Vhs capture advice.

[lollo]

so the noise is from the capture device ?

No

[Leanoric]

That's mostly chroma noise, not sure if it's cable related, Do you have a JVC VCR with S-Video and LTBC? The DNR in the TBC function should get rid of most of that noise.

No its one of the later jvc's that will play svhs but not record, it doesnt have a tbc. It does have B.E.S.T picture system which apparently checks the codition of tape and compensates during playback to give a better picture. Ive left it on but not really sure if it helps or not.

I don't think other cabling would help much.
Here just a quick shot with Avisynth filtering (denoising, color tweaking). I left it interlaced.

Nice one, thats a massive improvement. Ive had a play around with the chroma and temporal smoother filters in vdub, but cant get it looking nearly as good as yours.

In regards to the colour, is that something that I need to tweak in settings before capture or after?

[Leanoric]

The samples are very noisy, probably because the tapes and not (completely) fixed the VCR, but not completely unwatchable.

A simple AviSynth post-processing improves a bit. Just a quick attempt on my side, play with the parameters for better results.

sli image comparison: https://imgsli.com/MTU2MTI3

image comparison:
[Attachment 69271 - Click to enlarge]

video restored:
[Attachment 69272 - Click to enlarge]

video comparison:
[Attachment 69273 - Click to enlarge]

A massive improvement like Sharc's. Looks like Im going to have to learn how to use avisynth

[lollo]

AviSynth mitigates some of the issues, but you always trade a bit.

The "dancing" noise is reduced, but still present in the restored videos; a higher temporal radius in the denoiser or a final denoise with dfftest of KNLmeansCL can reduce it, but some fine details will be removed.

In any case, the key factors for a good capture are the VCR (player) and the conditions of the tape. You can't change the second. Starting with a high end S-VHS VCR with TBC/D.N.R and Y/C output is the main requirement. If you can't, AviSynth may help for some improvement.

[oln]

The noise on those clips looks pretty normal for a VCR without fancy digital noise reduction. (there is some noise pattern clip2 that I can't tell 100% if it's just weak tape signal or the vcr not being 100%) If it's a later JVC with B.E.S.T there is usually also a image setting option that can be set to EDIT, AUTO/NORM or SOFT (or SHARP on certain decks). If it's on EDIT it's gonna look a bit more noisy as that turns off most of the NR.

I've found that setting "comb filter" in the setup menu to off on the PAL Panasonics can sometimes help reduce the dot crawl/ Y/C crosstalk noise from a vhs composite source though I haven't fully determined if it results in more noisy chroma or not (for a higher resolution source like laserdisc or similar you want it to be on of course). The Panasonic DVD-recorders also has a noise reduciton option you can turn on (via the "DISPLAY" button on the remote) though it can cause a bit of ghosting and smearing so YMMV.

[Alwyn]

In Virtual Dub 2: Yadif Double Frame Rate deinterlace, Colourmill colour adjustment, Neat Video denoiser on default, cropped and resized, exported at CRF 16.


[Attachment 69280 - Click to enlarge]

[Sharc]

In regards to the colour, is that something that I need to tweak in settings before capture or after?

Unless there is a massive and obvious flaw one can normally leave the color adjustment options at their defaults for capturing and do the corrections in post.
In your case it can be done in post.

Not sure how this should really look:

[Sharc]

Looks like Im going to have to learn how to use avisynth

Yes, recommended even if you have "perfect" VCR and capture gear. VHS is still VHS which can benefit from post processing.
If you are hesitant to bother with Avisynth scripts and syntax you may want to try Hybrid which installs avisynth and creates the scripts for you. But even then you should have at least some basic understanding of Avisynth in order to use Hybrid properly.
And yes, for VirtualDub2, NeatVideo is quite effective for denoising and easy to use, but it is not free.

[lollo]

In Virtual Dub 2: Yadif Double Frame Rate deinterlace, Colourmill colour adjustment, Neat Video denoiser on default, cropped and resized, exported at CRF 16.

Thanks Alwin, this gives the opportunity for an additional comparison (colors apart) between NeatVideo approach and AviSynth approach (within the limits of used parameters). The winner is obvious.



