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Make Low-Res Videos Less Blocky with FixMyMovie
Posted by Kevin Purdy at 3:00 AM on February 23, 2008
So your friend popped the question at a concert last week, and your only evidence is a pixellated, under-lit cell phone video? Free webapp FixMyMovie won't get you up to HD-quality, but it can cure many of digital video's common ailments. Upload a video (original files are best), compare the "before" and "after" segments, then give FixMyVideo the job and preview your smoothed-over video in full screen, with the option to grab still screenshots at any point. I didn't have a video file of the tossed-off kind FixMyMovie can best help, but the MakeUseOf.com folks seem to vouch for this free service.
Tags: cell phone | cell phones | video | video editing | web applications
Comments (AU Comments · US Comments)
There are currently no AU comments for this post.
Webran61
Posted 3:44 AM 23/2/08
YouTube should build this into their video uploading process.
Webran61
ConstyXIV
Posted 5:49 AM 23/2/08
So someone finally brought the CSI video filter to market?
:)
ConstyXIV
MotionDSP
Posted 8:49 AM 23/2/08
It's definitely more than noise reduction, though you're right -- noise reduction is a positive side-effect of our processing. FixMyMovie uses MotionDSP's suite of video enhancement algorithms -- based on super-resolution principles, which combine information from multiple frames of video (5-9 frames) to create a new video that has up to 4x the resolution, and less noise.
Of course, it depends on the quality of the video you upload. MMS video from mobile phones is extremely low-bitrate, so it's hard to extract detail, and the biggest benefit you get is, as you suggest, noise reduction. But, if you have video from a better sensor, like a higher-end camera-phone or digital camera, you can really extract more detail. See our flash demo on the splash page on FixMyMovie, turn to the "books" example, and you'll see that in the FixMyMovie version, you can actually read the titles on the books.
To see the detail we extract, make sure you download either the Quicktime or Windows Media versions that we make available for download. The flash player is limited 400x304 resolution, but the Quicktime and WMV versions are 4x the resolution of your upload. So if you upload a 320x240 file from your digital camera, the Quicktime download will be 640x480.
Enjoy, and thanks for checking out FixMyMovie.
MotionDSP
earth2marsh
Posted 8:49 AM 23/2/08
This looks like noise reduction applied to video, in which case you're trading sharpness for less grain. Still, it can be worth it sometimes!
earth2marsh
da5id_nz
Posted 8:49 AM 23/2/08
Bout time!! I only mentioned this in a Lifehacker thread in November last year!
da5id_nz
MePerson
Posted 2:08 AM 24/2/08
cool! now we can take the videos we download from youtube and say we have the "original hi-quality" version :)
MePerson
billda
Posted 10:29 AM 24/2/08
This is seriously cool.
Dugg.
billda