I interviewed my grandfather in 2016 about his life. After the first interview I watched it from a computer screen and noticed that the focus had been off, it was in his ears and not on his eyes.
At the time I was so disappointed that I gave up the project. My grandfather passed away in 2021 and this year I finally went back and watched the interview. It’s still difficult to watch it because all I notice is the focus which is off.
I don’t even have a computer that could run Video AI at the moment, but I was wondering if it could maybe fix the focus issue? I’d love to do short video about my grandfather to my relatives and family members, but I am kind of a perfectionist and the focus issue really bothers me. So if there’s any way to fix it I’d love to know.
That is a really good question. Unfortunately, there is little that can be done for out-of-focus files, however, you may be able to sharpen the file to a point where it may look more in focus using the Proteus model.
When using the Proteus model, if you find that the Auto settings are not perfect for your use case, you can switch to Manual > Estimate. This setting will allow you to adjust the parameters based on what the model thinks is best vs what you think is best.
Hi Ida,
thank you for the response! Do you know if there’s anything being developed at the moment which might fix out-of-focus video files in the future? From what I’ve understood this can be done to still images with Photo AI at the moment. There’s e.g. a youtube video where someone exports the video to still images, uses Sharpen AI to fix the focus in each image and then imports those still images back to video.
To the best of my knowledge, there is not anything on the market that will refocus an out-of-focus video. With that being said, you could export the file as an image sequence and try using Sharpen AI on the frames and then restitch the files together.
This is a lengthy workflow, but the results should be better than what you would see from just using Topaz Video AI or another video app.
As mentioned, TVAI can’t do it, and there’s no simple ‘one click’ and free method. There is high end commercial software out there though but it will cost you, even for a plugin, and you will need a video editing program for any plugins of course.
Take a look at this video and see if it would help you:
It’s a short tutorial on a Boris FX Continum unit called BCC Magic Sharp. That costs $99, on top of your video editing program and is I think the cheapest they do (they have others at greater cost). But I think you can create an account with them and ask for a 15 day fully working trial. They have a forum too, Continuum - Boris FX Forum , and you could post in there too, for advice.
The plugin is NOT only for Adobe though it’s possible that subscribing to Adobe After Effects for a month or two might be the cheapest method - I haven’t checked. The cheapest compatible editing program to buy seems to be Vegas Pro using the OFX version of the plugin (Vegas Edit usually costs around $100 and works just fine). Not sure if they do free trials on that. Boris FX cover pretty much everything in the video plugin world but as I said, they are expensive and you may find it a steep learning curve so don’t start a time-limited free trial until you’ve got more of a handle on what’s involved!
Export as tiff files (16bit), make the resolution a bit smaller, take Photo AI with Enhance standart and shapren strong and get the resolution back to normal, maybe this does help.
Thank you Imo for the offer! I would really appreciate this. So that I won’t waste too much of your time how about I cut some clip that’s few minutes long and send it to you somehow? I think it would be enough to see if the software can fix or improve the focus. In total I have about 1 hours and 30 minutes of video.
