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I don't think so. Perhaps AI-upscaled? The footage looks legit and would track with the tube cameras that would have likely been used at that time. Although it

by LocalH 8mo ago

I don't think so. Perhaps AI-upscaled? The footage looks legit and would track with the tube cameras that would have likely been used at that time. Although it sucks that it's deinterlaced to 30fps. Video like this really needs to be preserved without immediately throwing out half of the motion

scherlock 8mo ago
Yeah, this doesn't look like AI generated. It was probably filmed on super 8 film stock. The clothing, hair cuts, manufacturing process all scream early 80s. I could see a cheap restoration introduction artifacts as a more likely reason for the look.
- LocalH 8mo ago
  It looks more like video to me, honestly. It appears to be a smooth 30fps rather than the 18fps I'd expect from Super 8. There are also telltale stair-stepped sloped lines that demonstrate the effect of the deinterlacing. There did exist luggable 3/4" U-Matic recorders which I'd have to imagine CBS would have been using in 1980.
  - scherlock 8mo ago
    Yup, you're probably right. Author confirmed it was done by CBS news crew.
usefulposter 8mo ago
YouTube/Google doesn't give a shit anymore. They will mangle your video and audio and serve users "enhanced" "improved" "upscaled" encodes without telling you. --- "YouTube secretly tested AI video enhancement without notifying creators" - Aug 25, 2025 https://arstechnica.com/google/2025/08/youtube-secretly-tested-ai-video-enhancement-without-notifying-creators/ https://arstechnica.com/google/2025/08/youtube-secretly-test... "YouTube will let you opt out of AI upscaling on low-res videos" - Oct 29, 2025 https://www.theverge.com/news/808717/youtube-automatic-ai-upscaling-shopping-updates https://www.theverge.com/news/808717/youtube-automatic-ai-up... --- Not only that, YouTube turned many old videos shot in portrait (from the 2010s and before!) into engagement-boosting "Shorts" crap which get horribly mangled in their own way. "Notice a weird beauty filter on Shorts? YouTube says it's on purpose" - Aug 26, 2025 https://www.androidauthority.com/youtube-shorts-upscaling-experiment-3591230/ https://www.androidauthority.com/youtube-shorts-upscaling-ex...
ErroneousBosh 8mo ago
You're not "throwing out half the motion". Given that PC monitors these days don't have an interlaced mode, how would you display it? Line doubling, so you're throwing out half the vertical resolution?
- ahartmetz 8mo ago
  AFAIU it is possible to get nearly full resolution and full frame rate by using motion tracking to merge the fields. I.e. if the motion is regular enough, lines from the previous and / or next frame can be inserted instead of doubling the current lines. Which is almost the same process required to achieve best image quality at half the frame rate, just without throwing away frames.
  - ErroneousBosh 8mo ago
    You're not throwing away frames, though. You're blending the lines from the odd and even frames so that you get the full vertical resolution, with a certain amount of motion blur on moving vertical edges. Analogue video is 25 frames per second, 50 fields per second. You could guess at what the "missing" lines in a field are, but that doesn't magically make it 50p video.
    - LocalH 8mo ago
      The effective rate for 50i or 60i video, in terms of motion fluidity, is 50 or 60fps. Just because it's half the resolution per field doesn't mean that it's not a "frame" of video in abstract terms, just that it's not a "frame" in the jargon (because fields by definition are half a frame). It is impossible to decimate a video from 50/60i to 25/30p without losing half of the motion fluidity, even if the properly interlaced source video is technically 25/30fps.
- LocalH 8mo ago
  > You're not "throwing out half the motion". Yes, you are. The odd and even lines from proper interlaced footage belong to two separate moments in time, and so when you deinterlace from 60i to 30p you are unavoidably losing half of those moments. > Given that PC monitors these days don't have an interlaced mode, how would you display it? You deinterlace it to 60fps. There exist several algorithms to do so without losing motion fluidity. > Line doubling, so you're throwing out half the vertical resolution? Losing half of the vertical resolution of a 60i video is losing half the motion.

by LocalH 8mo ago

scherlock 8mo ago

Yeah, this doesn't look like AI generated. It was probably filmed on super 8 film stock. The clothing, hair cuts, manufacturing process all scream early 80s. I could see a cheap restoration introduction artifacts as a more likely reason for the look.

LocalH 8mo ago
It looks more like video to me, honestly. It appears to be a smooth 30fps rather than the 18fps I'd expect from Super 8. There are also telltale stair-stepped sloped lines that demonstrate the effect of the deinterlacing. There did exist luggable 3/4" U-Matic recorders which I'd have to imagine CBS would have been using in 1980.
- scherlock 8mo ago
  Yup, you're probably right. Author confirmed it was done by CBS news crew.

usefulposter 8mo ago

YouTube/Google doesn't give a shit anymore. They will mangle your video and audio and serve users "enhanced" "improved" "upscaled" encodes without telling you. --- "YouTube secretly tested AI video enhancement without notifying creators" - Aug 25, 2025 https://arstechnica.com/google/2025/08/youtube-secretly-tested-ai-video-enhancement-without-notifying-creators/ https://arstechnica.com/google/2025/08/youtube-secretly-test... "YouTube will let you opt out of AI upscaling on low-res videos" - Oct 29, 2025 https://www.theverge.com/news/808717/youtube-automatic-ai-upscaling-shopping-updates https://www.theverge.com/news/808717/youtube-automatic-ai-up... --- Not only that, YouTube turned many old videos shot in portrait (from the 2010s and before!) into engagement-boosting "Shorts" crap which get horribly mangled in their own way. "Notice a weird beauty filter on Shorts? YouTube says it's on purpose" - Aug 26, 2025 https://www.androidauthority.com/youtube-shorts-upscaling-experiment-3591230/ https://www.androidauthority.com/youtube-shorts-upscaling-ex...

ErroneousBosh 8mo ago

You're not "throwing out half the motion". Given that PC monitors these days don't have an interlaced mode, how would you display it? Line doubling, so you're throwing out half the vertical resolution?

ahartmetz 8mo ago
AFAIU it is possible to get nearly full resolution and full frame rate by using motion tracking to merge the fields. I.e. if the motion is regular enough, lines from the previous and / or next frame can be inserted instead of doubling the current lines. Which is almost the same process required to achieve best image quality at half the frame rate, just without throwing away frames.
- ErroneousBosh 8mo ago
  You're not throwing away frames, though. You're blending the lines from the odd and even frames so that you get the full vertical resolution, with a certain amount of motion blur on moving vertical edges. Analogue video is 25 frames per second, 50 fields per second. You could guess at what the "missing" lines in a field are, but that doesn't magically make it 50p video.
  - LocalH 8mo ago
    The effective rate for 50i or 60i video, in terms of motion fluidity, is 50 or 60fps. Just because it's half the resolution per field doesn't mean that it's not a "frame" of video in abstract terms, just that it's not a "frame" in the jargon (because fields by definition are half a frame). It is impossible to decimate a video from 50/60i to 25/30p without losing half of the motion fluidity, even if the properly interlaced source video is technically 25/30fps.
LocalH 8mo ago
> You're not "throwing out half the motion". Yes, you are. The odd and even lines from proper interlaced footage belong to two separate moments in time, and so when you deinterlace from 60i to 30p you are unavoidably losing half of those moments. > Given that PC monitors these days don't have an interlaced mode, how would you display it? You deinterlace it to 60fps. There exist several algorithms to do so without losing motion fluidity. > Line doubling, so you're throwing out half the vertical resolution? Losing half of the vertical resolution of a 60i video is losing half the motion.