stuff, but like, you know, I think that also plays into like that whole aspect of, well, it is what it is.

00:06:48:08 - 00:07:06:22
Robbie
But we also don't want to make it like we want to be authentic to what it is, but not realizing that authenticity is misplaced, like it was never that crappy. It didn't look like that originally. So if your goal is to just make it like, oh well, we don't want to make it to A to good, but not realizing what the original look like.

00:07:06:22 - 00:07:32:14
Robbie
I think you're right. You're doing disservice to what that original content is and it could be better. So I think we're in agreement there. Let's start let's start big picture 50,000ft view about this, right? Because, I think there are some issues that kind of our germane to whatever the, wherever the source is. Right. Whether it's, you know, film archival, whether it's video archival, whether it's, you know, bought from the stock footage house and the three things that I see there.

00:07:32:16 - 00:08:00:17
Robbie
And see if you agree with, we can expand on these little bit more aspect ratio issues. Right. I think we deal with resolution issues. People were like, oh, well, I found this clip and it was 320 by 240. It can go right into my PhD project. Fine. Right. That's not an issue. Right. And then, you know, I think this idea of, you know, continuity issues or like, you know, like, you know, glitches, like you might find issues where, like, oh, there's drop frames in this, there's like all sorts of things, right?

00:08:00:17 - 00:08:20:12
Robbie
That can happen. Let's talk about this for a second. Let's start with the first one aspect ratio. When you look at a piece of archive how are you evaluating whether the aspect ratio is correct and what's the right way or wrong way to correct for an aspect ratio that might be not correct?

00:08:20:14 - 00:08:43:09
Joey
Yeah. And this is one of those things where I'm extremely dogmatic about it. I do not believe in changing aspect ratios. I think basically if you are stretching something, you're always doing it wrong. Yeah. It can be a creative decision if you get, for example, a four by three image and you need to put into a 16 by nine container, do you pillar box it or do you crop the top and bottom?

00:08:43:11 - 00:08:49:07
Joey
What you never do ever is stretch it out. But here's what we.

00:08:49:07 - 00:08:56:10
Robbie
People people some people sometimes do that like the blurred version behind. So it's, you know, you're not getting the box, but you know, that kind of thing.

00:08:56:11 - 00:09:14:08
Joey
I personally hate that. I hate that look. But I do see it has its place. As long as the actual image is still its original aspect ratio, I would still put that into the realm of technically correct. However, what you really gotta look out for is you don't know how many times this has been converted before it got to you.

00:09:14:09 - 00:09:40:05
Joey
It could have a 10% stretch one direction or the other. It could have been stretched out horizontally to the wrong aspect ratio. So it's worth your time. If something looks a little off, try to find a circle in that image and see if that circle is close to a circle, right? Try to find something that you know can be a visual reference point to see.

00:09:40:05 - 00:10:08:09
Joey
Hey, did this get adjusted a little bit before it came to me? And should I put it back to its original aspect ratio? Then kind of hand-in-hand with what you talked about with resolution, obviously we can't always get the highest resolution sources, but let resolution sometimes dictate what you. And granted, it's not always our decision. Sometimes it's a creative stakeholder, like a director or a producer's decision of how to handle letterboxing or pillar boxing.

00:10:08:11 - 00:10:26:21
Joey
But obviously we're going to be at least asked for a recommendation. In most cases, if your footage is leaning towards the lower end of the resolution spectrum, no matter what its source, you probably don't want to try to push in full frame, cutting off the top and bottom and then getting that full frame 16 by nine out of a four by three image.

00:10:26:21 - 00:10:55:20
Joey
Because you're just now getting rid of another like 40% of your resolution by doing that. Yeah. So in those cases, I mean personally I think we have the viewership world has evolved past caring about letterboxing or pillar boxing because we've gone from TV, then movies and TV with letterboxing than TV in 16 by nine with pillar boxing then mixed together, then random Hollywood movies going from Imax to normal to Imax again for no reason.

00:10:56:01 - 00:11:20:09
Joey
The viewing public doesn't care about changing aspect ratios mid-show nearly as much as they used to. So I always say pillar box if at all possible. Yeah, but be wary when you do that of the resolution and also be wary of the edges. We'll talk a little bit more about edges later, but, you know, just cutting it to top and bottom and side to side.

00:11:20:14 - 00:11:35:07
Joey
You might even want to crop them a little bit more on the edges. So that way when you cut between different shots that letterbox or that pillar box doesn't wiggle, you know, sometimes it's worth making a four by three container for your four by three sources in a.

00:11:35:12 - 00:11:37:11
Robbie
If you don't see crap crap on the edges, right?

00:11:37:15 - 00:11:44:10
Joey
Yeah, basically. So they're all pillar box, but they're not all very slightly different pillar box.

