Classic Competitions

My favorite era of on stage female bodybuilding is the late 80s, early 90s. Especially the NABBA / WABBA competitions from that era.

Unfortunately the quality of recordings from that era is not the best. But there are so many gems to be found in old competition videos still.

I wondered if there is anything I can do to make some of these old videos more enjoyable. So I used AI technology to enhance the quality on this clip:

https://youtu.be/73CnZpjZTQg

For comparison here is a screenshot from the original untouched recording at 100% size:

Thanks for posting this. This is amazing, I've been wondering when this tech would be available and wondered how well it would work on the old comp footage. Completely agree with you, they were amazing back then and seeing them more clearly like this is a dream come true.. I wondered though if the AI needed training for this to work. Do you mind sharing the workflow and what software you use? Hope to see more of these from you!

I've used Topaz Video Enhance AI, it has multiple pre-trained AI models, with more being added. For these competition vids that have interlacing artefacts on top of compression artefacts, I found the "Dione Interlaced Robust" model works best. But it always depends on the source material.

For example, this might sound counter intuitive but sometimes you can get better results if you shrink the video resolution before sending them through an AI model. In some cases for very low quality video I've had success with two pass processing. First sending it through a model that removes compression artefacts then another that enhances detail.

I wish I could do full competitions, but even with a hi-end computer processing an 1 hour competition could take up to 24 hours.

Here is another one:

https://youtu.be/XOG0jK22exo

My favorite era of on stage female bodybuilding is the late 80s, early 90s. Especially the NABBA / WABBA competitions from that era.

Unfortunately the quality of recordings from that era is not the best. But there are so many gems to be found in old competition videos still.

I wondered if there is anything I can do to make some of these old videos more enjoyable. So I used AI technology to enhance the quality on this clip:

https://youtu.be/73CnZpjZTQg

For comparison here is a screenshot from the original untouched recording at 100% size:

WOw she is so hot!

Looks like interlacing is still in an issue, from this still. There are some good models to correct that.

I suggest read first, comment later.