VHS!

[tomhopkins]

Hi.
I have been taking on the task of transferring my family memories to DVD and would appreciate some help in cleaning up the video. I have had them proffesionally transferred and I am happy with the fact that this is the best capture I can get as the VHS has been copied numerous times. My software of choice is virtualdub, as I don't think I'll be up to the challenge of using Avisynth! If you download the video from the link below, you'll see that there are definitly some noise problems aswell as grey flickers accross the screen. I've tried to remove these prroblems but I didn't get very far! What filters would you reccomend? Also,would "Video Enhancer" be any use?


http://www.megaupload.com/?d=FNCU6IPG
36mb


http://www.compression.ru/video/ls-codec/index_en.html (decoder)


Thanks!

[jman98]

I don't do this type of thing, so I'll let others comment on the VirtualDub and restoration aspects of your post.

However, I am a bit puzzled by your link to compression.ru. I'm not sure what the point of that is. I do want to warn you that while their stuff probably works, it almost certainly doesn't work as well as they claim. These are the same guys who offer a subtitle remover program and I can tell you that the examples they show are completely doctored. Nobody outside of a professional shop with tens of thousands of dollars (or much much more) worth of professional software can get those kinds of results.
Anything available for free simply does not work like their photos show.
I'm sure that their remover program does what all the others I've seen do - it does sort of remove subtitles, but you have a ghost image in the place where they were removed and it looks like the subtitles, only it's transparent. I don't really like the effect all that much, but it has its devotees. The fact that they would doctor photos to support a free program makes me really wonder what their true motives are. I hate to be a pessimist, but I can't rule out that being in Russia, there might be backdoors or something hidden in their software that might allow unauthorized access to your PC if you install their stuff. I've been to this part of the world and I actually do speak Russian and I can tell you that I wouldn't trust anything from there to be exactly what it claims to be and nothing more.

[jagabo]

compression.ru creates many very good filters for VirtualDub. They also create custom filters that are licensed to many international corporations. For example, their motion vector based frame rate conversion algorithms are licensed by Sony and Samsung for use in their 120 Hz LCD Tvs.

[nwo]

It's best if you stick to the DV codec, as filters such as that will not work with all programs.

[thecoalman]

I have had them proffesionally transferred and I am happy with the fact that this is the best capture I can get as the VHS has been copied numerous times.

The best filtering and tools are analog based for VHS that are used prior to conversion to digital.... A good VCR being on the top of the list. Once you've converted to digital errors and other things that can easily be fixed prior to capture are now a perfect digital copy. e.g timing and sync issues can be fixed with a TBC in the analog realm but a filter isn't going to help because you have a copy of the error. A filter can't distinguish between jitter in the capture or how its supposed to look.

Having said that what format did they give you the captures in?

[lordsmurf]

That is horrible conversion job. That's not even close to the best that be done with the tape you've got. I could do better without even trying.

It's full of chroma noise, audio hiss, and other problems. Much of this needed to be corrected in the analog playback hardware, before it hit a digital conversion. Some of those errors will be nearly impossible to remove to a high-quality level, in the condition it is now.

Sorry to be the bearer of bad news.

Most of these so-called "professional" conversions services use consumer-grade crap to work with video. It requires broadcast- and professional-grade equipment to truly restore video and give a good conversion.

A good S-VHS VCR, basic TBC, and proc amp would have corrected most everything you see wrong in that video. The place you used probably had a junky plain ol' VHS VCR, so crappy DVD recorder or cheapo video card, and no additional equipment. A lot of these places bulk ship to places like India too, they don't do any work in-house.

It'll cost money again, but I suggest you get this redone by somebody that knows what they're doing, if it's really important.

Most of my work seems to be "try again" type work these days. They went to somebody cheap and/or local, and what they received was crappy work. I'm given the DVD made previously, the source tapes, and told to do better. Never a problem, easy to surpass the garbage some of these hacks churn out.

[HOTPROPHET]

listen to lordsmurf, I've read some of this guy's stuff and did much research on TBC's, proc-amps, detailers, etc after reading his posts. After reading much about these old pieces of hardware and seeing the difference they make on videos, I'm going the way he suggests.

[tomhopkins]

Unfortunatly the man who transfered my VHS disposed of my tape as I asked to keep postage costs down. Pease be aware this tape was 20 years old and ajustments were made to mainly combat the ghosting. Please give me advice on how to clean this footage.

