How do I clean up a video?

[pandel]

I've got some "old" videas that I D/L from the web a long time ago...they look fuzzy and slightly washed out.The audio is OK. Is there any way to clean them up so they look better?

[greyhound]

It is hard to get a better result than the original, but it is possible to enhance movies and filter out some "noise" and so on.

If you send (e-mail in the signature; no restrictions to size) a "small" sample to me I will try to use some of tools to make it better (or at least try) and let's see (I'll then tell you which tools I have used).

[casvdry]

Since your older videos were quite possibly encoded and/or filmed at a lower quality there isn't much you can do to the files. You can clear up minor noise and slightly sharpen the image but you won't notice much of a difference. Your best bet is trying to find the videos you have from a better source.

Also, re-encoding can decrease image quality rather than improve it. Especially in the cases of re-encoding to a different format. One way to get better results is to minimize the viewing area of the video to make it appear less grainy, but if you're dealing with videos recorded at lower resolutions anyway, they will be small to begin with.