What causes this horizontal white line of noise.

[Spektre]

I am capturing a 2nd generation copy of an old home movie. The original VHS is sadly lost.

It is in rough shape and of course on SLP. The lineage of the tape lead me to remember I likely had access to the 1st generation copy.

The color and sound are so much better on this gen, but there is a persistent horizontal white couple lines of noise through many parts of this tape. They have obviously developed since the 2nd gen copy was made from it. I cannot "track" it away.

Any idea what this is? I hate to give either capture to the customer as the white line is distracting, but in all other respects it is a superior copy.

Attached are 2 frames. First the 2nd gen copy, then the 1st gen copy with the cursed white line.

Thanks for any advice.

[aramkolt]

Kind of looks like a line dropout that could have been baked in during the copying process, but that's rather thick for just one single line. Is it just on a single frame?

Also on that first image, mainly looks like chroma over saturation and maybe tint is also off a bit.

I'm a bit confused as well - so neither of those is the first generation copy?

What's the full capture chain?

[Spektre]

So, this is the strange part. The left is the 2nd gen copy. The right is the 1st gen copy. No original is availble.

Whatever this defect is must have developed AFTER the 2nd gen copy (which was made fromthe 1st) was made.

It is not in one frame, this "line" (which seesm to comprise a few scan lines, persists through much of the tape.

Capture chain is the same on both (I just did them). AG-1960P deck -SVideo-> AVT-8710 TBC -SVideo-> ATI 600 USB capture.

[aramkolt]

I kind of wonder then if there's a physical crease in the tape maybe? You could flip the lid up and see that if it's there on an area that has it particularly bad.

The odd part is that it is kind of strange that the second generation tape has fewer chroma issues which seems unlikely if that tape was made from the one with the issues. I suppose it could be that there was some sort of automatic chroma gain control (some TBCs call that ACC) that could base chroma levels on the height of the color burst.

If you know for sure you aren't using that first tape, I'd be interested to see if I can make it look normal with my variety of TBCs that have various chroma correction features. PM me if your client is willing to let that tape go. I don't quite understand how the audio can be worse on the second generation tape, but that'll be interesting to see if any of my machines can do any better with that as well.

[Spektre]

I kind of wonder then if there's a physical crease in the tape maybe? You could flip the lid up and see that if it's there on an area that has it particularly bad.

The odd part is that it is kind of strange that the second generation tape has fewer chroma issues which seems unlikely if that tape was made from the one with the issues. I suppose it could be that there was some sort of automatic chroma gain control (some TBCs call that ACC) that could base chroma levels on the height of the color burst.

If you know for sure you aren't using that first tape, I'd be interested to see if I can make it look normal with my variety of TBCs that have various chroma correction features. PM me if your client is willing to let that tape go. I don't quite understand how the audio can be worse on the second generation tape, but that'll be interesting to see if any of my machines can do any better with that as well.

I think you are understanding it backward. The left image (tape) was made from the right image (tape) obviously at some point in time before this particular line developed. To my eye that left image (2nd) has chroma issues. The right image (1st) has better chroma, better sharpness, better audio, better everything (as I would expect being one generation earlier) except that line.

[dellsam34]

Need a short lossless clip to identify the damage, a screenshot doesn't tell the whole story.

[Spektre]

I kind of wonder then if there's a physical crease in the tape maybe? You could flip the lid up and see that if it's there on an area that has it particularly bad.

Bingo.

Flipped up the lid and there are two lines running the length of the tape where the oxide is scratched off. Must have been run in a pretty bad deck at some point.

Well, that stinks, I can either offer her the (to my eye) bad 2nd gen copy capture or the better 1st gen with a line.

Any type of restoration to fill in this line is beyond my pay grade.

Thanks for the help.

[The 14th Doctor]

Have a similar problem myself with a wedding tape from 1987, though it's a first gen from my understanding (As in filmed with a full sized VHS camcorder). Unlike your example, the white streaks are smaller and only affect certain parts as oppose to the whole entire tape, but to me it doesn't look like standard drop out.

This is the only tape I've ran in my VCR that has this sort of problem, so I don't think it's the VCR at fault here. I do remember playing the tape in a consumer VCR just to see what was on it, and the streaks appeared there as well. My guess is that it was also ran through a faulty VCR at some point before I played it in the consumer VCR, or the camcorder used to film the footage was faulty.

Can't really get rid of em' with stuff like Spotless and RemovedirtMC, unless I'm just not trying hard enough with the filters

[lollo]

Can't really get rid of em' with stuff like Spotless and RemovedirtMC, unless I'm just not trying hard enough with the filters

You can give to FixRipsp2 a try. It is quite destructive, so you may want to apply only on concerned frames (not in my example) and play with its parameters and the number of calls (2x odd fields, 2x even fields in my example ):

# interlaced fields TFF
# problem: horizontal stripe
# solution: repair with FixRipsp2

video_org=AviSource("weddingexample.avi").convertToYV16(interlaced=true)

# plugins directory
plugins_dir="C:\Users\giuse\Documents\VideoSoft\MPEG\AviSynth\extFilters\"

	# FixRipsp2
Import(plugins_dir + "FixRipsp2.avs")
	# RgTools
loadPlugin(plugins_dir + "RgTools-v1.0\x86\RgTools.dll")
	# DePanEstimate
loadPlugin(plugins_dir + "depanestimate110\DePanEstimate.dll")
	# FFTW
loadPlugin(plugins_dir + "LoadDll\LoadDll.dll")
loadDll(plugins_dir + "fftw3_20040130\fftw3win32mingw\fftw3.dll")
	# DePan
loadPlugin(plugins_dir + "depan1131\DePan.dll")
	# MaskTools2
loadPlugin(plugins_dir + "masktools2-v2.2.23\x86\masktools2.dll")
	# MVTools
loadPlugin(plugins_dir + "mvtools-2.7.41-with-depans20200430\x86\mvtools2.dll")

### separate fields
video_org_sep=video_org.AssumeTFF().separateFields()

### select even fields
video_org_sep_even=SelectEven(video_org_sep)

### select odd fields
video_org_sep_odd=SelectOdd(video_org_sep)

### repair
video_org_sep_even_rep=video_org_sep_even.FixRipsp2().FixRipsp2()
video_org_sep_odd_rep=video_org_sep_odd.FixRipsp2().FixRipsp2()

### interleave
video_interleaved=interleave(video_org_sep_even_rep,video_org_sep_odd_rep)

### weave
video_restored=video_interleaved.Weave()

#return(video_restored)

stackhorizontal(\
subtitle(video_org,"video_org",size=20,align=2),\
subtitle(video_restored,"video_restored",size=20,align=2)\
)

[dellsam34]

From the screenshot the damaged scan lines are well over a dozen as can be seen from the DOC running out of memory and switching to white lines, on top of that it is consistent across the entire tape so there is no option to borrow lines from before and after frames. That tape is a lost cause.

[Spektre]

from the screenshot the damaged scan lines are well over a dozen as can be seen from the doc running out of memory and switching to white lines, on top of that it is consistent across the entire tape so there is no option to borrow lines from before and after frames. That tape is a lost cause.

"doc"?

[The 14th Doctor]

Stands for Drop Out Compensation

Yeah imo if it lasts for the entire tape then there is nothing that can be done, at least with the wedding tape for example there is a chance to fix it, I'd say mostly because the streaks only happen during certain parts of the tape and for rather brief moments.

I actually tried fixrips2 myself and yeah, was rather destructive. Was in the process of using the trim command a bunch to have only the glitched bits be filtered out, but since I had to type the command 30+ times I gave up after a while.