Newbie Needs Some Help Using Nero 9 to Improve TV Recorded DVDs

[suzanne27]

Hi to all. Just joined the forum.

Tried my 1st editing commercials & reburning of PBS concerts originally recorded on a Samsung DVD-R120. The recorder finalizes them as DVD-Video. After editing, Nero Vision is burning back in same format.

Good news is, the 1st Nero burned copy worked on the DVD player.
Bad news is, couldn't seem to get it to improve video quality, regardless of the settings.
Maybe not possible in this case using Nero?

I've read Nero's help files & tutorials (joke) several times & some other articles. Nero's explanations have always left something to be desired, IMO.

Don't expect anyone to go through every single setting in Nero Vision. If some could point me to some good tutorials doing what I am, using Nero and / or other prgms & how to improve video that's not crystal clear - if that's possible.

Some concerts were recorded off analog antenna. Quality is generally good, but there are some flecks & such I'd like to remove.

Thanks.

[usually_quiet]

Welcome. Just a suggestion... You might get more eyes on your problem if you asked a moderator to move your thread to the "Restoration" section of the forums.

[guns1inger]

Nero is not a restoration tool. It's video tools are pretty rudimentary, and in most cases will at best preserve what you have, and often reduce the quality.

Video restoration is an art. There is no magic "fix video" button in any application worth it's salt.

First thing I would do is look at a better editor. VideoRedo and Womble Mpeg Video Wizard are smart Mpeg-2 editors that will not re-encode your video after editing. This is the first step to not making things worse.

After that, it really depends on what sort of issue you as to how best to address it. The two main tools for restoration are virtualdub and avisynth. AVI Demux is also worth a look. Virtualdub is a GUI, linear editor that has a very wide range of plugins for doing restoration work. It is relatively easy to use. The biggest problem is that is does not output to mpeg-2, so you have to either save to an intermediate format (preferably lossless) or frame-serve to an mpeg-2 encoder.

Avisynth is a script driven frameserver. You write commands in notepad in the form of a script, and load this into your encode. Avisynth then filters your video before the encoder produces the output. It is very powerful, has a huge range of plugins and filters, but is daunting to begin with because it has no visual interface.

The basic first rule is do not harm. Every re-encode has the potential to reduce the quality of the video further. There is no point filtering a video to fix it, then losing all of the good work by badly encoding it.

The the restoration is fairly minor, look at virtualdub, some of the noise filters for it, and learn how to frameserve to good encoder. Keep Nero out of the process completely if you can.

[jagabo]

There's not a lot you can do with a DVD recorder source -- especially if you used more than 2 hour mode. You can correct some things like bad black levels or color shifts. You can reduce macroblocks but you'll get an overall fuzzier picture. Sharpening will accentuate macroblock artifacts as well as the underlying video. I'm not a fan of noise reduction but a lot of people here are. Neat video has a good noise reducer for VirtualDub. It's slow and it's not free. There's a demo version though.

[suzanne27]

Thanks for the help & suggestions. I'll check out the prgms mentioned.

VideoRedo and Womble Mpeg Video Wizard are smart Mpeg-2 editors that will not re-encode your video after editing. This is the first step to not making things worse.

Could you explain a little further? Is re-encoding ever desirable (for this purpose), if you don't change formats?

Virtualdub is... relatively easy to use. ... does not output to mpeg-2, so you have to either save to an intermediate format (preferably lossless)

If save to intermediate format, then use a different prgm to convert to desired final format?
Is that considered re-encoding or no?

or frame-serve to an mpeg-2 encoder.

Not quite sure what that means - guess I'll figure it out.

There's not a lot you can do with a DVD recorder source -- especially if you used more than 2 hour mode.

That's what I'm afraid of. Some were recorded at high frame rates - some not.

[redwudz]

If you are re-encoding a already low quality video, it will definitely get worse. If you just need to cut and paste and not modify the structure or do any filtering of the video, then it's easy. Use most any MPEG editor.

I use VD(Mod) for most filtering. It's fairly easy to use and has a lot of filters available. But, as mentioned, it only outputs AVI type formats. A few available filters: http://www.thedeemon.com/VirtualDubFilters/ But you can frameserve from it.

Frameserving lets you output the filtered video directly to a encoder without creating a in-between file. I use TMPGnc encoder. If you look at the bottom of the VD(Mod) tool page, you will see a list of guides for the program, including frameserving. Avisynth is a better option, but has a bit of a steep learning curve.

From my experience with Nero, it almost always re-encodes, whether it's needed or not.

And I'll move this to our Restoration Forum.