I have been down the super-resolution path, with separating elements, and the results are uninspiring from the sources available.

We have scans at higher than 4K of the original prints, they contain much more genuine resolution than any of the home versions, so if you were going to work with anything, it would make a lot of sense to work with those.

Resolution isn’t really the issue, it is dealing with noise, damage, grain, recovering colour, etc. We actually have more resolution than is easily handled.

Feel free to pursue your theories, you may work out a really great workflow or a solution to an existing problem, but also be ready for robust discussion and feedback. I do film restoration for a living, have a horrible amount of study and materials on everything from esoteric colour theory, to film emulsion composition, to brain bending (for me) algorithms and math based theories on everything from noise analysis, to colour matrix transforms, and (for example) over 2000 pages of research on the way silver halide particles interact with dye bases, their clumping behaviours, diffraction processes and limitations and more stuff that I really never wanted to know about. I know about 1/4 of what I wish I knew about this stuff!

This is to say, it is a deep field, way too deep for any one person to know everything, but there is a reasonable chance others have already trod the paths you may choose to explore, so be aware that people may ask pointed questions or suggest that things have already been tried or may be a dead end. You may re-explore those paths and find a branch others missed, so go for it!

The main thing on these forums is results - there are a lot of good, bad and ugly theories out there - so your idea of trying a few seconds first and seeing how it goes is a good plan. Post your results and I’m sure you will get a lot of interest.