Making Videos Look Old Timey

 

This post recently came across my news feed and outlines a means to convert a modern video to look vintage or 'old timey'.  This post will summarize the method and offer a makefile that performs the transformation.

The general effect takes three steps: 1) downsample the frame rate, 2) color adjust to an older style, 3) grab a vcr noise overlay, scale it and apply it.

$ cat -n Makefile
     1    all: sideBySide.mp4
     2    # https://ottverse.com/create-vintage-videos-using-ffmpeg/
     3   
     4    %.ts: %
     5        ${SH} ffprobe -v error -show_entries format=duration -of default=noprint_wrappers=1:nokey=1 $< > $@
     6   
     7    %.size: %
     8        ${SH} ffprobe -v error -select_streams v:0 -show_entries stream=width,height -of csv=s=x:p=0 $< > $@
     9   
    10    input.mp4:
    11        ${SH} youtube-dl -f mp4 -o $@ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uvy02Cv7DIc
    12   
    13    adjustFps.mp4: input.mp4
    14        ${SH} ffmpeg -i $< -filter:v fps=fps=10 -strict -2 $@
    15   
    16    vintageFilter.mp4: adjustFps.mp4
    17        ${SH} ffmpeg -i $< -vf curves=vintage -strict -2 $@
    18   
    19    vcrOverlay.mp4:
    20        ${SH} youtube-dl -f mp4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J_MZb7qTenE -o $@
    21   
    22    overlay.mp4: vcrOverlay.mp4 input.mp4.ts vcrOverlay.mp4.ts input.mp4.size
    23        ${RM} list.txt
    24        ${SH} bash -c "for i in {1..$(shell echo `cat $(shell echo $^ | cut -f 2 -d ' ')` / `cat $(shell echo $^ | cut -f 3 -d ' ')` + 1 | bc)}; do printf \"file '%s'\n\" $< >> list.txt; done"
    25        ${SH} ffmpeg -f concat -i list.txt -vf scale=$(shell cat $(shell echo $^ | cut -f 4 -d ' ') | sed -e "s/x/:/g"),setsar=1:1 -an $@
    26   
    27    video.mp4: overlay.mp4 vintageFilter.mp4
    28        ${SH} ffmpeg -i $(shell echo $^ | cut -f 1 -d ' ') -i $(shell echo $^ | cut -f 2 -d ' ') \
    29                         -filter_complex "[0]format=rgba,colorchannelmixer=aa=0.25[fg]; [1][fg]overlay[out]" \
    30                         -map [out] -pix_fmt yuv420p -c:v libx264 -crf 18 $@
    31   
    32    sideBySide.mp4: input.mp4 video.mp4
    33        ${SH} ffmpeg -y -i $(shell echo $^ | cut -f 1 -d ' ') -i $(shell echo $^ | cut -f 2 -d ' ')  \
    34                         -filter_complex '[0:v]pad=iw*2:ih[int];[int][1:v]overlay=W/2:0[vid]' -map [vid] \
    35                         -map 0:a -acodec copy -shortest $@
    36   
    37    clean:
    38        ${RM} *.mp4 *.ts list.txt *.size

The end result should give you something of the form of this:

For more details, refer to FFmpeg Official Site: http://ffmpeg.org/