00:11:44:15 - 00:11:59:00
Robbie
Right. It's a way it's a way to make em more uniform. Yeah, I see that. So I mean I think the aspect ratio in identifying the circle is a great, great tip there. But I see this also like let's take let's take this aspect from like the, the, the the buyer or the person or the editor who's acquiring this footage.

00:11:59:00 - 00:12:20:14
Robbie
Right. Like the first thing they even just think about is like, you're at a stock footage place or you're looking through archival is like, okay, well, I have, you know, a 16 by nine show and all of this stuff is four by three that I'm that I'm looking at. It's coming up with a plan on how to attack it that is providing consistency, but also providing, you know, image fidelity in the way that you attack.

00:12:20:15 - 00:12:36:08
Robbie
It is, I think, what you're really saying, and I think I have one more kind of overarching thing that I would say when I, when I think about archival and stock sources, is a lot of times you have to think about, kind of like the, the codec and container and also what the end use is going to be.

00:12:36:08 - 00:12:55:12
Robbie
And what I mean by end use is two things. One, how heavily are you going to push this? Right. Because if you get something and you're like, you know, you were working with the director of producing, like, yeah, we really want to like, you know, you know, do a big look on this stuff or whatever. If you have something you know, that's 720 by 480 motion Jpeg from a storehouse, right?

00:12:55:12 - 00:13:14:05
Robbie
Like you're going to be a little limited in one you're scaling and how you present it to how much you can actually push color and contrast in that image without it falling apart. So the other thing I always suggest to people is like, hey, look, if you can get this in higher quality containers and codecs, that is always going to be advantageous to you, right?

00:13:14:07 - 00:13:37:01
Robbie
And what's even more advantageous to me a lot of times is some some of these start places on archival stuff will actually give you sort of a chain of custody kind of run down of the actual piece, like how like original source was three quarter right. We transferred this to whatever. Right. That's great to know that like, okay, this is the second generation of this or whatever.

00:13:37:01 - 00:13:43:06
Robbie
Like so following up on those details with the archival source or stock house, always a big thing to do as well.

00:13:43:08 - 00:14:03:00
Joey
Yeah. So you know, those are things that kind of apply to anything. Right. There's four by three film. There's 16 by nine film. There's four by three video. There's 16 by nine video. There's stills of a million different aspect ratios. Right? The big thing is don't go stretching stuff that's that's always a no go. But let's. Yeah.

00:14:03:00 - 00:14:10:01
Robbie
And don't and don't scale in 900%. And don't try to do magic with crappy containers and codecs.

00:14:10:03 - 00:14:35:20
Joey
Exactly right. So now let's talk about kind of the film world. Right. Because, you know, when we cut when it comes to both stock footage and old newsreels and anything from the past 100 or more years, there's a good chance film as an acquisition is going to be involved in your documentary, even if you never shot a frame of film.

00:14:35:20 - 00:14:56:18
Joey
And film has a lot of unique issues specific to it that we need to treat. Again, with respect to the authentic source. Biggest one texture and grain. What's your kind of stance on how to best deal with texture and grain in the overall context of a documentary when you get these film sources?

00:14:56:20 - 00:15:12:19
Robbie
Yeah, it's a great question. And I want to just before I answer that, I want to just say one more higher level thing that I don't think that we're going to really dive into, in this section, but I think it's worth pointing out here, just in case you do have a mythical, you know, a unicorn budget where you can do this kind of thing.

00:15:12:19 - 00:15:43:08
Robbie
Right. I just, I last night snows outside, kids are asleep. I'm like, I gotta what am I going to watch on TV? And I couldn't find anything. And I found myself going back to watch that challenger space shuttle challenger doc on Netflix. That was a couple of years ago, right. And we talked about this before. Like we were both blown away by that, that documentary, because we had seen a lot of those sources before and never seen them look as good as they did in this documentary.

00:15:43:08 - 00:16:14:02
Robbie
When we were like, oh my God, there must be some sort of magic formula they have when it specifically when it comes to film archival. If you have a unicorn budget and there is a way to go back and re scan the original films with modern technology, that is obviously going to be your best bet, because then you can decide on all of this texture denoising, framing, all of that kind of stuff, and you're doing it optically, which is going to be the best quality, you know, potential that you're going to get.

00:16:14:02 - 00:16:37:09
Robbie
Right. I think for this section about talking about film archive, well, we're going to assume that you don't have a unicorn budget to go back and re scan original eight, 16 and 35 millimeter sources or whatever, to get the best out of it. But I just want to point out that for the highest level, that is often the best choice when it comes to archival is find the original re, scan it and start from start, start fresh.

