S-VHS to DVD - Restoration

[J8son]

When I was younger my Dad had an old Super VHS camera that he would take on every family trip to document anything and everything. A great deal of my childhood is now stored away on S-VHS tapes in my attic.

The only problem is that over the years they have gotten mixed in with all of our old VHS movies. So now, since we were never in the habit of labeling anything, I've decided to go through the hundreds (and I do mean hundreds) of old tapes and find all my old home videos from the years past. Once I'm done I'm going to capture them and put together a nice DVD album of all my memories.

I was wondering that since I now have access to resources never dreamed of back in the days of the Super VHS camera, is there a way to improve the overall quality of these old S-VHS tapes once I digitize them?

Any good restoration tutorials or plug-in's come to mind? I want to do what ever I can to correct the video and improve the over all image quality.

[Marvingj]

Check out Lordsmurf site, its right up your alley.

[kisrum]

What marvingj said.

and get them out of the attic. Maybe take one or two to a local restoration service and try to get them to show you what they do to them.

With what it sounds like you're getting ready to invest in time, you might as well invest in good hardware/software, although many experts here seem quite happy with virtualdub. I only have about 8 VHS that I care about so I'm not willing to make the investment.

Don't make any promises to your family about deadlines, etc. You won't keep them.

[lordsmurf]

Maybe take one or two to a local restoration service

Be very careful about this.

Some service consider the mere act of being digitized as being restoration. Which is, of course, bullshit.

If you want a service to do the work for you, find one that is going to improve the quality of the original, to whatever degree is physically possible. Not merely slam it through some DVD recorder.

If their setup does not include TBCs, proc amps, detailers, expensive VCRs, libraries of software .. then run ... run as fast as you can. Some of these services are known to do more harm than good, especially if they use dirty, overused VCRs.

[J8son]

I just digitized one of my old videos just to try some tests in After Effects in color correction.

I've noticed that when I took it through my XL2 and into my PC (original playing off my S-VHS deck) I have some very bad artifacting.

I've de-interlaced the video and still appears there. I know it's not on the original tape and it's happening at some point during the digitizing process.

Any thoughts?

[FulciLives]

I just digitized one of my old videos just to try some tests in After Effects in color correction.

I've noticed that when I took it through my XL2 and into my PC (original playing off my S-VHS deck) I have some very bad artifacting.

I've de-interlaced the video and still appears there. I know it's not on the original tape and it's happening at some point during the digitizing process.

Any thoughts?

First of all ... do not EVER de-interlace your footage if you intend to have the final outcome be a DVD disc for playback on a TV. In fact you never ever want to de-interlace unless the only playback device will be a computer monitor.

Your footage is interlaced and yes interlaced video looks "strange" on a computer monitor BUT that is just how it is ... it will look fine on a DVD playing back on a TV and even computer DVD software (like WinDVD and PowerDVD) will de-interlace upon playback (on-the-fly).

So it is possible that the "very bad artifacting" you see is just normal interlaced video.

Also when talking about such things it is a very good idea to do a screen capture and post an image so that we are seeing exactly what it is you are seeing.

Your method of digitalizing (using a DV camcorder's analog-to-digital pass-thru) is a good method of getting the analog video into your computer. You do have to "watch" your luminance levels though as the DV cam is probably doing things incorrectly i.e., 0.0 IRE BLACK vs 7.5 IRE BLACK but that isn't the issue you are seeing as that can be very subtle. edDV knows about this black level issue I would ask him about that. Maybe he will come by and post about it here or point to one of his other posts about it.

- John "FulciLives" Coleman

[J8son]

Wow! I learn something new everyday. I guess that is a common misconception when working with DV footage. The first thing people want to do is de-interlace it when they see the weird ghosting effect. I guess I'll know better next time. It won't be a big deal in my case since this was just a test and I'm going to recapture all this footage anyway.

Also, let me clarify my digitizing process. I'm not taking it through all three systems at once (S-VHS to DV Camera to PC). I'm first recording the footage from my S-VHS VCR onto a DVD tape and then I am capturing it with my firewire. Just wanted to be clear on that because I'm not sure if that'll make a difference in the problem I'm having (since at some point during the DV camera stage is when it's happening).

Here is a screen capture of the problem I'm having. You can see the blocky artifacts in the footage. Keep in mind that the artifacts appear pre and post de-interlaced footage so I think I can rule out that problem.

[FulciLives]

I've never seen distortions of that type but then I don't work with DV footage that much but still that is not a normal thing. Hopefully someone else can chime in here with a solution.

The only thing I can say for now is that many if not most DV cams have analog-to-digital pass-thru meaning you input your analog video into the cam and the cam converts it to DV in real-time allowing you to "capture" the DV without the need to first record it onto a DV tape. I would try this method as it is more direct and hopefully your cam does function this way.

As for the problem you are having ... maybe try a different DV capture program. There are at least a couple that are free and the best, ScenalyzerLive, is not free but does I think have a free fully functional trail period. Look in the TOOLS section (see the "tool bar" on the left hand side of this site).

- John "FulciLives" Coleman

[greymalkin]

you might want to just try going from the s-video/rca out of your SVHS camcorder straight to a capture card. Capture as raw .avi or huffyuv. This might require the purchase of a capture card but that's just one suggestion. The first suggestion would be to clean the svhs camcorder as well as the mini-dv cam. The artifacting looks more like digital than analog. This is kinda like the distortion I got when trying to play a tape recorded in one dv camera on a different dv camera.

..and thank your dad for using SVHS. He could have saved a few bucks and gone with regular vhs like i decided to do with my wedding video

[davideck]

J8son -

What SVHS VCR are you playing back with?
Was your screen capture of an SVHS tape?

[J8son]

I'm going to try the pass through method and recapture some of the footage later and see if that clears up the problem. I'll keep you posted.

[Dasun]

I have seen distortion of this type, bad DV (in my case digital 8) tape. What you see is most likely caused by bad drop-out leading to digitial errors that the error correction system can not handle. Skip recording to DV and passthrough the camcorder and this will not be a problem.

Incidentally, this is what worries me about archiving DV - when the tape fails it is either big blocks or a blue screen both of which I think are much harder to remedy than a hail of dropout induced white lines on analogue video.

[JAB285]

I've done 20+svhs tapes to dv and have never had any look like your screen shot. If your svhs tape are playing correctly on your tv then the problem must be in your dv camcorder or the dv tape. What kind of dv camcorder are you using? It might need cleaning. Pass thru might be a solution for you, but I wouldn't give up on the dv tape altogether. My 20+ svhs tapes turned into 50 dv tapes. I then used the dv tapes as masters to make dvds from. Dv tapes are much easier to edit and a lot of people save them as masters to make future dvds from. You might want to consider this as an option. I agree with greymalkin. You should thank your Dad for using svhs. The higher resoultion of svhs will provide you with better dv tapes and in turn better looking dvds. Once you figure out whats wrong that is.

[Nelson37]

Definitely a digital problem. Note the precisely squared blocks. Analog does not do this. Looks very much like data loss. My guess would be either a bad tape or a problem with the recording heads.

I would recommend you completely eliminate the unnecessary, and apparently degrading, step of recording to DV tape and just use the pass-thru.