The last time “L’arrivée d’un train en gare de La Ciotat” looked this good was back in 1895.
There is nothing like experiencing the past as we experience it today. Watching New York City in the 1920s in color is bound to make you feel weird since the past truly doesn’t seem so far when you can see it like this.
This developer and YouTuber named Denis Shiryaev took things to the next level. He used several neural networks to upscale a famous French short from 1895 to make it look as though it were filmed on a smartphone.
The 50-second French short called “L’arrivée d’un train en gare de La Ciotat” shows the arrival of a train at the Ciotat Train Station. Its fame comes from the story in which watchers allegedly panicked out of fear that the train would burst through the screen and crash into them.
Apparently, Shiryaev thought a change would to the classic good. He upscaled the film to 4K resolution at 60 fps with several neural networks. The result is nothing short of amazing.
SEE ALSO: 9 VISIONARY SCI-FI MOVIES FROM THE PAST TO THE PRESENT
Here is the original film:
And here is the updated one:
The added sound makes the video feel like it was shot in the 2020s with weirdly dressed people.
In order to make the impressive upscaling possible, he used Gigapixel AI and Topaz Labs. Apparently he “set up some settings before Topaz upscale, and after some tuning, got nice sharp results.”
This is an astonishing step and opens up a world of possibilities for the future of restoring old movies. While there are certain elements such as grains and over smoothing in the video, these are nothing that can not be fixed. It is certainly exciting to think about this technology’s advancement in 10 years.
Which movie would you like to see get restored?
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Derya Ozdemir <p>Derya Özdemir studied Translation & Interpreting at Marmara University. Her love for reading and writing started at an early age and evolved into a great fascination with everything science-related. Having done numerous translations between Turkish and English, she is experienced in popular science, medical, and creative texts. Interested in the act of learning itself, she tries to keep her mind busy with the global news, whys and hows of the world, and natural sciences. She wants to contribute to the popularization of science and communicate ideas all around the world. When she is not working on deadlines, she can be found petting stray cats in the streets of Istanbul.</p>
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