Specific Making the text readable

[apowe]

Making the text readable in this scene from a cartoon (likely impossible, but worth a shot)

Attached are two screen captures from an episode of The Venture Bros. season 1 DVD. I'm trying to decipher what this resume says. Unfortunately the resolution is only 720x540 because the episode is not available on Blu-ray or HD streaming. Apparently season 1 was created in standard def, so it'd be impossible to find a better source. With that said, the last time Adult Swim showed the episode on cable, I was able to read some of it on my HDTV a little bit better than I can with these images on my computer monitor. I don't know if Adult Swim actually got access to a slightly higher master version, or if they just have a really good digital upscaler for broadcast.

Anyway, the sharper image was sharpened just a bit using VLC Player's internal options, while the blurry one is original and unmodified. I didn't know for sure if sharpening it with VLC pre-screengrab would be any different than doing post-screengrab editing (working with a more-raw source?), so I included both just to be safe.

I've tried several tutorials involving high pass filters, blurs and layered transparencies, etc. I've also tried two specialty programs called SmartDeblur and Blurity, which didn't do anything for me. I'm not skilled with PS or those programs, though, so my failures don't necessarily mean it's impossible. But I do suspect that the image is simply too low-res to be workable.

I truly appreciate anyone willing to take a stab at this. It's silly and unimportant in the grand scheme of things, but it's part of a fun hobby for me. So, thank you!

Finally, I'll include what I know/think some of the text says, just in case it helps:

The Monarch​

1st heading: Objective(?)​

2nd heading: Education​

State University 19??-19?4 (most likely says 1980-1984)​

B.A. Creative Writing, Minors(?) Physics, Marine Biology, Entomology​

3rd heading: Work Experience​

1995-Present Self-Employed​

4th heading: Special Skills​

Driver's License​

??????​

??????​

???????? a "people person"?​

5th heading: ???​

??????? Guild of Calamitous Intent Ball​

??????? Guild of Calamitous Intent Ball​

Biff Loman in "Death of a Salesman"​

6th heading: ????? Extra-Curricular Activities​

Charity work - Big Brothers of America​

 

[Eggy]

I'm afraid this is not possible due to the lack of information (pixels)
Every square is a pixel

 

[admin]

I grabbed a screenshot from a 480p web source but it didn't look much better. Sharpened it and reduced some of the noise, still unreadable.

Probably the only hope to get a clear version of this would be for the studio to release a higher res version at some point in the future.

 

[Eggy]

I've even tried BenVista PhotoZoom without result...

 

[apowe]

I grabbed a screenshot from a 480p web source but it didn't look much better. Sharpened it and reduced some of the noise, still unreadable.

Probably the only hope to get a clear version of this would be for the studio to release a higher res version at some point in the future.

View attachment 91185

It seems like you found a slightly better quality screenshot to start with, that's cool. After a quick search, it appears that computers must scale 4:3 DVDs from 720x480 to 720x540, which explains why my screenshots have the latter resolution... and it's possible that I lost some quality due to that scaling process. Of course, I don't know how the web source you found would have been uploaded without that scaling happening, but either way, thanks for locating it.

I could read a few new words from your image, so that's great. Thanks!

I'm holding out hope that they release the entire series, with remastered seasons 1 and 2, on Blu-ray once the series ends, but it could be like 20 years before that happens.

I'm afraid this is not possible due to the lack of information (pixels)
Every square is a pixel

I've even tried BenVista PhotoZoom without result...

Thanks for trying!

 

[revnart]

@admin you think you could post original of your screenshot without noise removal and sharpening? Just want to try also

 

[admin]

@admin you think you could post original of your screenshot without noise removal and sharpening? Just want to try also

Here's the best one I could find.

 

[apowe]

I'm glad admin posted that second screenshot, I was able to make out a couple more words. It looks like I've got maybe 40% deciphered.

For those interested, I'm posting my results. The only layered format I can save is pdn, and I figured that wouldn't be wanted here, so I'm uploading 3 tif files (the forum doesn't allow tif uploads, so they're in a zip).
They're labeled, so you can re-stack them together. You'll also want to add an additional layer at the very bottom with a blank white background. The top layer should be text over a transparency--hopefully that was preserved.
(Top layer: deciphered text overlay -- 2nd layer: sharpened resume -- 3rd layer: unmodified resume -- 4th layer: white background so you can easily read the text overlay if you want to)

As I was doing this, it became apparent that the resume's letter and word spacing is extremely strange. I had to resize/reshape my text overlay word-by-word to make it fit, even in places where I was 100% confident that I had the correct words. I don't know if Microsoft Word (which the resume was created in) does this automatically, and I don't have it installed to test.

For font, I used Courier New, 7pt, bold.

A huge thanks and credit go to admin, whose images (both of them) I used in those files.

I'm confident in much of the text I deciphered, but a few parts were somewhat less certain, including several of the numbers.

If anyone ends up working on this in the future, please share your results!

Thanks again to those who attempted this.