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  1. Recently I acquired some 1st generation VHS that belonged to a friend mine who has passed. These are episodes of the Cher Show (solo) that re-aired on VH1 in 1998/1999. This series has never been on DVD and any advice on cleaning it up would surely be appreciated. I'm fairly familiar with VirtualDub and I'm becoming more familiar with avisynth using avspmod. Thanks

    https://www.mediafire.com/?vcg8v6llu3oufra

    15 second sample utvideo codec
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    Where did all the herringbone noise come from?

    Why are black levels so high? Was it captured that way? Some highlights are blown away.

    How was the video captured/recorded, whatever?

    Notice that the black borders keep changing size. What's up with that?
    Last edited by sanlyn; 19th Mar 2014 at 03:19.
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    First try and a quickie. Still has a long way to go but I ran short of time. Some of the herringbone is still there. I doubt you'll get rid of it completely without ruining everything. Others can have a field day playing with it. Will have to fix this in 3 steps. Maybe 4. Maybe 5. Had to go to 16-bit plugins to prevent banding. Maybe you could get a better capture ? ? ? Looks over filtered right now, especially in MPC-BE player. I'll have to work on that.

    What happened to the audio? Kinda tinny, even for VHS.

    Later.
    Last edited by sanlyn; 19th Mar 2014 at 03:20.
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    Using a VCR with S-Video output, or a running the composite through a better comb filter could help the checkerboarding.

    Some of it's just noisy analog cable, though.
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    Herringbone isn't all that difficult to smooth away, although some fine detail will suffer. The biggest problem with the clip is that angular hash (stripes). There's a destripe routine that can clean it, but it's seriously destructive. Wish cherbette would let us know if that stuff is in the original playback. If it is, the video's in trouble. If not, it could have been a fault in the capture.

    True, if this was taped from a broadcast with that junk it could have been in the original signal.
    Last edited by sanlyn; 19th Mar 2014 at 03:20.
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    I think the herringbone was in the original signal. The angular hash/checkerboarding is poor capture/chroma decoding, the comb filter should be low-pass filtering the chroma so that it doesn't look like a sine wave.
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    Could be the answer. We've had a lot of captures recently that display similar problems, and worse.
    Last edited by sanlyn; 19th Mar 2014 at 03:20.
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    I don't know avsynth, but in YUV color space applying a low pass filter (0.5mhz should be fine for VHS captures) to the color components should fix this.
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    Anyone know of a low-pass chroma filter for Avisynth? FFTD3D? NeatVideo has advanced setup for low-frequency noise, and mid- and high-frequency filtering can be disabled. The destripe routine I mentioned uses MaskTools, but it can make a video so soft it looks out of focus.

    This would be child's play with a better capture, but it's just possible that the angular hash isn't coming from the capture device. Maybe yes, maybe no. Seen a lot of it lately, though.
    Last edited by sanlyn; 19th Mar 2014 at 03:20.
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  10. I think the heringbone effect you're seeing must be coming into play in the capture somewhere? What would cause this. I don't think I've ever noticed it in my captures before. I'm playing through a Sony VCR and am passing through my Panasonic DVD-R (which I believe one of y'all here told me has a built in TBC on Line 1) and out the S-Video to VC500. I can definitely try to recapture with the blacks better. I thought I had the histogram going the whole time & it wasn't going into the red at all but I could be wrong. Maybe even settings in the Panasonic that need to be tweaked. I dunno.
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    Which Panasonic DVD-R is it? And how does a DVD recording look? In XP mode it might be better.
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    Originally Posted by Cherbette View Post
    I can definitely try to recapture with the blacks better. I thought I had the histogram going the whole time & it wasn't going into the red at all but I could be wrong. Maybe even settings in the Panasonic that need to be tweaked. I dunno.
    The only thing that will be in the red on the histogram is usually the black borders. Dead black border will be a little spike at the left-hand end, which can safely be in the red zone -- because, of course, it's usually RGB 0 black. Your "black" borders in the capture don't come out black, they're about RGB 20.