00:16:37:09 - 00:17:09:03
Robbie
But assuming you can't do that, let me answer the noise and grain. Question. I am of two minds of this. I think that the the the particularly on 16 mil that was so popular in, you know, I mean 60s, 70s, 80s, whatever. Right. Like for newsgathering, for all that kind of stuff. I tend to think that the grain in it, puts somebody in a mood and genre and they can identify it very easily as being, oh, this is archival.

00:17:09:03 - 00:17:36:15
Robbie
And because it's, you know, a natural grain source, because of all the emotions of the filming, whatever, whatever, it just feels different than, hey, I slap some grain on my video now it's filmic, right? It definitely has that feel. With that said, some of it can be way, way too noisy, right? And I think that the way that I think about film, archival is I always try to kind of respect what the original source kind of looks like with that in that context.

00:17:36:17 - 00:17:58:18
Robbie
But almost always I'm doing some level of light noise reduction, and that's even more so. Like the one thing I think about that is not necessarily on a single clip basis, but is by I'm doing noise reduction in an attempt to get like a sequence of archival shots to feel about the same in terms of grain level and grain structure and all that stuff.

00:17:58:19 - 00:18:18:16
Robbie
And another way of doing that, of course, is that you might heavily denoise and then reapply your own grain for consistency. Right? But in general, I like to kind of blend the two together, right. Like keep some of that original grain, do some noise reduction for some consistency. But you know, it's it's going to be a little bit on, on, on that.

00:18:18:16 - 00:18:20:07
Robbie
How do you how do you feel about it.

00:18:20:09 - 00:18:55:07
Joey
Yeah, I agree, I think one of the challenges with documentaries is a lot of times the story is woven together in the edit, but visual continuity isn't something they can really judge in the offline edit, and in some cases doesn't really matter for the story. For example, if you have, you know, a series of events that happen ABCd in this order and they present them ABCd in this order, but the sources for B have been degraded heavily, where the sources for C are pristine, it's going to knock the viewer's head a little bit continuity wise, going ABCd in order.

00:18:55:12 - 00:19:06:23
Joey
So it's kind of it falls on us a little bit to not, like you said, not remove all the grain, not replace all the grain, try to balance shot by shot. It.

00:19:07:01 - 00:19:08:03
Robbie
So in that regard it.

00:19:08:03 - 00:19:10:12
Joey
Looks like the story.

00:19:10:14 - 00:19:18:07
Robbie
Yeah. And I'm sorry to interrupt, but I was going to say in that regard, like sometimes it's about making the good stuff a little less good. Right? I mean, so like.

00:19:18:09 - 00:19:21:05
Joey
You know, we have to meet in the middle to make a sequence work.

00:19:21:05 - 00:19:43:18
Robbie
Yeah, yeah. And so and so specifically like I think that's like I, we've encountered this in the past few years even like we did a series about kind of, like the, the nuclear age, if you will, and, and a lot of, like, old, like, military footage, testing footage, you know, like, you know, nuclear bombs going off and stuff, and you'd have these beautiful, perfect scans that had very little grain.

00:19:43:20 - 00:19:51:11
Robbie
And then you had somebody crappy little camera, you know, like, you know, a little eight Miller, you know, eight millimeters a printer, you know, type film camera.

00:19:51:15 - 00:19:55:18
Joey
Right? And then we had some that had gamma radiation corruption.

00:19:55:20 - 00:20:12:15
Robbie
Right. And so like in that case, it's like, okay, well, unfortunately we're not going to be able to bring the crappy stuff up. So it's more like, hey, on the good stuff, we actually going to do a little bit more to flow from like a grain continuity standpoint with the rest of the stuff.

00:20:12:17 - 00:20:35:07
Joey
But when you're doing that, I'll just say this. It's not just getting the slider right, take those, still or even take a small playback of the grains you're trying to match and zoom way the hell in on your viewer. See how much color is in that grain, see how big the chunks are? See how much amplitude is in the contrast is in it.

00:20:35:09 - 00:20:55:09
Joey
You'd be surprised how much you can match grain, especially even using the built in film grain in resolve. If you go in that little advanced tab where you can dial in the color channels, you can dial in the shadows, the mid-tones and the highlights. You can dial in things like size if you, you know, don't rely on your eye and your feel on it.

00:20:55:09 - 00:21:13:20
Joey
Full frame. If your goal is to technically match this grain so these two shots line up, don't be afraid to zoom way the hell in and look at that grain in detail and take some time when you're doing that match, because it does matter. And it does. It does help the flow of the film.

00:21:13:22 - 00:21:37:13
Robbie
So related. What do you feel about some other problems with film? Things like dust and scratches. Gate. We've, even something, you know, severe, like a tear or a hole in that particular frame. Like, you know, I, I'm of two minds of this kind of stuff because, again, I want it's archival. It's meant to be kind of like, this is, you know what it was.

