Help! Need to enhance old, degraded VHS & capture to PC

[megarogoji]

Hi,

I have many old VHS tapes of television shows that will never be aired again that I want to capture to my PC. The video and sound quality is poor on most of these tapes due to age, the fact that they were taped on sub-standard recorders to begin with, the fact that often the original signal was recieved on an antenna, or also, in many cases, due to the fact that the tapes themsleves are not originals but copies of copies (3rd, 4th or 5th generation).

I want to capture these videos to my PC, but I was wondering if there is any hardware or software that can help restore the video by doing some sharpening, color correction, time based correction or whatever.

I am willing to consider anything hardware/software wise to transfer these tapes over. I know I'll need some sort of capture card or DV camcorder to get the video on the PC, plus I'll need some software like VirtualDub to actually capture it into AVI or MPEG or whatever. However, what would be the best hardware and software to get if my primary goal is to restore and enhance old VHS footage?

Thanks in advance

[MaDmiZe]

VCR to Capture card to VirtualDub ......VirtualDub is free and has all sorts of filters out there to processs and enhance....brightness,sound,sharpness, remove station logos...ect.
Capture cards are reviewed on this site....and can be found from $80. on up just about any where....
You didn't say what you wanted to do with em after that.....you will probly want to burn to CDR as avi's for storage...or if you have or plan to purchase a DVD player...convert to mpg and burn to CDR as VCDs.

[circleking]

If money is no object, I would suggest buying a standalone TBC (Time Base Corrector). This device restores all sync pulses, colour burst signal, etc. This helps when capturing because it restores the signal to proper standards.

Some fringe benefits of TBCs include: removal of ALL macrovision signals (including the colour stripe), colour correction if needed, video signal level, colour delay adjustments, VCR skew problems (usually from stretched tapes), and more depending on what type you get.

By having the TBC handle all this "housekeeping" stuff (which often takes up a lot of processing time), it leaves your computer programme free to correct the other problems.

There is a nice little plug-in for VirtualDub BTW that works great for VHS tapes called Flaxen. Would somebody post the link for Flaxen. I lost it.