Poor quality DVD, help needed

[straycat264]

I've been trying to clean this up for a while, but my ignorance has so far defeated me - this is an extract (taken straight from the DVD with MakeMKV) which I've found really troublesome.

I'm on a Mac, so I've been using Vapoursynth / vivtc for reverse telecine (assuming I have my terminology right) - combined with a few different methods for some basic denoising / sharpening - but I'm sure (or just hope) that better results are possible.

Any advice would be very welcome!

[davexnet]

Inverse telecine followed by levels, or something to deepen the shadows

[straycat264]

Inverse telecine followed by levels, or something to deepen the shadows

Thanks! That does look better, but still has some of the issues I'd been getting. Example - the detailing on the white buildings:
[Attachment 60911 - Click to enlarge]:

I've had a breakthrough since posting this - so I've managed to improve it some - (this is after playing with the levels on your suggestion:
[Attachment 60912 - Click to enlarge]

Happier with the results, but I still feel like I could be doing a better job.

It's frustrating because this is essentially a behind-the-scenes DVD of the musical footage from Robert Altman's Kansas City. Of which I have the Bluray - but for this footage, there's only this and VHS.

[davexnet]

It might be worth posting a video sample of your latest result as well as your script. Hopefully you'll get some further responses,
I'm not up to speed with VapourSynth

[straycat264]

It might be worth posting a video sample of your latest result as well as your script. Hopefully you'll get some further responses,
I'm not up to speed with VapourSynth

Here's the latest - I used rpow / resize to push it up to 720p

[straycat264]

It might be worth posting a video sample of your latest result as well as your script. Hopefully you'll get some further responses,
I'm not up to speed with VapourSynth

Vapoursynth is effectively a Python rewrite of Avisynth, with many (but not all) of the plugins ported across.
I'm using it on a Mac, which has many (not all) of the Vapoursynth plugins ported across.

So from my perspective, it's effectively a subset of Avisynth, but it's still awesome.