00:21:37:15 - 00:21:54:02
Robbie
But at the same time, we've heard, as we've already said, that's not what it was originally. Probably nobody was like, oh yeah, cool. We have a hole in the frame. Let's go with that. Right. So out in the in the I, I'm curious about how you approach some of those things, but also is there a point. And I think there's a larger view for this section.

00:21:54:02 - 00:22:09:02
Robbie
Is, is there a point where you're this is a little bit beyond color, specifically when it comes to film frame stuff, and this is more about a restoration artist doing a little bit more than you can do in the context of a color grading application.

00:22:09:04 - 00:22:32:05
Joey
Yeah, absolutely. I my general philosophy is for tiers, dust, scratches. If we can get them out in a non distracting way, absolutely do it. Unless like you said, there's a creative reason to keep them in. It's supposed to look the grade and it's supposed to look like somebody stepped on this reel and left it in the toilet for a while.

00:22:32:10 - 00:22:49:09
Joey
You know, we have at our disposal. I think people would be surprised if they dig into resolves film restoration toolset. We have a very, very set of potent weapons to deal with.

00:22:49:11 - 00:22:49:14
Robbie
Great.

00:22:49:16 - 00:23:22:23
Joey
Film problems. I just want to talk about some of my favorites. When it comes to dust, the automatic, dust busting, shockingly good and normally automatic things don't work too great. But what the automatic dust busting does? It essentially uses the optical flow algorithms to resolve where it looks at motion across frames, and if it sees one frame of a splotch that's not supposed to be there, it'll blend the previous and next frames into that splotch to get rid of it.

00:23:22:23 - 00:23:49:15
Joey
So it basically knows, okay, there is motion vectors of somebody's face, and having these splotches for one frame doesn't make sense. So throw that on there and give it a look step frame by frame, looking for any artifacts and any negatives. The one thing you got to be real careful with, especially when you doing the automatic dust removal, is it only works if your temporal data is intact.

00:23:49:15 - 00:24:12:12
Joey
What I mean by that is you don't have things like repeated or blended frames, because it's literally relying on the relationship of one frame to the next, to the next, to the next. So it will do incredibly great things on temporally coherent footage. On non coherent footage, it's going to give you artifacts or no results, things like that.

00:24:12:12 - 00:24:36:01
Joey
That's where the normal dustbuster effect comes into play, which is a completely manual tool where you literally land on a frame, drag a box around the piece of dust and it will, depending on if you drag the box down to the right or down to the left, take out that chunk from the previous frame or the next frame, and you can manually go in and paint those things out.

00:24:36:04 - 00:24:53:22
Joey
So it's one of those things where you can get into you can get into too much detail. If you find yourself you are going frame by frame, painting out a thousand pieces of dust or dirt, unless it's absolutely critical. Maybe that's the point where you recommend to the client, hey, let's send this to a dedicated film.

00:24:54:00 - 00:24:54:18
Robbie
Restoration.

00:24:54:23 - 00:25:11:15
Joey
Artist, and it's worth the money to do that. But for a lot of cases, you'd be surprised how far you can get with the built in tools and look, it doesn't have to be perfect. It doesn't have to be every piece of dust, every scratch. If you knock out 50% of them, 60% of them, it's a huge improver.

00:25:11:15 - 00:25:16:19
Joey
All image is going to look so much smoother on playback. It's going to help the viewer.

00:25:16:21 - 00:25:33:02
Robbie
Yeah. So I think those are all those are great tools too. And I would also add to that mix too. Don't forget about things that are more traditionally video kind of repair tools like patch replace or dead pixel fixer, those kind of things. They can in a pinch, they can they can work great for this kind of thing.

00:25:33:02 - 00:25:48:09
Robbie
Like I had one a couple weeks ago where there was like a little, like burned out spot for like two frames on the side of somebody's cheek patch. Replaced her with a couple key frames. Worked great. Also, don't forget, I think people forget this all the time. By the way, this is just a general resolved note that oh effects.

00:25:48:11 - 00:26:05:19
Robbie
Most of them can be tracked in some, not most of them, but the ones that like I'm talking about actually can be tracked right down in your tracking palette. There is oh effects tracker. Right? So like if you did want to use something like, you know, dead pixel or a patch replace or something like that, you can do that.

00:26:05:19 - 00:26:20:02
Robbie
Or of course, frames will work as well. Now, you mentioned something just a moment ago that I think is a whole can of worms. So I apologize for opening it, but I do think it's important you had mentioned this idea of cadence, right? And repeated frames and that kind of stuff. Here's what I want you to do.

00:26:20:02 - 00:26:35:03
Robbie
I want you to identify for me what that issue is, how somebody sees it. But then also where does it most likely come from. And then third, how can we potentially fix some of these, these cadence issues.

