The Doctor Who restoration team had a fantastic frame interpretation process. But if it is one frame, that would be easy enough to do in Photoshop. I looked and I didn’t see it. What is the GOUT frame number?
VidFire has some major limitations. If I recall correctly all of the Time Meddler, some shots from Tomb, and episode 5 of The Ambassadors of Death couldn’t be vidfire’d do to frame rate issues. Then again, 30mm isn’t a pal 16mm telerecording with NTSC color!
I’m a bit of a VidFIRE nerd, and a fan of the Restoration Team’s work, so I think this post might be of some interest.
Regarding Ambassadors 5, I have never seen the VHS in person (saw a poor quality copy years back), but my understanding is that 2-4, 7 did not undergo the process (Ambassadors 1 still exists in its original format), but 5 & 6 did, simply because of time constraints caused by uncertainties regarding which scenes in the other episodes would be in color, and in the end those were presented in a hybrid B&W/Color format. That being said, the DVD release is presented in full color, and 2-7 have all undergone the VidFIRE process.
Tomb of the Cyberman, excepting an easter egg, was not given the VidFIRE process on the original DVD release, which to my understanding was due to uncertainties that the process would work correctly once the masters underwent MPEG-2 compression (it worked of course, and the story later received a special edition with the full process).
The only stories to not undergo VidFIRE for the DVD range were The Crusades: Episode 1 (The Lion) and all of The Time Meddler. This was because of the poor quality of the telerecordings available, and as a result a belief that the illusion of it being from a tape/electronic source would be broken.
That being said, the VidFIRE process CAN be used on film sequences, and rather convincingly apparently, even if not intended. The original DVD release of The Seeds of Death accidentally VidFIRE’d everything, causing it to receive a special edition to correct this (and add more bonus features of course). Typically the process only touches the studio scenes; the film sequences are left alone as they would have originally been at the lower frame-rate anyway. Also, another rule utilized was in essence, if it originally was shot with an electronic camera, it gets VidFIRE’d, regardless of whether it was originally printed to film or tape (some 60s episodes were actually shot with electronic camera’s to 35mm film, not tape, either because of unavailability of tape machines that week, complex editing, or both).
So VidFIRE is a powerful tool*, and many of it’s weaknesses come more from it’s purpose of application rather than flaws in its process, although there are some dodgy areas on rare occasions, especially in the earlier days of its use.
*VidFIRE is actually a combination of many different tools, although the identities of which are kept a “trade secret” of sorts
You should check out Ambassadors on DVD, sure it’s a bit pricey for a region 1 copy, but it’s well worth the price.
Heh, sorry if I didn’t clarify myself, but I already am a proud owner of that DVD. I was lucky enough to get all of the B&W and some of the color stories before they went out of print here. Now it’s just a long slog to grab the remaining R1 Classic Who DVD’s; out of print or otherwise.
Anyways, in regards to fixes, one error I noticed long before I joined the forums, and still exists in v2.7 is the shot starting at about 13:07 (the long shot of the Jawa’s carrying R2-D2 to the sandcrawler). The error in question is that the furthest-most mountain in the shot in the 1977 version has a stunning reflection/shadow of the light of the sunset hitting it. This was altered (in '97?) to crush it out as part of the effort to make the shot look like it was set at twilight. Unfortunately, this hasn’t been restored in any of the version of Despecialized, and would be great to see restored to its former glory in v3.0