Here the comparison with the sli images: https://imgsli.com/MTU2Mjg5

[Leanoric]

I've found that setting "comb filter" in the setup menu to off on the PAL Panasonics can sometimes help reduce the dot crawl/ Y/C crosstalk noise from a vhs composite source though I haven't fully determined if it results in more noisy chroma or not (for a higher resolution source like laserdisc or similar you want it to be on of course).

Ive got one tape in particular that still has pretty bad dot crawl, its an old camcorder film dubbed onto a vhs, Ill give it a try with the comb filter off and see if it makes a difference. Its not really a problem on the other tapes, the es10 has done a really good job of removing most of it, its just the noise thats the problem.

In Virtual Dub 2: Yadif Double Frame Rate deinterlace, Colourmill colour adjustment, Neat Video denoiser on default, cropped and resized, exported at CRF 16.


[Attachment 69280 - Click to enlarge]

Thanks Alwyn, thats been really helpful. Ive downloaded the colormill plugin and it really improves some of my captures. Ill think Ill buy the neat video plugin as well, Ive read a lot of good things about it.

Looks like Im going to have to learn how to use avisynth

Yes, recommended even if you have "perfect" VCR and capture gear. VHS is still VHS which can benefit from post processing.
If you are hesitant to bother with Avisynth scripts and syntax you may want to try Hybrid which installs avisynth and creates the scripts for you. But even then you should have at least some basic understanding of Avisynth in order to use Hybrid properly.
.

I watched a couple of avisynth tutorials last night and the installation alone is pretty hardcore! Hopefully I'll get there eventually.

In Virtual Dub 2: Yadif Double Frame Rate deinterlace, Colourmill colour adjustment, Neat Video denoiser on default, cropped and resized, exported at CRF 16.

Thanks Alwin, this gives the opportunity for an additional comparison (colors apart) between NeatVideo approach and AviSynth approach (within the limits of used parameters). The winner is obvious.


[Attachment 69283 - Click to enlarge]

Here the comparison with the sli images: https://imgsli.com/MTU2Mjg5

Avisynth does a really good of denoising and keeping detail. I think vdub and neat video denoiser might be a good compromise for someone like myself though, who hasnt got the expertise/ability yet to use avisynth.

[Bwaak]

Here is my take https://easyupload.io/rhenrx The file is 8 MB, will expire in 6 days.

All in VDub2:

- MSU Deinterlacer
- 6-axis color correction
- Camcorder color denoise (56)
- Temporal smoother (3)

[rgr]

And my attempt:
1. VirtualDub2 - deinterlace, crop, ColorMill, resize, Neat Video
2. VEAI - AMQ
(A bit oversharpened, color range not corrected, without paying attention to aspect ratio)


[Attachment 69289 - Click to enlarge]

[lollo]

Thanks Bwaak and rgr for your attempts.

Comparison between Bwaak and AviSynth:



Here the comparison with the sli images: https://imgsli.com/MTU2NDcz

Comparison between rgr and AviSynth:



Here the comparison with the sli images: https://imgsli.com/MTU2NDcy

Even with these two new cases (color apart) the winner is evident

[jagabo]

It's hard to say without a wider variety of shots, especially without a reference for black and white levels. I used some of the bright rocks in the foreground as a white reference. That leaves the sky is a little too purple.

ConvertToRGB(interlaced=true).RGBADjust(r=188.0/182.0, b=188.0/95.0).ConvertToYV16(interlaced=true)
Tweak(sat=0.70)
ColorYUV(gain_y=100, off_y=-20)

[Attachment 69295 - Click to enlarge]

Toning down the red adjustment would alleviate the purple sky.

[Alwyn]

Lollo, no it's not. Look at Bwaak's attempt; the shadow on the back of the man is visibly worse in your AVISynth attempt.

RGR's attempt is pretty darn good as well, in fact even better. Without a label, it would be very difficult to tell which one is which.

Since we're into comparison mode, you should fix up your colours.