00:26:35:05 - 00:27:07:21
Joey
Yeah. So the, the most common is the tell us any or the three two pulldown, idea, which is it is started out as, a way of converting 24 frames per second film into 29.9 first, frame per second or 59.9 interlaced field per second. Video. So this is your newsreels. This is stuff that was a film that was converted to video before we had HD 24 frame a second video available.

00:27:08:00 - 00:27:23:12
Joey
What it is is it takes like frame. Now nobody jump down my throat. If I get these numbers wrong. I'm going from memory here. It's like the A been the B and then C is split into two fields, D is split into two fields. And then we go to the fifth frame. So it's a and there's.

00:27:23:13 - 00:27:27:16
Robbie
Other there's there's other there's other cadences that are possible to it by the way.

00:27:27:18 - 00:27:48:20
Joey
Yeah. There was what's called the advanced pull down which is very rarely used. What you do encounter it sometimes the point is when you see three frames and then two fielded frames and then three more frames, right? You know, that's a pull down. Now, if you're working in a 29.97 timeline, you might be okay to just keep that as is.

00:27:48:22 - 00:28:04:09
Joey
However, if you're working at a 24 frame a second show, which in most cases we are now, you actually want to remove that pull down and what's going to happen is most most animals can do this and resolve can do what you do in clip attributes just by telling the the clip that it is a pulled down thing.

00:28:04:09 - 00:28:29:00
Joey
So it takes a 2997 clip and derives a 2398 clip from it. The key thing here is it needs to know where the start of that cadence is. Some tools can automatically detect it. After effects does a very good job doing that. Resolve doesn't automatically detect it. So you kind of go through and you tell it A, B, C or D, and each time you got to look at that source, go frame by frame, one, two, three, four, five.

00:28:29:03 - 00:28:54:00
Joey
Now let's talk about some weird situations here because this is where this is where I get real passionate about this because I see it done wrong so many times. Let's say you have a pull down applied, then somebody has converted it to progressive. So the interlaced fields are gone and you end up with three frames of motion, two frames of like one frame, like a freeze frame, three frames of motion, two frames with a freeze frame.

00:28:54:02 - 00:29:12:01
Joey
You can't just remove the pull down, because now the algorithm that takes those interlaced fields and puts them back together won't work. So what do you do? You got to get rid of those repeated frames. Now it gets even worse when somebody in edit for example, has gone in and said, oh wait, this is a 2020 997 clip, we're working at 20 398.

00:29:12:05 - 00:29:30:12
Joey
I'm going to time squeeze it and rescale the time. So now you have repeated frames that have now been time warped. You might end up like okay, four frames than a freeze, four frames than a freeze. So go frame by frame by frame. And here's where you got to use some of the tools at your disposal to manually do this.

00:29:30:12 - 00:29:45:06
Joey
This is one of the things that I do probably the most when fixing weird motion conversions and archival sources. I think a lot of people don't realize you can do, and a lot of people don't bother taking the time to do. But most of these shots are not very long. We're not talk about an hour long clip here.

00:29:45:06 - 00:30:10:09
Joey
We're talking about maybe a two second shot in a sequence. Right. So I go through left, right, left or right, right, right, right until I get a repeated frame. Then mark it in and out, extract that repeated frame and keep that process going. So essentially I'm shortening that clip to shorter than we need it. But I am taking every discrete moment in time and putting them one after the other after the other.

00:30:10:09 - 00:30:27:18
Joey
What does that get me? It gets me something that I can then nest into a compound clip. Again. The duration is going to be shorter than I need it to be, but render that in place. Now I have now that I have all of the actual frames intact with no repeats, no ghosts, no anything else but you and you.

00:30:27:18 - 00:30:31:17
Robbie
You close the gap. You close the gap though that where the removal of the frames were.

00:30:31:17 - 00:31:04:21
Joey
Yes, yes, I've closed the gap on each of those. So essentially, if you play it back, it'll look like the motion will be intact, but it'll be too fast, right? That's what render that down optical flow it back to the right time frames. Yeah. Beautiful smooth motion that doesn't have jitters, doesn't have shakes. And this can work with any cadence essentially because once that once a time effect has been baked into the source you have, you don't have the option of automatically fixing it.

00:31:04:21 - 00:31:06:08
Joey
You got to go in frame by frame and.

00:31:06:12 - 00:31:25:03
Robbie
By the way, this is a this is a funny little solve. I had an issue like this the other day where I was there was a dissolve between two different archival sources with different cadences. So I had fixed each but the last frame in the first one, or the last couple of frames in the first couple frames in the next one.

00:31:25:05 - 00:31:44:03
Robbie
That looked like a jump because it was like, I don't know how to describe it, but it looked like a jump. The new smooth cut, by the way, has optical flow options in it, so you can actually invent that frame like it invented a frame to smooth that over even more. Which is which is great. Now, let me ask you one more quick, cause you brought up something I'm curious about.

