M🞵A🞵S🞵H - De-Specialised Edition

A few years ago, classic TV comedy MASH, was remastered and released on streaming platforms. The picture quality was massively increased with just one minor flaw. They cropped the image to 16:9 widescreen 😱

This upset some fans.

The thing about widescreen is that it chops off the top and bottom of the picture. The top of Hawkeye's head? Gone! The bottom of Hot-Lips' boots? Vanished! אױ װײ איז מיר

But, there is an upside. Or should that be side-side? Anyway, the new remaster adds some previous unseen detail to the left and right of the picture.

Here's a grab from the original:

And here's the remastered wide version:

Perhaps an animated GIF will help?

As you can see, the remaster has great picture quality and bonus content at the sides. However, you might also be able to notice that the widescreen image has been stretched a fair bit. By my calculation it was originally a 1.72 aspect ratio before been distorted to 1.777.

This GIF makes it a bit more obvious what has been stretched and how the image has moved from the centre:

So, is it possible to take the sides of the widescreen version and stitch them on to the edges of the 4:3 version? Yes!

With a bit of ffmpeg magic, I scaled the 16:9 version back to its original ratio, then I added some black padding around it, then I overlaid the 4:3 on top - giving it some transparency so you can see how well it fits.

The (frankly overwhelming) command is:

ffmpeg -i wide.mp4 -i orig.mp4 \

   -filter_complex \

   "[0]scale=670:390,setsar=1,pad=670:480:(ow-iw)/2:(oh-ih)/2:black,setpts=PTS-0.375/TB[v0];[1]scale=640:480,setsar=1,format=rgba,colorchannelmixer=aa=0.5[fg];[v0][fg]overlay=(W-w)/2:(H-h)/2[vid];[0:a][1:a]amerge=inputs=2[aout]" \

   -map "[vid]" -map "[aout]" -c:v copy -c:a aac -strict experimental -b:a 192k copy output.mp4

That also shifts the first video by a couple of frames due to the files being slightly out of synch. I've also kept both soundtracks, for your discordant joy.

Here it is - the intro to M*A*S*H with extra side bits:

As you can see, they adjusted the font size of the main titles. As the video progresses, you'll notice the vertical offset changes - I don't know how much manual adjustment was made. The videos shift in and out of synchronisation - I assume the original was transferred from film to tape in a less precise process than the remaster.

ToDo

• Get AI to fill in the missing corners?
• Get AI to continually correct the placement of the video?
• Get AI to add a laugh track?