Which filters should I use for VHS tapes?

[lingoguysw5]

I've captured a movie from my vcr using Adaptec and need to make some adjustments using Virtualdub to make it as near to the source as possible. When I enlargen it on the PC , let alone the TV the image distorts shaking and flickering. As a small screen image of 4 inches it is fine. What can I do to overcome this interference? Will it improve once encoded with tmpgenc's mpeg2 DVD format? I am not asking for a miracle just a clearer picture. Also should I change the compression as the file is fairly big? Will the bitrate perfect the picture? If anyone knows I'd like to hear from you. Thanks Clive

[Cobra]

Clive,

First of all, it is impossible to "improve" the image quality by re-encoding. You can make improvements in the way of cleaning it up so, for example, the noise reduction filter on TMPGEnc will remove the video grain, at the expense of smoothing the video out. Adding more bitrate will not make it any better - the encoder just compresses what it sees - rubbish in, rubbish out I'm afraid!

With regards to your filesize being too large, when you convert it to DVD using TMPGEnc you will be able to set the bitrate up to make it fit on a DVD. There are plenty of guides on the bar to your left on doing this - they fall under "Convert".

As far as your flickery picture goes, this could either be the capture card or the software. I'll assume it's your software just now. There is a guide on using VirtualDub to capture video, which is what I used and it worked perfectly with my GeForce4:

https://www.videohelp.com/guides.php?guideid=310#310

I used the Morgan MJPEG Codec to compress my video on-the-fly - I found setting 90 to be the perfect balance between very high quality and hard drive space - anything above 90 yeilds little quality gain for a large space gain.

TMPGEnc will accept the huge output file no bother, and convert it to DVD for you. Since it's a VHS capture (as was mine) you are best off in TMPGEnc setting the motion search precision to "High" and enabling the noise reduction filter. The high quality mode on this filter actually doesn't make much difference at all but increases encoding time drastically - I wouldn't bother.

Anyway, the main points are that you can't increase the quality of the video, only alter it to look a bit better and that you need to convert to DVD to get a proper filesize.

Hope this helps,

Cobra

[lordsmurf]

I can never stress enought hat the playback equipment (TBC and VCR) are the two most important aspects to capturing. Clean signal.

Then comes good capture card with good software being used properly. That can be an obstacle too for newbies.

I think you need to work on these two things (playback, capture), not filters.

That's my honest opinion here.