00:31:44:04 - 00:31:59:10
Robbie
So why should I have to like? Why should I have to remove duplicated frames? It feels like it's so fast anyway. Is anybody going to notice it? Right? Like, why do I have to go through all this pain in the ass work?

00:31:59:12 - 00:32:22:01
Joey
You know, if the shots not moving and nobody's happening and there's no action, maybe you don't, but most times that's not the case. Sometimes you ever just watch. And this is what it's one of those pet peeves of mine that I've seen in really expensive documentaries, where I watch somebody walking across the screen in an archival clip. It's like walk, walk, walk, walk, walk, walk, jump or walk, walk, walk, walk, walk walk.

00:32:22:03 - 00:32:22:06
Robbie
Walk.

00:32:22:10 - 00:32:41:10
Joey
Yeah. And the problem isn't one instance of that repeated frame or that jitter frame. The problem is in almost all cases, it happens at a regular interval. And that's when the viewer starts to pick up on it. Right. And they don't know, oh somebody took a three to pull down, banked it down and then re timed it in premiere.

00:32:41:10 - 00:32:42:21
Joey
Ooh they're not.

00:32:42:21 - 00:32:43:02
Robbie
No.

00:32:43:04 - 00:32:50:05
Joey
So put it a show thinking that except for me but I it looks it looks cheap.

00:32:50:07 - 00:33:08:01
Robbie
Yeah I also put it out there that I also put it out there that most, most reputable QC these days will flag repeated frames especially on digital platforms. If you're releasing on, you know, an Amazon or Apple TV or whatever, they're not going to stand for repeated frames.

00:33:08:03 - 00:33:26:21
Joey
But it's one of those things. It's so easy in most cases to say inherent to source. Which right. Don't get me wrong, inherent to source is a powerful weapon to use when you're trying to trying to get a show done. And some things are inherent to source, and we can't fix everything, right. This is one of those things that at first glance, it might look like, oh, it's just baked in.

00:33:27:00 - 00:33:30:13
Joey
There's nothing I can do. There's something you can do.

00:33:30:15 - 00:34:02:11
Robbie
Support for this episode comes from Flanders Scientific and their DM series HD monitors from set to post to broadcast, these versatile HD monitors are equipped with an industry leading array of features and capabilities, making them an indispensable tool to detect engineers, editors and colors. Learn more at Flanders scientific.com. One thing I see all the time with film, originated sources is, well, actually there's 2 or 3 things here.

00:34:02:13 - 00:34:29:12
Robbie
Number one is weird. Let's just call it, you know, color layer shifting or, you know, sort of problems with where you might get, oh, why is this so pink and red? Or why is this, you know, green or whatever, right. That's number one. Number two is I often see optical problems where like, somebody might be ghosted and you're like, why am I seeing, like a silhouette of someone's face?

00:34:29:12 - 00:34:54:05
Robbie
Right. Like kind of necks. It almost looks like, a halo around them. You kind of see that from a lot of archival sources. And then the third one that I think is is worth, worth noting is what do we do when things in the film frame we did because we didn't dress this one yet, but the actual frame moves, right, like, like severe, gate weave or rolling issues where the actual things move.

00:34:54:05 - 00:35:12:13
Robbie
How do we attack? So so I'm curious, what are your thoughts about that? I want to ask my more sort of give my opinion on the first one with sort of these color imbalance issues that sometimes pop up with different, you know, different layers, whatever. Now, this could be a couple different reasons for this. It could have been the original film process, right?

00:35:12:13 - 00:35:30:12
Robbie
And just different layers aging at different rates. And when somebody scanned it, they didn't clean it up. Right. It could also just be a transcoding problem that you don't know at that point. Right. So my, my general take with, film sources that have color problems is wide end into the funnel to small into the funnel. Right?

00:35:30:17 - 00:35:54:01
Robbie
I'm starting generally with something like offset and printer points right before I even do any sort of transform into my working space, just to kind of get that more or less balanced out for the the transform and sometimes you'll be surprised how heavy those moves are with like an offset, right? Like you're just like, oh my God, I've never moved this wheel this far in my life.

00:35:54:03 - 00:36:00:11
Robbie
Completely normal as far as I'm concerned. Do you have anything else to add to that? I mean, like, I'm sure you have some sort of, take on on this, because.

00:36:00:11 - 00:36:24:13
Joey
It's actually a really, really good point about adjusting before you're working space transform because you know, the selling point, if you will, of just about every color management system out there, they will tell you that you can make all of your adjustments in your working space. And for non broken sources, that's totally true. Guess what? We're dealing with broken sources.

