Photos and videos are really like rudimentary time machines, capturing moments that we can carry with us into the future. And thanks to AI and digital upscaling, we’re being given clearer and clearer pictures of the increasingly distant past.
NASS over on YouTube, for example, has been spending a lot of time combing through century-old footage, restoring and upscaling numerous silent videos from the early 1900s to 60FPS HD video. We’ve seen this sort of thing before, but the sheer amount of footage available on their channel is impressive (179 videos at the time of this posting).
According to NASS, the footage has been restored, upscaled, stabilized, speed corrected, sharpness enhanced, noise removed, colorized, the works. Some of the upscaling has also been AI-assisted. And while the colorization and sound are “not historically accurate,” they really bring the footage to life. It’s like an actual chronovisor! Sort of.
Here are a few showcasing Marseille, London, and Tokyo from the 1920s.
