Doctor Who missing material in the Patterson Bigfoot hoax?

[andyparting]

Have just read this article about the Patterson-Gimlin ropey footage of the Bigfoot being stablised and degrained using AI:


www.indy100.com/science-tech/bigfoot-footage-ai-sighting-revealed-2659840014


So my question is, can any Doctor Who episode film sequences lacking the A/B roll negatives be restored to their original standard through this process of artificial intelligence? While I have no problem with the likelihood of missing Doctor Who episodes on 16mm still being found to this day, for me the original broadcast tapes and A/B roll negatives are missing for good. But is there a chance through AI that the episodes that only survive on 16mm could be restored to their original clarity? Particularly the film sequences. Please don't get me wrong, what his been achieved so far for Blu-ray particularly season 8, is nothing short of incredible. However we are still at a stage where there are limits for what can be achieved today, as is evident in the film sequences were ghosting or strobing appears on the screen during motion. However, this is not apparent in the restored Patterson-Gimlin Bigfoot footage.

Thoughts please...

[josephsenior]

Apr 13, 2023 16:51:42 GMT andyparting said:

Have just read this article about the Patterson-Gimlin ropey footage of the Bigfoot being stablised and degrained using AI:


www.indy100.com/science-tech/bigfoot-footage-ai-sighting-revealed-2659840014


So my question is, can any Doctor Who episode film sequences lacking the A/B roll negatives be restored to their original standard through this process of artificial intelligence? While I have no problem with the likelihood of missing Doctor Who episodes on 16mm still being found to this day, for me the original broadcast tapes and A/B roll negatives are missing for good. But is there a chance through AI that the episodes that only survive on 16mm could be restored to their original clarity? Particularly the film sequences. Please don't get me wrong, what his been achieved so far for Blu-ray particularly season 8, is nothing short of incredible. However we are still at a stage where there are limits for what can be achieved today, as is evident in the film sequences were ghosting or strobing appears on the screen during motion. However, this is not apparent in the restored Patterson-Gimlin Bigfoot footage.

Thoughts please...

Partially, it's like a black box. It would require a lot of tweaking. As they say garbage in garbage out. AI may be able to clean up the footage in some ways though it can also remove quality too.
You would have to train an AI model on 16mm prints, broadcast tapes, and A/B roll negatives for it to understand the quality changes. It would require a massive dataset before any real results and even then you could spend 6 Hours running the model only for it to remove faces or something.
From my experience on AI upscaling/image enhancing, it is all down to what information you put in. Sometimes you will get the best footage ever, other times you get garbage and that's hours down the drain for no progress. AI tends to over degrain as well, which can be an issue.

[John Wall]

There are now two threads on similar subjects and some interesting information being shared 👍 Whether someone will be able to press a button and out will pop Marco Polo is…..However, as I’ve pointed out elsewhere we’ve had things to help “recover” DW that few could have predicted so never say never.

I’d like to encourage those interested/knowledgeable to get together, try things out and see what transpires.

[simonashby]

Simple answer - yes. Technology will get to a point where film inserts will be enhanced to look like original negatives and out of phase inserts will be able to be 'unpicked' etc. etc. They'll never be the 'originals', but we'll be able to produce something that could look like they were the originals. But it will take time, a lot of 'learning' and will require manual input at various levels. But it'll become economical to do, no doubt.

Apr 13, 2023 22:20:16 GMT John Wall said:

There are now two threads on similar subjects and some interesting information being shared 👍 Whether someone will be able to press a button and out will pop Marco Polo is…..However, as I’ve pointed out elsewhere we’ve had things to help “recover” DW that few could have predicted so never say never.

I’d like to encourage those interested/knowledgeable to get together, try things out and see what transpires.

As I've just stated in the other thread (just acknowledging that I am repeating myself!)- the technology used so far to restore Doctor Who such as Colour Recovery is generating relatively simple information that is being recovered from a real source and reference point. Same with RSC and all of the others. And even then it still requires a lot of manual input to bring it up to scratch.

There's a gulf between that what is being discussed in this thread. Then a further gulf between this and the other thread about generating realistic recons.

But there'll come a point where it'll become economical to do both well aided by AI, not solely generated by.