What do you choose, DNR on the VCR or denoise filters?

[Master Tape]

I've seen some people say it's best to turn the DNR off on your VCR and clean it up with filters in post, then i've seen others say it's best to denoise in hardware.

In this instance i'm using a Panasonic HS860, though i haven't quite got the hang of the perfect line of filters to use to get a nice clean image, as some tapes are noisier than others. And it doesn't look as smooth with the DNR turned off. Whilst DNR gets rid of most of the grain, turning it off leaves behind more that even my degrain filter wont get rid of, though there is more detail. In some instances the grain looks frozen which i dont like.

AviSource("D:/Video.avi")
ConvertToYV12(interlaced=true)
AssumeTFF()
QTGMC(preset="slow", matchpreset="slow", matchpreset2="slow", sourcematch=3, tr1=2, tr2=1, NoiseTR=2, sharpness=0.1, border=true)
TemporalDegrain2(degrainTR=3)
Sharpen(0.4,0.0)
nnedi3_rpow2(2, cshift="Spline36Resize", fwidth=768, fheight=576)
Sharpen(0.4)
Crop(8,0,-0,-12)
AddBorders(0,0,0,12)
Prefetch(8)

[ozymango]

It it all helpful if I answer, "It depends"? Seriously, depending on whatever tape I'm trying to digitize -- especially a bunch of tapes from the 1980's that were shot with a tube camera with really interesting color shifting -- sometimes I'll try tweaking the hardware (VCR output, Panasonic DVD recorder pass-through levels, capture card levels) and sometimes I'll try leaving everything set to the defaults and then try cleaning things up in editing, and as far as results go -- mostly I end up with trade-offs, in that I can increase visibility in some dark scenes, but lose detail, or increase detail but also increase dot crawl, etc etc etc.

Anyway, I agree with you that I personally think the sample with DNR On looks better, to my eye, than the DNR off. The filtered sample also looks better than the DNR off, but there's still some noise in the video that I don't think you're gonna be able to filter out, without losing detail. Well it's always fun to play with filters to see if we can squeeze just that little extra edge out of our videos, good luck on your future tests!

[Sharc]

Why color subsampling at the beginning?
Why QTGMC for a progressive PsF source, just doubling the framerate and duplicating frames? There is nothing to deinterlace. Framerate is 25fps.
Why sharpening noise and halos?

With much simpler basic filtering:

[Master Tape]

Why color subsampling at the beginning?
Why QTGMC for a progressive PsF source, just doubling the framerate and duplicating frames? There is nothing to deinterlace. Framerate is 25fps.
Why sharpening noise and halos?

With much simpler basic filtering:

Because degrain only works with planar colorspaces, so has to go before.

Well this was just used as an example, because of the different visuals. There's lots of different sources throughout the tape so i just leave QTGMC on as default.

Just to sharpen things up a bit. I've been trying to find a way to sharpen the picture without bringing out the noise too much. I was using Unsharp before which felt a bit much and gave me more halos. Perhaps i'll just use one line of Sharpen rather than two, so it's a fine balance between detail and noise.

[Sharc]

Because degrain only works with planar colorspaces, so has to go before.

ConverttoYV16 would make it planar and would preserve the 4:2:2 color subsampling, rather than reducing it to 4:2:0 at the beginning.

[johnmeyer]

You definitely do not want to use any analog denoiser. The digital ones always work better.

However TBC, which some VCRs have, is a different story. There are some things they can correct which cannot be fixed with digital filters. Unfortunately, on some VCRs, the TBC can make things worse. You have to do your own test to know whether it helps.

[Master Tape]

Because degrain only works with planar colorspaces, so has to go before.

ConverttoYV16 would make it planar and would preserve the 4:2:2 color subsampling, rather than reducing it to 4:2:0 at the beginning.

Will do thanks. Though i upscale alot of my videos so ColorMatrix only works with YV12 or YUY2.

You definitely do not want to use any analog denoiser. The digital ones always work better.

However TBC, which some VCRs have, is a different story. There are some things they can correct which cannot be fixed with digital filters. Unfortunately, on some VCRs, the TBC can make things worse. You have to do your own test to know whether it helps.

I did think using a 25 year old analog denoiser probably isnt the best approach. The best digital denoiser i've found so far is NeatVideo, though takes too long to render the file, then having to render this again once i deinterlace and apply the other filters. Is there any sort of magic filter in avisynth that works just aswell to save some hassle?

I know what you mean about the VCR's TBC. It works great for the most part, but it doesn't seem to like macrovision or digital tv signals, so i run it through an ES10 in those instances.