Moth3r said:
Example of what Avisynth can do to restore 8mm film:
http://www.vimeo.com/2823934

Very impressive. It's hard for me to comment without knowing more details. The motion stabilization is easy, and I'm assuming that some of the sharpness is a byproduct of his clever use of an anamorphic lens, followed by resizing. Color quality is probably because the color was good to begin with. There is a very good film-specific color-correction avisynth filter called CMYK that I am using for the Puggo Grande - it's doing wonders on the red shift (which most home movie super-8 film doesn't exhibit). The motion smoothness doesn't surprise me, it's easily achieved with the Workprinter, deshake, and judicious deinterlacing.

But what I can't quite explain is how he has achieved such a degree of sharpening without artifacts. I'd have to see the entire films at full size... most of his clips don't have much motion. If they really look that good full size on a TV screen, then that would be a remarkable achievement, even in 16mm film. Unless it just looks that good when it's small, or the artifacts are on the other segments of the clips :) There are a TON of sharpening tools available for avisynth, and I've experimented with most of them. Maybe he experimented more than I did :)

I might be able to make the Puggo Grande look that good at that size, but I wonder if it would be at a cost of it looking worse on a big TV. Although I'm reserving a healthy dose of skepticism, I've bookmarked the page and will see if I can dig up any more details. Thanks for the link.