    Do you get all that herringbone and skinny angular striprs when you play that source normally on TV?

    The DVD-R's tbc is doing some work. Likely the original VCR had a problem that can't be solved after the fact. Overall, looks petty good in that respect.
    Last edited by sanlyn; 19th Mar 2014 at 03:21.
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    Originally Posted by happycube View Post
    Which Panasonic DVD-R is it? And how does a DVD recording look? In XP mode it might be better.
    Please. Don't record noisy VHS to MPEG. The O.P. wants lossless AVI because these vids need some work.
    Last edited by sanlyn; 19th Mar 2014 at 03:21.
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    I suggested it since there's *something* wrong with this chain, causing the chroma checkerboarding, particularly noticable on the reds at 9.3 seconds, and the pink shirt around 12.7 seconds.

    Figured it'd be good to try some variations to see what was messing up the chroma decoding there.
    Last edited by happycube; 6th Mar 2014 at 18:22.
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  15. It is a DMR E55. Oh I guess I misread what you were saying, sanlyn. So you're saying I didn't record the blacks black enough? That should be a easy fix
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    The DMR-E55 is one of the older, good Panasonics, so try connecting the composite out into the VC500 and see if it does better?
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  17. The composite versus the S-video?
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    If you have s-video, use s-video. You don't need to hassle with dot crawl on top of herringbone and low-frequency stripes.
    Last edited by sanlyn; 19th Mar 2014 at 03:21.
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  19. ok i'll try another capture and report back. What's funny is some of the other episodes taped from VH1 do not have the "herringbone" distortion. Maybe it was just a bad connection that day I dunno or maybe it's something on my end. I'll tinker around to be sure.
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    Good show. If not for those one or two problems, this could be made into a much nicer transfer. If it comes out as before, well....another learning experience where we do the best we can.
    Last edited by sanlyn; 19th Mar 2014 at 03:21.
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  21. I seem to recall noticing this issue once before when the "Line in NR" was set to "Off". I'll post another sample tomorrow. Thanks for all the help
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    Herringbone pattern is apparent - flaws inherent from VHS source and capture, or maybe analog cable (as mentioned) and some crosstalk on those reds and pinks (also as mentioned).

    Looks like a job for a couple of resizes (down to 360x480 with precise bilinear then back up to 720x480 with lanczos to eliminate the crosstalk) and a strong dose of Neat Video with the temporal filter for that wavy noise.

    Not perfect but, for it being the middle of the night here, it will do.

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    Originally Posted by happycube View Post
    Using a VCR with S-Video output, or a running the composite through a better comb filter could help the checkerboarding.
    Are you suggesting a hardware solution? If so, what would you recommend?
    I hate VHS. I always did.
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  23. Is this one any better?
    Image Attached Files
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    A bit, but I'm being subjective. Blacks look nicer, and a few less artifacts. (Maybe less sharpening on this capture?) I believe Sanlyn would have better input on this.

    As for post processing, it's not really going to be easier or more difficult. It still has those herringbone and dot crawl artifacts. As well, don't worry too much about the coloring. As long as you don't oversaturate to clipped levels, or underdo it to near zero chroma it can always be corrected with the wide variety of color filters available, for VirtualDub and Avisynth.

    Having said that, it goes without saying that removing as many of the artifacts at the capture level as you can is ideal, but it's also quite normal to believe that every VHS capture will have its issues and need processing regardless.

    It's just the nature of the beast when dealing with an analog format being converted to digital.
    I hate VHS. I always did.
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  25. That is true. Sanlyn just suggested I try a second capture with darker blacks. I think the few less artifacts may come from the Line in NR being turned on. I'm open to suggestions as to whether we like this or not lol
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  26. Originally Posted by sanlyn View Post
    First try and a quickie. Still has a long way to go but I ran short of time. Some of the herringbone is still there. I doubt you'll get rid of it completely without ruining everything. Others can have a field day playing with it. Will have to fix this in 3 steps. Maybe 4. Maybe 5. Had to go to 16-bit plugins to prevent banding. Maybe you could get a better capture ? ? ? Looks over filtered right now, especially in MPC-BE player. I'll have to work on that.

