Improving VHS Footage?

[foochuck]

Hello,

I have a very "picky" client who has asked me to capture an old VHS tape of a wedding video.

From the sound of it, I think he's expecting the footage to turn from VHS quality to HD quality.

I understand that this is not possible, but I'm wondering if there are any available programs and / or techniques I can use in After Effects (CS3) to help improve the look of the footage.

Obviously with tapes that are 10 years old, the footage has degraded and dropout is not avoidable, however I'd like to improve upon it, if at all possible.

Thanks

[lordsmurf]

No. This is beyond the scope of what After Effects can do.

You'll need more complex methods, involving AVI Synth and/or VirtualDub (and that's just for video -- audio needs work usually, too). Have you considered outsourcing this on tape to somebody else? (Contact me if that's an option.)

A lot can be done to a decent VHS tape, to get it close to "DVD quality", more than most people realize. It has to start at the tape, however, in hardware. By the time it hits software, most of what is possible can't be done anymore.

[GSP_87]

If your capture device has settings to adjust the picture, I'd increase the contrast and tint/color and maybe decrease the brightness. I think the quality of the cables will make a difference too (s-video instead of the regular red/white/yellow, and quad-shielded or whatever is better than plain).

[MJA]

for noise I heard a lot of good feedback about Neat Video in VirtualDub

[codecpage]

For bulk conversion I just use Virtualdub with the temporal smoother filter set to 5 (removes most noise, color flicker and moire).
More cleaning options are shown at http://www.codecpage.com/index_cleaning.html.

[creakndale]

Neat Video sells an After Effects CS3 "Home plug-in" version for $50. I've used it and have been impressed with the results. It's processor intensive and really slows down rendering but if you choose to do this yourself, have the time and patience to tweak each video scene, it's worth it.

http://www.neatvideo.com/

creakndale