Reverting Loss from .MOV (MPEG-4 Compression)

Question

I was wondering if it is possible to revert the loss that was caused by MPEG-4 compression. I had HD quality images and our colleague made the grave mistake of converting these HD images into a ".MOV" file to save space, which caused a great loss of detail around the moving object due to MPEG-4 using temporal redundancy as well as spatial redundancy.

My idea is to get the loss back, if it is possible. I know it is an unlikely thing, but still, I wanted to ask if anyone experienced such a situation.

I can share a sample video. As you can see, although the resolution is 2K, there is a great amount of blur on the object that is moving. Ironically, that is the object we want to 3D reconstruct to have a model of. So, it all depends on the quality. Original images were taken by a DSLR camera, if it matters.

Any ideas?

Answer 1

No, there is no way to recover information lost during any encoding steps - they are discarded forever. The only way to avoid this is to use lossless encoding.

That said, there are various algorithms available which will interpolate or try (using machine learning) to create detail based on various assumptions (such as buildings have edges, faces have a certain structure etc) so you may be able to produce something that looks better.