VHS to DVD / picture quality problem

[mollazehi]

recently i have started to convert my vhs tapes to dvd . i have some tapes that have been recorded in 2003 , and i never used it during this 10 year . during the conversing I am not getting good picture quality . it looks noisy and not good .
the audio is also noisy .
how can i fix these problems?
please help

this is a snapshot of my converted VHS .

[hech54]

More information needed.

[mollazehi]

i am using honestech VHS to DVD 4.0 Deluxe to convert the tapes to DVD and my VCR is LG model :vlk9320w . what other information should i give ?

[hech54]

Are you capturing to MPEG2?
How much time are you trying to put onto each DVD....1 hour, 2 hours, 6 hours?
Are the tapes recorded in LP or SLP mode?

[mollazehi]

thank you for reply
i am capturing to MPEG2 PAL and 2 hour for each video file .
i dont know about LP or SLP ??

[sanlyn]

thank you for reply
i am capturing to MPEG2 PAL and 2 hour for each video file .
i dont know about LP or SLP ??

Standard VHS recording modes are SP (2 hours), SLP (4 hours), LP (6 hours, sometimes called "EP"). The slower modes have lesser quality.

There are several reasons why it's impossible to give you detailed answers. We don't know how your "sample" video was converted from YV12 to RGB and then compressed into a JPG. A still image is not a moving video, which is another story altogether -- but your still image is over saturated and seriously over sharpened to the point of strong edge ringing, obvious halo effects, and an "etched" appearance. The tape players in today's DVD/VHS combo players are of very low quality to begin with, and capturing noisy old VHS tapes directly to lossy compression like MPG or DivX is one of the worst ways of capturing analog to digital.

[mollazehi]

So , what i should do to get the best results ?

[sanlyn]

I'm not intimately familiar with your honestech capture device or what level of MPEG2 it uses when capturing. When tape is involved, especially home-recorded or old, damaged tape, the "best" way is to capture to a lossless medium such as YUY2 AVi using lossless real-time compressors like huffyuv to keep "lossless" files to a smaller storage size. Lossless means that no data is discarded. Lagarith and UTC are two other lossless compressors used in video, although they are somewhat slower than huffyuv. Lossless compressors act in a way that is similar to ZIP or RAR. You can decompress and edit and filter and recompress ZIP again and again with no data loss.

Video encoding is a different matter. Data is lost in the encoding process, especially chroma data. The lower the encoded bitrate, the more data is lost. Another factor is that tape has a lot of noise, and home-made tapes have even higher noise levels. Video encoders don't react well to noise; they encode it as artifacts and other distortions. So, one would capture tape to lossless media for the purpose of reducing some of tape's innate noise and other defects. This presents a more pristine image to the encoder. You get better and cleaner results -- it won't look like DVD or HD, but it would certainly look much "better".

I can say right away that what I've described is the way that many serious hobbyists (and professionals) clean and encode video. I can also say that most people wouldn't undertake this process: they either don't care, don't notice, don't know how, or don't have time. It does take time, as well as a little learning and a lot of patience. In any case, you should look into the source of the over sharpening and the over saturated effect. Many tape players over sharpen by design; if the player has a sharpness control, turn it down or set it to neutral. If there are saturation, contrast, or color controls, etc., in your player or capturing software, learn to tweak them for a better, less "processed" image.

If capturing to MPEG2 is your only option, you should capture using as high a bitrate as you can. This will give you a large file, but it won't be your final product. It will be your working copy (which you can archive to a hard drive). That high bitrate capture would be decoded and processed with lossless intermediate files that you don't have to keep forever, but you will need working space on a hard drive for processing. Once those files are cleaned as well as possible or practical, re-encode with a good encoder (many of them are free) to the output of your choice (DVD or even standard definition h264), and use a good authoring program to author and burn to disc.