On the 4th of September 1948 Queen Wilhelmina of The Netherlands abdicated the Dutch throne in favour of her daughter Juliana.
In this film you see the famous balcony scene on the Palace on the Dam in Amsterdam where Wilhelmina holds her fairwell speech amidst Juliana's husband Prins Bernhard and her three eldest daughters, Beatrix, Irene and Margriet.
For us this is a special occasion because it is the first time that we used a new method of colorization for such a relatively long film.
In the second part of the film you see a comparison between the original B&W footage and the current colorizer that we have been using for the past three years, followed by a comparison with our new method which uses a different algorithm and principle.
The remarkable fact is that this entire 5 minute video was colorized using only 5 manually colorized reference frames. The cleaver A.I. subsequently follows the movement and shape changes of all the objects in a scene.
New reference frames are only required when drastic scene changes occur. In this example two new reference frames were needed to tell the A.I. to make the dresses of the three princesses red.
To end this video there is a comparison between our regular colorizer and the new method. Goodbye to DeOldify? Due to the fact that hand colorized reference frames are needed the amount of work is 5 fold with the new method, but we think it is most certainly worth while and you will see more of it in the near future.
A very important advantage of the new method is that objects like flags, uniforms, trams, busses, trains, clothes etc. can now be given the historically correct colours. Also colour fluctuations will be a thing of the past.
We are very pleased to show you this, especially considering the fact that colorizers like me have been waiting for a better colorizer for nearly 4 years now. Hopefully you will continue to enjoy and appreciate our work.
Source: Beeld En Geluid (Copyright).
Please DO NOT use any of this footage without permission!