00:36:24:13 - 00:36:59:09
Joey
Let's say you have a film scan that was tagged incorrectly. So it's full range levels as opposed to video levels. You're not going to fix that in your working space. Fix that before you do the input transform. Because guess what the input transform is, is expecting a certain image, right? So in those cases where you have drastic color imbalances or drastic channel imbalances, because different layers of film of age differently, go to the channel mixer, balance that stuff out in channel mixer or like you said, offset or even traditional color management or sorry, traditional color correction tools.

00:36:59:11 - 00:37:17:18
Joey
Because and I firmly believe that it's a good thing to do this before your input transform, because essentially what you're doing is you're sanitizing the source for the input transform, because that input transform is expecting what you're saying it is and what your source is is not exactly what you're saying. Yeah.

00:37:17:18 - 00:37:40:16
Robbie
And this and this is going to protect you. I mean, you see it all the time. People are like, oh, I got these little like green specks or black spots or whatever. Like these are oftentimes things like negative values that are created from, from from a mathematical transform when you're into your working space. Like there's a whole I agree with you that I'm not this whole idea that, like, if you're going outside, you're working space, you're doing it wrong, doesn't really play well with me.

00:37:40:16 - 00:37:56:12
Robbie
Because, like, if you think about I mean, even if you think about back when, when, when our pipelines were more lot heavy than they are now, we still kind of put that lot in the middle. Right? Like it was still like, okay, I'm going to do some image prep and massaging before the light. Then I'm going to do some things after.

00:37:56:12 - 00:38:13:21
Robbie
And like I still think that holds. And we see that all the time, like where we often see it is as we'll talk to you about next is in video footage that's really overexposed and burnt out right. You get weirdness if you try to do that adjustment in your working space sometimes, and you can just go right before that.

00:38:13:21 - 00:38:21:16
Robbie
Normal. Why? Why RGB yeah. Just going to game that down okay. My I'm not blown out. And then when you hit the transform all is hunky dory.

00:38:21:18 - 00:38:44:19
Joey
Yeah. You need to win when you have kind of sources that you don't that you can't vouch for if you will. Yeah. And you can usually see this on your scopes. You can see it in the image. It is, I think, absolutely critical to sanitize that source before it hits your input. Transform because like we've always said, that input transform is expecting something real.

00:38:44:19 - 00:39:01:12
Joey
There's no one size fits all input transform right. So it's whether it's expecting sRGB, whether it's expecting 709, whether it's expecting skinny on film. Right. You need to give the input transform what it's actually expecting. If you expect a good result.

00:39:01:14 - 00:39:22:14
Robbie
Yeah. So that optical issue that I spoke about with film sometimes where you see ghosting, I had the hardest time a few years ago with a, we were doing a film about, the Korean War. And so it was all of this like, soldier originated for the most part, like eight millimeter pocket cam, kind of stuff, you know, in the 1950s.

00:39:22:16 - 00:39:40:10
Robbie
Who knows how that was processed, who knows how I was scanned. And oftentimes, you know, you'd have a tank or an airplane or a person's face. And there was just this, like, just think about it almost like that analog, that analog ghosting that you, you know, you saw sometimes in like, bad TV, right? Where like, you kind of have like a separation of the image.

00:39:40:12 - 00:40:04:15
Robbie
Probably not that it's probably more of an optical issue about how it was originally scanned into into video. How would you go about fixing something like that? Because I've had, you know, obviously various levels of, you know, cloning or masking or sharpening or sharpening can kind of sometimes relieve that. But is there is there some approach that you have that where you, you know, you go to first when you have that kind of situation?

00:40:04:16 - 00:40:25:13
Joey
That's one of those things where it is unfortunately, in most cases and crimes that this is going to change image to image. But that is one of those things where I think it is kind of inherent to source. And this is a judgment call you got to make when you're evaluating these sources. Is the fix more damage than the original problem?

00:40:25:15 - 00:40:41:17
Joey
If we get into trying to, let's say there is some ghosting, if we get into trying to cut out that main subject and ghost it by like repositioning it, then you get like, oh, we're going to put a halo in it, and there's going to be weird tracking issues, and we're going to have to do a bunch of rotoscoping at that point.

00:40:41:23 - 00:40:58:23
Joey
You're faking it so hard that I think, just like if we try to make the color adjustment further, then what the image will allow, if we want to fix things further than what the source will allow, sometimes we do more harm than good. And that's a judgment call you got to make. Image per image.

00:40:59:00 - 00:41:22:17
Robbie
Yeah I agree and I mean that's a situation where you go back and say, hey, is there another scan of this available or is there another source of this available? I will say in a pinch though for this particular thing, and I'll put some examples if I can find them up in the, in the show notes for this episode, a luma only key can actually do wonders with this kind of thing where you do a little bit of a harder edge than you would for normal color correction, right?

