fixing badly captured video

[sepultura]

I used Adstech's DVD Xpress to capture a movie from VHS. At the time, I was fairly new to the capture process and so I didn't know about defragging my C: drive. Of course, when we fail to do this, problems happen. With DVD Xpress, the color of the screen goes wacky. The original video may be bright blue in particular scene, but the resulting capture resulted in light blue one second, dark blue the next, constantly shifting back and forth. Are there any software titles, freeware/shareware/trialware/commercial software, that will let me fix things?

Please let me know. thanx!

[guns1inger]

That doesn't sound like the results of not defragging, it just sounds like an old tape with major problems. Click on the Report This Post link in the bottom of your post, and ask the mods to shift this to the Restoration forum. You will have more luck getting answers there.

[sepultura]

Seriously, yes it is. I've tried it on another tape. It was also captured without defragging, and came out with wacky color changes. Then, i defragged the HD, recaptured it, and it came out without any problems. The tape i was talking about in my other post was almost a brand new video. I watched it all the way through in my VHS recorder, and it was pretty flawless. It all has to do with the defragging, when the color goes in and out like that. Defragging was a pain, because i always kept the drive almost full (with less than 1gig of free space left). Now that i am familiar with capturing, and know the do's and donts, i keep the drive with plenty of free space, so when i do need to defrag, it doesn't take so long.

[sepultura]

Thanks Gunslinger, for your suggestions. I will look in the restoration forum.

[redwudz]

Probably one of the better programs around for filtering bad video is the freeware VirtualDub. For your video, I would use VirtualDub Mod, as it's a little more versatile and accepts MPEG video, though it only outputs AVI format.

For filters, start at: http://neuron2.net/

You might take a look in the 'Other' page at 'Dmitry Popov's Filter Database'. It sorts out some of the many filters available and makes it a little easier to find one that might work for you.

You may find some that smooth out color or brightness changes or you may have to split the video up and work on the individual sections. It depends how much time and effort you want to spend.

And guns1inger's right. This would be better answered in our Restoration forum. Moving you.

[lordsmurf]

You cannot fix this in software. Once an error is made digital, it's next to impossible to fix. The problems you refer to cannot be fixed, and any improvements would be marginal at best.

You need to re-capture the video.

[sepultura]

thanks Lordsmurf. I was afraid that i was going to get that answer. LOL I will just recapture it, then.