In any case, the point is that one can get a pretty good result without the AVISynth effort; some of us just don't have the time or the talent to get on top of it. And when it's actually being viewed as a video instead of poring over a slide-image, I don't think the viewers would actually complain about the non-AVISynth versions.

Please don't get me wrong; I am not belittling your results; they are great. But for much less effort, there are other, simpler ways of achieving the aim being good quality video.

[jagabo]

Yes, of course color correction is much easier to do in GUI based tools with interactive controls.

[lollo]

Lollo, no it's not.

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder

In any case, the point is that one can get a pretty good result without the AVISynth effort; some of us just don't have the time or the talent to get on top of it.

It seems difficult to you, but honestly there is no excessive time nor talent needed to run 3 lines AviSynth script with QTGMC / TemporalDegrain2 / LSFmod.

Please don't get me wrong; I am not belittling your results; they are great. But for much less effort, there are other, simpler ways of achieving the aim being good quality video.

Sure there are. Again, my point is that the concept "much less effort" is wrong.

I don't think the viewers would actually complain about the non-AVISynth versions.

I agree. It was just an excercize, and a good chance in this thread, to compare different approaches looking to fine details in depth.

And finally, on my side it was not a competition, but just a game comparing different results without diminishing anyone

[Sharc]

And finally, on my side it was not a competition, but just a game comparing different results without diminishing anyone

...The winner is obvious.

LOL

Even there it depends what you are looking at

[Leanoric]

I've just processed a 25 minute episode of the show with these filters and it doesn't look too bad at all. Much less noise, and with the colour correction its significantly better. Ill give the neat video denoiser a try next and see if I can improve it even more.


[Attachment 69315 - Click to enlarge]


The thing that always confuses me is the cropping and resizing. Just wondering if I've got this right before I process more episodes?


[Attachment 69316 - Click to enlarge]

[Bwaak]

704x576 (some would say, 703x576 or even 702x576) has 4:3 proportions. Since you are deinterlacing into 50p, I assume this is your target frame rate and scanning type. It is not applicable to DVD-Video. If you want to upload to YouTube and preserve 50p, you need at least 720-line video.

Therefore, for maximum compatibility with software players as well as YouTube, I would set Aspect ratio to "disabled" and set New size to 960x720, and set sample aspect ratio in the output codec to 1 (for h.264 there are two fields sample width and sample height, set both to the same number, for example, to 1).

[Leanoric]

704x576 (some would say, 703x576 or even 702x576) has 4:3 proportions. Since you are deinterlacing into 50p, I assume this is your target frame rate and scanning type. It is not applicable to DVD-Video. If you want to upload to YouTube and preserve 50p, you need at least 720-line video.

Therefore, for maximum compatibility with software players as well as YouTube, I would set Aspect ratio to "disabled" and set New size to 960x720, and set sample aspect ratio in the output codec to 1 (for h.264 there are two fields sample width and sample height, set both to the same number, for example, to 1).

I’ve got no plans to upload anything youtube. Its just for personal viewing, mainly from a pc. Im deinterlacing the fishing series because im putting them onto a usb stick for my dad to watch and figured it would look better for him to watch that way. I’ll keep everything as avi and probably wont de interlace most of it, I’ve found that vlc doesnt do too bad of a job as Im watching.

The thing that I do want to do on all of my videos is too add black bars all around to hide the distortion. Would the setting I’ve used be ok for videos that I want to keep as avi, but just want to add black borders to?

[Sharc]

The thing that I do want to do on all of my videos is too add black bars all around to hide the distortion. Would the setting I’ve used be ok for videos that I want to keep as avi, but just want to add black borders to?

Yes, provided the player plays the new .avi files as 4:3.
If you re-encode it with x264 (.mp4) you may resize to square pixels as Bwaak suggested, or you can keep your proposal but encode it with SAR 12:11 (SAR width=12, SAR height=11 in the x264 GUI of VirtualDub2).

[Alwyn]

For denoising in VDub, I've also had success with the free MSU denoiser, down the page a bit here:

http://www.infognition.com/VideoEnhancer/filters/denoising.html

I put the Preset onto Medium Noise MSU and both sliders to ~ 42.