00:41:22:17 - 00:41:43:13
Robbie
You're really kind of trying to mask it off pretty well and then just deepening the, you know, bringing down mid-tones and shadows in that, in that key layer, can sometimes get rid of that, like kind of because it's generally, it's generally somewhere having to do with kind of the light like, you know. Yeah. High contrast edges where, you know, the light is coming through the frame of film.

00:41:43:13 - 00:41:53:17
Robbie
Maybe it wasn't flat or something. You know, whatever the the clouds may be, sometimes you can fix that with just a key and just bringing down that a little bit to lessen that halo.

00:41:53:19 - 00:42:15:14
Joey
Yeah. And the secret there is, you know, yes. You're adding contrast to do that sometimes maybe there's lots of noise or issues in the highlights or in the deep shadows and it's worth it just to kind of cut those off. But then guess what? You might end up with a higher contrast than your actual grade once. Well, d contrast it after you've kind of chopped that data out.

00:42:15:14 - 00:42:34:03
Joey
If that data is bad data, right. If there's like a bunch of grease or grime in the deep shadows, you can like do a log adjustment for example, bring that down and then actually clip it there, use the hard clip tools and then readjust the contrast back to where it fits in your grade. Now, granted, there won't be any detail anymore there.

00:42:34:03 - 00:42:47:11
Joey
It'll just be kind of gray. But you will have achieved your grades, you know, wanted contrast ratio and removed the objectionable data, the noise or the grime at the same time.

00:42:47:13 - 00:43:05:07
Robbie
Yeah. And then related. The last thing I talked about is, is, is gate weave and extreme cases of gate weave. Right. In, in more wood rolling. Right. So when it comes to gate weave and kind of like that wobble that you might get as you know, the films moving through the scanner, there's plenty of restoration tools that will kind of fix that for you.

00:43:05:09 - 00:43:39:20
Robbie
I'm more in the situation where I often find, like, you'll get like a middle of the shot, just like a two frame jump up and then it comes back down. Right. And I think in those situations there's a couple ways of handle it. Number one is making cuts and just physically repositioning and kind of like one of the things I often do is I will take like the frame before and the frame after where that jump is, I'll make the cut right, and then I'll kind of like use a different mode of that, that section that jumps up and kind of move it back down and then kind of go left arrow, right arrow, left

00:43:39:20 - 00:44:12:22
Robbie
arrow, right arrow, just to kind of see that it lines up right, which is really helpful in cases where it's not super severe. That jump, you'd actually be surprised how well stabilization can work. And those kind of things. I would just say I found that the, the, you know, the simplest, stabilization, the translation option often works best for that kind of just like that gateway, because you start getting especially in perspective, you'll start it will start warping things a little bit, which is a telltale sign of bad.

00:44:13:00 - 00:44:13:20
Robbie
A bad synchronicity.

00:44:13:20 - 00:44:22:05
Joey
Yeah. What about the stabilization and film sources? The warnings I will give you is that things like film grain and noise will trick the stabilization.

00:44:22:07 - 00:44:22:15
Robbie
Totally.

00:44:22:17 - 00:44:51:19
Joey
Foreground objects and actual camera motion that you might not want to stabilize will trick the stabilization. So what does this mean? Jump into something like fusion or even the match move effect, or the open effects track, or the FPS tracker that you mentioned earlier, and find a single point at the background of the image or a single point if you're lucky enough to have the full gate, find a single point around the perimeter of the edge of the film.

00:44:51:21 - 00:45:10:03
Joey
Single point XY tracks are great tools for fixing film movement issues versus actually the captured camera, because you got to think about those two things separately, right? You might not want to stabilize the actual shot. You just want to stabilize out the motion of the film.

00:45:10:05 - 00:45:34:21
Robbie
Joey, good stuff here man. But I do want to draw a line in the sand here. We've talked a lot about, you know, sort of general archival and working with film archival sources. But what about the video side of things? I'm thinking about things like interlacing them, blinking. Well, instead of making this a two hour episode, what do you say we come back in a part two and we'll talk about more video centric or video specific issues?

00:45:34:23 - 00:45:52:07
Robbie
Instead of making this one long episode, just as a quick reminder, you can always check out show notes. As we've mentioned before at OffsetPodcast.com, you can follow us on social media, on both Facebook and Instagram by searching for The Offset Podcast. And if you wouldn't mind, you can check out this link right here to buy us a cup of virtual coffee.

00:45:52:07 - 00:46:09:22
Robbie
Any support that you're able to give the show goes directly into helping us out with, costs associated with our editor and hosting and all that kind of, stuff. So we really support any, we really appreciate any support that you can give to it. Good stuff here. As always. And I'm excited for part two where we'll dive into more of the video specific stuff.

00:46:09:22 - 00:46:13:04
Robbie
So for the ole Offset Podcast, I'm Robbie Carman

00:46:13:06 - 00:46:15:00
Joey
And I'm Joey D’Anna. Thanks for listening.