Suggestions for restoration script for this video

[DrCalhoun]

I'm wanting to clean up a vhs capture but before I get into it I thought I would see what people suggest for some avisynth filters/scripts. I haven't done any deinterlacing or color correction on it yet so any suggestions would be appreciated

[Attachment 89103 - Click to enlarge]

[Attachment 89105 - Click to enlarge]

[Attachment 89104 - Click to enlarge]

[Sharc]

Pretty good capture IMO. The darks could be a bit darker perhaps, but you may adjust the levels easily in post to taste and to fill the Y=(16....235).
It is 2:3 telecined, so don't deinterlace but IVTC (Inverse Telecine) to get the 24fps (23.976fps) progressive film frames back.

Try something like this:

colorYUV(levels="TV->PC") #expand the luma
TFM().TDecimate() #Inverse Telecine

[Alwyn]

Here's my hack job (picked up from the more-knowledgeable members of the forum!). After opening in VDub2, I fiddled with the colours and levels using Colormill and cropped off the head-switching noise and resized it to square pixels 720x540.

aviSource("D:\VH\Dr Calhoun\amarec(20251005-0916)sample2.avi")
ConvertToYV12()

TFM()
TDecimate()

TemporalDegrain2(degrainTR=3,grainLevel=1,postFFT=0) #light denoising

LSFmod(defaults="slow") #Sharpener

ColorYUV(gain_y=20, off_y=-15, cont_u=0, cont_v=-30)
/*
gain - raises the top of the histo more than bottom (or in VDub histo terms-moves the right edge: lower values to the left)
off - raises the whole histo (increased value move it right, for the side histo)
cont u and v - expands the colours
*/

#Waveform on top for checking the levels, unsure if this is the right order to check the post-capture histogram but it seems to work.
#TurnRight().Histogram().TurnLeft()#Puts histogram across top

Prefetch(8)

TemporalDegrain and LSFMod kill the CPU on my lappie (this script gives me 2.5fps encoding to AVI) so I would normally just adjust the levels, colour and sharpening in my NLE.

[lollo]

Pretty good capture IMO

USB-Live 2 card, probably (because its specific histogram).

TemporalDegrain2(degrainTR=3,grainLevel=1,postFFT= 0) #light denoising

With a temporal radius of 3 the denoising performed by TD2 is not so light, Try degrainTR=1 for a softer processing and to reduce load on hardware as well.

[Alwyn]

Try degrainTR=1 for a softer processing and to reduce load on hardware as well.

Up to 6.5fps now! Bravo!

My normal workflow would be NeatVideo in my NLE, which goes much faster.

[Sharc]

Pretty good capture IMO

USB-Live 2 card, probably (because its specific histogram).

Possibly yes (although I don't see a particular benfit in the typical spiky histogram of the Live 2). And because the OP captured well within the "safe" Y(16...235) the auto-adjustment of the Live2 didn't do its damage

[lollo]

I don't see a particular benfit in the typical spiky histogram of the Live 2)

Yes, the opposite in fact. The spiky histogram is somehow a "bad" thing, as we discussed some years ago. It is just a sort of pattern to recognize the USB-Live 2 captures.

[DrCalhoun]

Thanks for the suggestions folks. I will try it soon.

Pretty good capture IMO

USB-Live 2 card, probably (because its specific histogram).

Actually it is one of the white CX cards with a Conexant chip (one of the ones vhs-decode works with but I haven't got around to putting tap points on a vcr yet).

[lollo]

USB-Live 2 has the Conexant CX23102 IC inside

[jagabo]

Levels and white balance based on the woman's shirt in the first shot:


[Attachment 89112 - Click to enlarge]
before:after

ColorYUV(gain_y=40, off_y=-20, cont_u=40, cont_v=40)
ConvertToRGB(interlaced=true).RGBAdjust(bb=-16).RGBAdjust(g=247.0/239.0, b=247.0/239.0).ConvertToYV16(interlaced=true)

[Selur]

Nice! The RGBAdjust calls make it look fine for me.
(color grading is totally not my thing )

[jagabo]

One needs to check with a wider variety of shots.

[DrCalhoun]

USB-Live 2 has the Conexant CX23102 IC inside

Good to know! I guess I will take it off my Amazon wishlist!

[Alwyn]

@Jagabo, very nice. Where would that line fit with TFM? I see you say "Interlaced=True" when I assume it's not interlaced after TFM.

[jagabo]

I was running it on the video before IVTC. But you can run it after IVTC, just leave out the interlaced=true. Actually, I don't think it matters since the chroma isn't subsampled vertically.

[Alwyn]

Thanks.