I stumbled upon this the other day while working on another project, but it may prove to be quite useful.
Photoshop CS3 and CS4 have new features that allow you to align a number of layers and blend them together. This is the same technology used to create panoramic images from multiple photos. What you can do with it though is use it to blend a number of video frames together to remove video noise. Check this out.
I just happen to have a couple SW LD captures lying around on my hard drive, and wanted to know how well this Photoshop filter worked. So I imported a couple shots using File > Import > Video frames to layers...
I imported a shot of the binary sunset on Tatooine. Here's a screenshot of a single frame...
This is a screencap from the X0 LD capture, and there's still some noticeable video noise and a few spots around the white sun. Now, if I combine all the layers into a smart object, I can set the stack mode by going to Layer > Smart Objects > Stack Mode > Median. There are a number of options, but median seems to work best. Here's the output (with some slight curve adjustments)...
Now tell me you've ever seen a cleaner image pulled from a laserdisc. ;) The raw quality is incredible. (The only flaw here is the trail where Luke walks in this shot. You could avoid it by only using the frames where Luke doesn't appear, but the rest of the image wouldn't be as defined.)
Now, here's the cool part. Not only can you clean up a single source, but you can combine two together. Here's a frame from the exact same shot from a capture of the Japanese Special Collection LD...
...and the output...
Now if I isolate these two layers into the same Photoshop file, I can align them and blend them together with two incredibly awesome functions. Go to Edit > Auto-align layers, use Auto and uncheck the two lens correction options. This will align the two layers and warp them into place if necessary. Then go to Edit > Auto-blend layers, choose stack and check seamless tones and colors. And behold...
...a combination of both DC and SC sources.
Now, there are some obvious limitations here. What I've done is taken a still shot and blended together successive frames to end up with a single clean frame. This wouldn't really work for moving shots. Well, unless you figured out a way to take a high number of separate captures of the same LD and blend each frame together. That would actually be a fun project to test. The other thing I didn't try was auto-aligning all the frames together before creating the Smart Object. With how wobbly the film in these transfers is, the image could probably be even sharper with an alignment and/or video stabilization prior to import.
For reference, here are my screencaps from this shot:
SC:
Original frame
Clean frame
DC:
Original frame
Clean frame
Merged
And just for fun, here's a before and after of the opening shot from the SC LD:
Original
Denoised and some quick level adjustments:
For some reason, I get an error when I try to align the SC and DC versions of this shot, and I suspect it might have something to do with the starfield.
Anyway, this is such an awesome tool I thought I'd share it.