[HELP] 8mm film to DVD - help?!

[Miranda]

I need to upscale some archive footage for inclusion in a documentary (1080p, 23.976 fps) which has been badly transferred from 8mm film to PAL DVD-R. As well as being copied over incorrectly at 16x9 it looks field blended. The original 8mm film footage is now lost. Any suggestions?

Link to sample.

[Selur]

Main issues are:

• the lack of detail due to compression
  
• the blown luma.
  
• the blends.
  
• that from the looks of it the original frame rate of the scenes differs, some seem like they are just 6fps others are higher.
  

A few things I would suggest:

• Throw away the colors and turn it to grayscale (Color->Tweak->Saturation: 0).
  
• Crop away the borders.
  
• Try finding a pattern in which you can identify non-blended frames and then throw away the others
  (Frame->Reduction->Select Every)
  
• Use SpotLess (range 3+) to get rid of some of the heavy artifacts.
  
• Use Frame->Stabilize->Stab (range: 2+, shift: 16/16) to reduce some of the shaking.
  
• Use Frame->ReduceFlicker (aggressive, turned on) to reduce the flickering.
  
• Try some denoise or grain filters to reduce noise.
  
• Adding some grain at the end.
  

But all in all I don't see much hope for this one.

Cu Selur

Ps.: also overwrite the input PAR to 1:1