Can this video be improved a bit?

[laurenga]

Hello!
I would like to ask you for advice about what (if anything) can be done to improve a little a video I recorded. It was a bit of news I recorded with a DVD recorder from the (annalogic) TV. Problem is, the signal we receive from the particular TV channel I needed to record is very very bad. So, the recording is also very bad, it has like "snow" that is more noitceable over dark background colours and is a bluish colour in some spots but also reddish or greenish. Sorry I can't be more accurate with my description, here I add a couple of frames so you can have an idea; the second frame is a black screen and the "snow" can be seen very clearly.





I'm editing the video with virtualdubmod, I have tried a couple of "denoise" filters for virtualdub but they don't seem to have any effect at all on the video image (I know nothing about video restoration, so probably I'm trying the wrong things...). So I would like to ask you if maybe there was some filter or combination of filters that could help. I have never used avisynth, but if there's any avisynth plugin that would work better I don't mind dedicating the necessary time to try to learn. And,unfortunately, there's no way for me to obtain another copy or to record it again (as I said, it was a bit of the news and won't be aired again)
I'm well aware of the "garbage in, garbage out" rule, so I don't expect anything great. But if someone has any idea to make this video a little less "garbagy", I would really be very grateful
Thanks in advance for your help

[redwudz]

It looks like the color information is pretty well missing or buried in the noise. You could just convert it to black and white and it would probably look better than that. Then maybe try some filtering. But you don't have much to work with.

[Soopafresh]

Yes. You'll have to post a 10-20 second segment of the video somewhere and we'll write you an avisynth script which will significantly reduce (but not completely eliminate) the color noise. I like the suggestion from redwudz a lot and it'll save you some time, but if you want color, post a clip.

[guns1inger]

The problem is made worse by the level of compression being applied

[laurenga]

Hello again!
First of all, thanks very much for your responses and your ideas
You are totally right, making the video black and white improves the situation. I would appreciate a bit of colour, though (it should be part of a presentation) but if all else fails black and white is definitely an option.

I made a little sample of the video. Sorry but I had to compress it to divx with virtualdub (an uncompressed video gave me a 300-400 Mb file), so the quality of the original video might be a bit better but I hope you see the "bluish snow" (I have included a couple of seconds of black screen so it is more noticeable)

Thanks again for all your help

sample.avi

[Soopafresh]

This is what you could expect using Avisynth. Color problem reduced, but the vid isn't great to begin with. Noise is always a moving target. Fairly complicated to set up, but I'll automate as much as possible to make it easier.

test1.mpg


You other option is a commercial plugin for VirtualDub called NeatVideo . Do a google search. You can use it for free if your source video isn't over 640x480. Otherwise, it's $30 well spent for this purpose. Here's a quickly done example, cropped to 640x480. It can look a lot better.



neatvideo.avi

[laurenga]

Wow, thank you so much! I'm going to try the solutions you have given here. Judging for the results posted, it looks very promising . You've been really helpful, and I'm very grateful