VideoHelp Forum
+ Reply to Thread
Results 1 to 14 of 14
Thread
  1. I took videos over 50 years ago and had them transferred over to VHS then to CD's then to my Hard Drive and they are not good so is there any way to clear them up?
    Quote Quote  
  2. Mod Neophyte Super Moderator redwudz's Avatar
    Join Date
    Sep 2002
    Location
    USA
    Search Comp PM
    You 'might' be able to make them look better, but after so many conversions, there may not be much to work with. You get quality loss with each conversion. If you still have the VHS tapes or the original film(?), you'd be better off starting over.

    But you might try VirtualDub. It has many filters available and some may help you. Some filters here. http://www.infognition.com/VirtualDubFilters/

    You could also post a short clip from one of the videos here and others may be able to give better suggestions.
    Quote Quote  
  3. Banned
    Join Date
    Oct 2004
    Location
    Freedonia
    Search Comp PM
    I disagree with redwudz in that what he really and truly means by "might" is something like "Most likely impossible but there may be a 1 in 1000 chance that I'm wrong here" rather than "With absolute 100% certainty you can turn garbage into gold!", which is probably what the OP will take "might" to mean.

    Going from original video source -> VHS -> some disc format (probably NOT CDs as he claims but who knows?) -> God knows what on his hard drive
    is going through so many conversions that the odds are huge that this final mess can't really be improved. Oh sure, maybe jagabo can offer expert help to make things 2-3% better, but that's probably all.
    Quote Quote  
  4. Member
    Join Date
    May 2014
    Location
    Memphis TN, US
    Search PM
    Originally Posted by lostsoul65 View Post
    I took videos over 50 years ago and had them transferred over to VHS then to CD's then to my Hard Drive and they are not good so is there any way to clear them up?
    Rather than total despair, I'd follow redwuz with a request for more info. To say "I took some videos" doesn't tell very much. 50 years ago was the 1960's, so we'd guess the "videos" were film. We'd also guess (or hope) that a good shop did an optical transfer to VHS. Question is, how did the VHS get transferred to CD? Was it "CD" or "DVD"? How was it done? How did the CD's or whatever get onto your hard drive? Do you still have the VHS?

    See, we need more details before we relegate this project to the grave.
    - My sister Ann's brother
    Quote Quote  
  5. Member zoobie's Avatar
    Join Date
    Feb 2005
    Location
    Florida
    Search Comp PM
    The source is probably film which some labs will transfer direct to hard drives.
    Quote Quote  
  6. If you still have the film and it's in good condition you'll get much better results from a professional film scanning lab. If all you have now is some DVD or VCD files -- you'll have to upload a representative sample. Others will then give you an idea what you might achieve.
    Quote Quote  
  7. It was on film of course and it's gone. It was transferred to the old VHS tapes then to Yes DVD from Wall greens and of course from DVD to Hard drive there is no corruption and like most people all my digital stuff is on my hard drive. I only want to clear it up a little because I know without profession stuff that is all I'm going to get. With Yes DVD I have 54 segments on the DVD and I would like to know how I can separate each segment to send to all the old family that is still living.
    Quote Quote  
  8. Member
    Join Date
    May 2014
    Location
    Memphis TN, US
    Search PM
    Originally Posted by lostsoul65 View Post
    It was on film of course and it's gone. It was transferred to the old VHS tapes then to Yes DVD from Wall greens ....
    Eww, that might be an ouch! But we'll wait and see.

    So I take it that what you had is a DVD disc with 54 separate mpg files (or some other encoded format)?. The 54 files were copied, we hope, to your hard drive. Verify if that's correct.

    Working with either the separate files on the DVD or those on the hard drive, we need to know how they're encoded. You can use the free MediaInfo utility on one of them and post its information here. It's simple to install and use. When you install, check the dialog window and de-select any extra tool bars, freebies, etc., that are offered. Just install the program by itself. Don't go making screen captures of the readout. You can use the "View" menu to see the full report in "Text" format. Select that text with your mouse and paste the text in your post.

    When you say "separate the files" I'm not sure what you mean. If it's just one big DVD video with 54 joined segments, use MediaInfo for the whole thing.

    Sorry, but we need that info before anyone can do anything else. We can't just say no without seeing something.