[jagabo]

Crop by any amount you want. Then set the SAR (sampling aspect ratio) in the compression codec to 12:11. The SAR doesn't change when you crop.

If your players don't respect SAR flags, resize to 786x576, crop by any amount you want, then encode square pixel.

[Alwyn]

If your players don't respect SAR flags, resize to 786x576

Should that be 768x576?

[dellsam34]

Cropping has to be somewhere around the legal ratio of 704:576 (1.22 for reference only), Cropping too much on one direction could affect the final frame aspect ratio, Some tapes have large head switch noise and little horizontal blanking edge or vise versa, so if cropping freely by any amount and end up for example with 702x556 (1.26, compared to 1.22), that's a big difference, the frame geometry is going to change quite a bit, 8 pixels difference between the supposed resolution and the actual cropped one is tolerable, more than that will become visible.

Also if cropping is intended, don't resize back to the original resolution or anything less than at least 1080, the resizing artifacts will be noticeable, I'm working on an experiment to show how bad when you resize vertically to a resolution very close to the original one, The higher the resolution the less the jagged edges, Some resizing software smooth out the jagged edges at a cost but it is better not to have a lot of them to begin with.

[jagabo]

If your players don't respect SAR flags, resize to 786x576

Should that be 768x576?

No. Since these are ITU caps the 4:3 image is in a 704x576 portion of the 720x576 frame. The full 720x576 is wider than 4:3, ~786x576.

[Sharc]

By the way what the OP suggests in his post#229 is technically correct: He crops and pads (he doesn't resize) the frame by adding borders for obtaining a standard frame size of 704x576. If he plays this at an AR of 4:3 it gives an undistorted picture. If he re-encodes with x264 he has to set the SAR 12:11 as advised before.

@Leanoric: In fact you can crop by any amount (preferably mod2 for 4:2:2 sources as yours, or mod4 for 4:2:0 sources) in order to fully remove any right/left/top/bottom crud and pad back to 704x576, play it as 4:3 (forced by the player or TV), and eventually encode it with SAR 12:11.
In the case of your post#229 I would crop more on left and right, for example something like below. The 3rd picture in the attachment is for re-encoding with SAR 12:11.
(In the second picture of the attachment you may want to set the Fill color/Pick color.... to 'green' instead of 'black' for testing, in order to better visualize what's happening.)

The alternative would be to resize to square pixels.

[Leanoric]

By the way what the OP suggests in his post#229 is technically correct: He crops and pads (he doesn't resize) the frame by adding borders for obtaining a standard frame size of 704x576. If he plays this at an AR of 4:3 it gives an undistorted picture. If he re-encodes with x264 he has to set the SAR 12:11 as advised before.

@Leanoric: In fact you can crop by any amount (preferably mod2 for 4:2:2 sources as yours, or mod4 for 4:2:0 sources) in order to fully remove any right/left/top/bottom crud and pad back to 704x576, play it as 4:3 (forced by the player or TV), and eventually encode it with SAR 12:11.
In the case of your post#229 I would crop more on left and right, for example something like below. The 3rd picture in the attachment is for re-encoding with SAR 12:11.
(In the second picture of the attachment you may want to set the Fill color/Pick color.... to 'green' instead of 'black' for testing, in order to better visualize what's happening.)

The alternative would be to resize to square pixels.

A mistake I was making before was encoding to mp4 and leaving SAR at 1:1. Ive now changed it to 12:11 cropping to 692x560 and resizing to 704x576. Strangely VLC now keeps crashing when I play these files. I can watch them ok but then cant shut VLC and it then crashes?

Maybe it would be better to resize to square pixels for better compatibility with players?

Is Bwaaks suggestion of "set Aspect ratio to "disabled" and set New size to 960x720" how you resize to square pixels?

Should I still be cropping to 692x560, and then resizing to 960x720? Im also not sure about what numbers to put into the letterbox/crop to size boxes?


[Attachment 69325 - Click to enlarge]

[Alwyn]

Im also not sure about what numbers to put into the letterbox/crop to size boxes?

Nothing. Check "Do not letterbox or crop".