Thanks.


This is what the company usedOr claimed to....)
Panasonic S-VHS deck NV-FS200 which includes a Digital Timebase Corrector
and Digital Dropout Compensator (new cost around £1000). This feeds a
GTH Electronics ACE standards converter / colour corrector / timebase
corrector unit (cost £320 a couple of years ago). The signals then go
to a JVC DR-MH200 DVD recorder / hard disk recorder which makes up the
Basic Menu DVDs. For Deluxe Menu DVDs the signals are passed to a
Sony DSR-11 DVCAM recorder (cost around £1500 a few years ago), which
I then use in E-E mode to digitise the signal to a DV-AVI stream to
my high powered desktop PC.

[jagabo]

Some VirtualDub filters you'll want to look at:

Levels (built in)
Chroma Noise Reduction
VHS
Neat Video (not free)

[2Bdecided]

When you asked this question first at doom9... that was the best place to ask it! mc_spuds etc.

Cheers,
David.

[jagabo]

Here's an example with some levels correction and the Chroma Nose Reduction filter.

v2.avi

I bumped the audio level up but didn't make any attempt to reduce the hiss. I also treated the video as progressive for expedience.

[orsetto]

Members here can offer *some* improvement techniques for the recordings already tranferred, but they're more difficult and limited than what you can do with the analog originals pre-encoding. With luck and some skill your touch-ups may get the footage up to your own personal standards. Be sure to tell your extended family not to discard any remaining tapes they might have still have.

Unfortunatly the man who transfered my VHS disposed of my tape as I asked to keep postage costs down. Pease be aware this tape was 20 years old and ajustments were made to mainly combat the ghosting. Please give me advice on how to clean this footage.

This is a very common mistake, understandable because people simply aren't aware of the risk. That transfer company should have refused your destruction request for your own good, at least until you approved the DVDs. You should never discard the original VHS tapes before you are dead certain the DVD transfer totally meets your expectations. Even then, unless we're talking a huge number of tapes, the originals should be held onto, pending future technology options. When those of us with enormous VHS libraries discard tapes of broadcast material after DVD transfer, we take a calculated risk of loss vs storage space savings, gambling if anything went wrong we could somehow reacquire the videos by purchase or trade. But personal family videos are irreplaceable and the original tapes should be retained forever if possible, preferably in a different location than the DVD copies.

[2Bdecided]

I would always keep the originals, but if you use a TBC which works for your content, and if you keep the levels from clipping, and if the levels are spread over a reasonable range, and you capture to a mild lossy, or lossless codec - then everything else can be accommodated in the digital domain.

If there is something else that can only be worked on in the analogue domain, please explain it to me - because as far as I can see, we have far better denoisers and sharpeners in AVIsynth than you'll ever find in analogue hardware. The "only" problem is that they are slow, so if you want to do the job in real time then you missed your chance - unless you want to go D>A>D again.


I would normally say the original poster should have used DV instead of MPEG, but in this case just look at what he has to work with - a copy of a copy (of a copy, probably!). There are no high frequencies left. Anything MPEG adds can probably be removed without detracting from any of the remaining real content.

Cheers,
David.

[lordsmurf]

If there is something else that can only be worked on in the analogue domain, please explain it to me - because as far as I can see, we have far better denoisers and sharpeners in AVIsynth than you'll ever find in analogue hardware..

Nope, not true.

Chroma noise is the easiest one. Software is going to leave ghostly artifacts, while the hardware would have left a artifact-free version. At best, you can minimize the software damage, but you trade off the degree to which the noise is removed.

A lot of software filters are "save your ass partially because you did it too late" filters, not "just as good as" filters.

There's a reason many studios, companies, individuals own hardware. Speed is not it.

[thecoalman]

I had a clip of what the JVC DNR could do with heavy chroma noise from an original tape and to tell you the truth it was like night and day, it's not something I'd want to try with software. Anyhow I can't find it.... I'll be digging the VCR out in a day or two for another project so I'll recreate it. I'll provide two versions an original without DNR and one without, both in DV-AVI format. You can try your hand at the software route but I think you're going to have a lot of trouble matching it.

Will let the little blue guy take the one with DNR and further enhance it with software so we can can have fair playing field to see what type of final result we get. Then you guys can post your samples and techniques... then I'll steal the best technique for this particular tape...