    Surprised 25 other people didn't jump on this.
    - My sister Ann's brother
    Quote Quote  
  9. You can trim out short clips from VOB files with a program like Mpg2Cut2. That program only cuts on I frames so you will have about 1/2 second granularity on where you can cut.
    Quote Quote  
  10. It's .VOB files 11 of them when I open the Folder. Like I said everything digital is on my hard drive, including every CD and DVD I own. When I go to the main menu I get 54 segments. Now this is in YES DVD. Here is an imageClick image for larger version

Name:	Capture.JPG
Views:	394
Size:	69.8 KB
ID:	26219
    Quote Quote  
  11. Banned
    Join Date
    Oct 2004
    Location
    Freedonia
    Search Comp PM
    Originally Posted by LMotlow View Post
    Surprised 25 other people didn't jump on this.
    Ha ha - spoken like a true newbie! (In terms of membership here, not experience - no offense meant)

    Wait till you've been around as long as me and others and you'll get tired of this kind of post too. I could barely work up enough enthusiasm to say, essentially, "It's probably too late to improve the quality." The OP needs a LOT of help and someone else can hold his hand through this. Almost everyone who posts this kind of thing has very unrealistic ideas of the kinds of "improvement" they can make and the odds are that he'll get incremental improvement at best of maybe 2-3 or 5% and no more. It certainly won't be tons better after he spends a LOT of time and effort to do the filtering and re-encoding necessary. But then again quality is subjective so I suppose it's always possible that he could get a very marginal improvement but to his eyes it's earth shattering. We've got a few members here with eagle eyes who apparently can personally detect really small and minute quality differences that the vast majority of people would never be able to tell apart.
    Quote Quote  
  12. jman98, thank you for your post. I figure not to try and improve the video after reading your post and I'm ok with that because I don't watch these videos much anyway but is there a way that I can edit them? I mean cut some stuff out or just take certain clips out and put them in another folder. I don't think this is that important because you can glance at all 54 segments in about 15 seconds and figure out which one you want to watch. But I figure I would ask but might not even be worth the trouble?
    Quote Quote  
  13. Member
    Join Date
    May 2014
    Location
    Memphis TN, US
    Search PM
    Yep, I'll go along with most of that, jman98. I don't think the O.P. sounds like somebody hell bent on 6 months of restoration, LOL! (I'm not in the mood for it, either). Main point, I think, is how to cut those mpeg's into parts for relatives. I guess they've seen the clips enough to be satisfied so far.

    Anyway, you're right, it kinda looks like hens' teeth right now. But it's a start.

    For LostSoul65's info, the files that contain the actual videos are .VOB files. The owner disabled file endings in Windows, so he can't see the ".vob" part of the file names. The structure of DVD folders and files on a disc looks like this: https://www.videohelp.com/dvd#struct .

    The files shown in the posted pic have video and audio content in these files:
    VTS_01_1.vob
    VTS_01_2.vob
    VTS_01_3.vob
    VTS_02_1.vob
    VTS_03_1.vob
    VTS_04_1.vob

    The DVD has 4 titles and 4 menus. The menu for each title uses an ".ifo" file together with a matching file that looks like "vts_0x_0.vob". The backup files have ".bup" extensions.

    I have some dandy software that can pull out those videos and separate 'em lickety-split. But there's a lot of free stuff and some budget software that can do it for you. I don't have that other stuff, but someone who uses it can chime in and help.
    - My sister Ann's brother
    Quote Quote  
  14. 'I would like to know how I can separate each segment to send to all the old family that is still living'.

    Please make a copy of your folder before you do anything. Work with the copy.

    Now, when you say segments do you mean 'chapters'? There are 54 individual chapters on the disc?
    https://www.videohelp.com/tools/DVD-Decrypter can split by chapter. There is a guide here:
    https://forum.videohelp.com/threads/277756-How-To-Rip-and-Manage-Music-DVDs-just-like-M...r-Media-Center
    All you need to know is in the first half of the tutorial...to the part where the VOBs are split and renamed.
    Play each VOB in VLC (after the split) and rename them to your liking.

    If that doesn't work I would join all the VOBs below with VOBMerge (save to mpeg) and split by hand with
    VideotoVideo (Tools>Split Video (use 'Direct Stream Copy' preset when prompted so there is no quality loss)):
    VTS_01_1.vob
    VTS_01_2.vob
    VTS_01_3.vob
    VTS_02_1.vob
    VTS_03_1.vob
    VTS_04_1.vob

    Edit: tutorial on Videotovideo is here: https://forum.videohelp.com/threads/354976-How-to-cut-any-video-with-the-free-Video-to-...ideo-Converter
    Last edited by transporterfan; 7th Jul 2014 at 23:17.
    Quote Quote  
Visit our sponsor! Try DVDFab and backup Blu-rays!