VideoSoap with VHS?

[Dude_Son]

Ok Im backing up a old VHS tape that has pretty bad quality, should I use the "high" setting in my videosoap to make it look even better? I want the best quality possible, Im using 352X480 with 4.00 MBS is this the best setting for this? (Using a ATI AIW 9000 pro capture card--- AMD Athlon XP 2200 768mb SDRAM)

thanks

[antzen]

As I've understood it, you should always capture at "maximum" resolution (let's say 720x576x25fps (PAL D1) as I use), using a non-destructive codec like huffyuv. This will consume rather much diskspace (as an example: 12 gig for a 26 minute capture I made the other day).

When you have this "raw" material, you can use for example VirtualDub with a variety of restoration filters and plugins, like deinterlace and noise reduction etc.

To begin with I could recommend these filters that I've stumbled across and tried a bit: (can be found @ http://neuron2.net/)

- High Quality Smoother by Klaus Post (works nicely removing noise imho)
- flaXen's Filters (flaXen VHS) (seems to be best when working with NTSC, since I've not been able to find the use of it yet working with PAL).

Play around with VirtualDub and it's numerous filters until you get a result that you want...

Good Luck...
/antz

[FOO]

Those filters have preview mode with half the screen with
and without the filter so you can compare
Just see what you like.

[hudsonf]

I'm using a ATI AIW Radeon 8500 card and use the latest MMC version to do all my captures. I followed the guides on lordsmurf's page to setup my MMC, I get great captures this way. If your source is bad you won't get good results. I get 0 to xxxx frame drops when capturing from VHS, It depends on the quality of the source.

[lordsmurf]

I'm working on VideoSoap tests for my upcomig guides on this topic, but because ATI has not explained what any of them really do, the best we can do is test. Use the preview function.

Also realize the temporal errors are due to the computer display, not necessarily visible on the tv set if used at decent levels.

Only use it if the errors are bad.

And despeckle, blur and combo 1 seem to be any good, used either alone or in combination.

Since the source is only VHS (220-240x480) anything over 352x480 is just wasted.

Capturing higher at 720x480 or 640x480 is only good if you capture AVI, forego the video soap and use post-processing video filters during the MPEG2 encode process. Depending on the errors, this may be the best method (I only do this for the really harsh errors that need LOTS of attention).

[non-linear]

You'd probably be best to stay away from the high settings. I've tried them and had color bleeds whenever the shot would change (some blue and red patches from the previous frame would "ghost" onto the next frame). This happens even if the motion estimation is set to 100.

I think your best bet is to use light Videosoap and if you need to clean it up more, you can use the noise reduction in TMPGEnc (it takes a while to render the video, but I get pretty good results).