Helping My Neighbor Restore Old Videos: A Black and White to Color Video Project

A few months ago, my neighbor Sarah asked if I could help her with something tech-related. She's in her seventies, and like many people her age, she has boxes of old family videos that she can't really watch anymore. Either the VCR broke years ago, or the tapes have degraded so much that the footage is barely visible.

We've become friendly during the pandemic - she lives alone and I've been helping her with errands and technology stuff. So when she mentioned wanting to see some videos of her late husband, I said sure, let's figure something out.

The problem was that even when we managed to get the tapes digitized using a friend's video capture device, most of the footage was in poor shape. Some tapes had completely lost their color over the decades. Others were recorded on equipment that only captured black and white to begin with. Sarah told me these videos were from the 1970s and 80s - her wedding, the birth of her children, family vacations.

She said something that really stuck with me: "I just want to see them one more time, you know? But in a way that feels real, not like looking through a foggy window."

I started researching options online. Professional video restoration services exist, but they charge anywhere from $50 to $200 per video. Sarah has probably twenty or thirty tapes, so that wasn't really feasible. I also found some free software, but it required a pretty powerful computer and a lot of technical know-how. Plus, the processing would take hours per video.

Then I found this website that uses AI to colorize video automatically. The whole process happens in the cloud, so you don't need special hardware. You just upload your files through a web browser, wait for them to process it, and then download the results.

I was a bit skeptical at first, but they offered a free preview, so I figured we could test one short clip and see if it was even worth pursuing.

We picked a video from Sarah's wedding - just a thirty-second clip of her and her husband walking out of the church. The original was grainy black and white, kind of hard to make out details. We uploaded it and waited about five minutes.

When we watched the preview, Sarah actually started crying. The video was still a bit fuzzy - the AI can't fix poor original quality - but suddenly we could see that her dress was ivory with lace details. Her husband's suit was dark gray, not black like we'd assumed. The flowers she was carrying were pink and white. These details completely changed how the footage felt.

It wasn't just about adding color - it made the people in the video feel more real and present.

We ended up processing about eight of her most important videos. Some turned out better than others. Videos with good lighting and clear subjects worked best. Darker scenes or footage with lots of movement were sometimes less accurate. But even the imperfect ones were still more engaging to watch than the black and white originals.

What I really appreciated about this tool was how straightforward it was. I didn't have to install any software on Sarah's computer. I didn't have to explain complicated technical concepts. We just uploaded files through a browser and waited for the results. The processing happens on their servers, so Sarah's basic laptop didn't have any issues.

They also mentioned that videos get deleted from their servers after 24 hours, which was important to Sarah. These are personal family videos, and she wouldn't want them stored somewhere indefinitely without her knowledge.

The cost structure worked for her situation too. Instead of a monthly subscription that would keep charging her, she could pay per video or buy credits to use whenever she wanted. Since this was really a one-time project for her - digitizing and restoring the tapes that matter most - that pricing model made much more sense.

I learned a lot about how this technology actually works. The AI has been trained on millions of color images and videos, so it understands that grass is usually green, skies are blue, buildings have typical colors based on materials. It's not randomly assigning colors - it's making educated guesses based on what it's learned.

The tool also uses something called temporal consistency, which means it doesn't just colorize each frame independently. If a tree is green in one frame, it stays green in the next. This prevents that flickering effect where colors jump around, which you sometimes see in cheaper colorization tools.

Sarah and I spent a few afternoons watching through the restored videos. She told me stories about what was happening in each scene - who the people were, where they were, what was going on in her life at that time. It was really touching to see her reconnecting with those memories.

One video that really stood out was from 1982 - her daughter's first birthday. In the original black and white, you could see a baby in a high chair and people around. After colorization, we could see the birthday decorations, the cake, the outfits everyone was wearing. Sarah said she'd forgotten those details completely, and seeing them brought everything back.

I'm not going to claim this technology is perfect or that it solves every problem with old footage. The results definitely depend on the original video quality. And there's no way to know if the AI is picking the exact historically accurate colors - it's making educated predictions based on patterns it learned from training data.

But for someone like Sarah, who just wants to old video to color conversions that are close enough to feel real, it's pretty remarkable. The difference in emotional connection between the black and white versions and the colorized ones is hard to overstate.

They support a lot of different video formats, which was helpful because some of Sarah's files were in pretty old formats. I was worried we'd have to convert them first, but everything uploaded without issues.

The whole experience got me thinking about how many people must be in similar situations - boxes of old tapes sitting in closets, memories they can't really access because the technology has moved on or the footage has degraded over time. The fact that we now have tools that can black and white to color video conversion accessible to regular people is pretty amazing.

Twenty years ago, you would have needed professional equipment and expertise that most people couldn't access or afford. Now you just need a web browser.

Sarah's been sharing the colorized videos with her children and grandchildren. She said it's been wonderful for the younger generation to be able to see these family moments in a way that feels more relatable and engaging. Her granddaughter told her the old videos don't feel so "ancient" anymore - they're just regular family videos, just from an earlier time.

If you have old family videos that you've been meaning to do something with, it might be worth checking out. The preview feature lets you test a clip before committing to anything, which is nice since not all footage will colorize equally well. At least you can see if your specific videos are good candidates before spending money.

I'm really glad I could help Sarah with this project. It wasn't about changing her life or anything dramatic like that. Just making some old memories a little more accessible, a little more vivid. And honestly, that was enough.