    What happened to the audio? Kinda tinny, even for VHS.


    ED: OK. Re-posted.

    Later.
    Not sure what could be wrong with the audio. It's being fed into my Kenwood VR209 and passed through the cassette deck for attenuation and out to my E-MU 0202 USB for capture. I didn't think it sounded too shoddy. It is mono.
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    The black level was workable, but lowering it a little will help preserve more bright detail. A couple of camera shots looked a little "burned" in the highlights. The less clipping during capture, the better. Don't forget that the black borders will throw off your histogram on the dark end, if you're using a 'gram to check levels. It's OK if that little left-hand "spike" from the borders ends up in the red. The "brightness" control affects black levels more than other areas. "Contrast" stretches out the brights. The two interact a bit, so you have to fuss between the two to get the best compromise.

    I think the main purpose of the exercise is to see if a poor connection might have caused the big problem, or if that stripey junk is really on the original source. I do have a couple of old VHS cable recordings where the damn cable station had similar Fm "hash" (crosshatching) in the signal. Cleaning it 100% produced an unwatchable video. I got rid of a lot of it, and just live with the rest.

    The stripes BTW are slanted 44 degrees clockwise.
    Last edited by sanlyn; 19th Mar 2014 at 03:22.
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  28. I found this filter which seems to be what we may need but it may as well be written in Japanese. Figuring the parameters sounds like some technical math involved lol

    http://avisynth.org.ru/defreq/defreq.html
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  29. If the highlights being burned would be relative to the contrast right? I monitored the histogram the whole time while recording this clip & didn't see the right side (highlights) go into the red at all. *scratches head*

    Edit: nevermind I see where you say that lowering the black some more with fix this. I'll try again
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    Originally Posted by sanlyn
    What happened to the audio? Kinda tinny, even for VHS.
    Originally Posted by Cherbette
    Not sure what could be wrong with the audio. It's being fed into my Kenwood VR209 and passed through the cassette deck for attenuation and out to my E-MU 0202 USB for capture. I didn't think it sounded too shoddy. It is mono.
    What you can try is capturing through your soundcard instead. VirtualDub allows this in the audio menu settings. Yeah, I know that such units, like the 0202, are meant to improve things, and I thought so myself when using Behringer mixers, etc. But they can be overkill for baseband VHS audio, and some tapes just sound so much better without them. A simple onboard soundcard, using 48k/16bit/stereo, is good enough for VHS audio.


    Originally Posted by Cherbette
    I found this filter which seems to be what we may need but it may as well be written in Japanese. Figuring the parameters sounds like some technical math involved lol

    http://avisynth.org.ru/defreq/defreq.html
    Looks promising and worth a try. I wonder how it will do on dropouts, which seems to be one of the bigger challenges in restoration.

    Originally Posted by sanlyn
    I think the main purpose of the exercise is to see if a poor connection might have caused the big problem, or if that stripey junk is really on the original source. I do have a couple of old VHS cable recordings where the damn cable station had similar Fm "hash" (crosshatching) in the signal. Cleaning it 100% produced an unwatchable video. I got rid of a lot of it, and just live with the rest.
    This is quite challenging to determine, especially if the original recorder is no longer with us, but I see your point if it benefits at the capture level.

    Some of the grain is too fine to be part of the source, but the wavy lines issue can be either way. But it makes little difference in post processing if you can not determine the root cause to solve it earlier in the workflow.

    And yes, post processing is, in many ways, a path of compromise, especially when it comes to VHS video. The problem with VHS video, and capturing it - unlike, for example, DV tape - is that it was never designed for the digital age. I've accepted that, therefore I captureth and restoreth as bestest possible and moveth on...
    Last edited by PuzZLeR; 7th Mar 2014 at 12:22.
    I hate VHS. I always did.
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