Best method to remove VHS's noise at the bottom?

[TheGame7]

What do you suggest as being the best method to remove the noise at the bottom of the screen that appears when "capturing" VHS footage?

i) Black it out

ii) Crop it and rescale (?)

iii) Crop it and leave it

Also, should the black bars at the top, left and right be removed too?

I would like an answer for when converting to DVD that will be played on both TV and PC.

Thanks

P.S. I am using TMPGEnc Pro

[non-linear]

I recommend masking it (putting the black bar over it). That way, you won't mess the size of the video, causing video that was visible on TV to fall in the overscan. For a 720x480 video, I usually put a mask of 9 lines at the bottom to cover (your mileage may vary). As for the black bars elsewhere, I would leave them on, as they fall in the overscan area. If they look bad (ie, there's some distortion on any side), you could mask it as well.

If you were just creating a video to watch on your PC, then I would crop it out entirely, but also making sure to match the same number of lines cut on the left/right sides as to not mess the picture scaling.

[pijetro]

Just remember, if you crop, then do it in pixel heights of 8.

Since I use AVISynth for frameserving, i use the command:
Letterbox(8,8)

If you crop with Vdub, then remember to resize, and letterbox....

Good luck!!

[FulciLives]

I crop the bottom then add black to the TOP and the BOTTOM to equal what I cropped from the bottom.

So if I crop 16 from the bottom (sometimes you can get away with 12 but most times I find I need to crop 16 to completely remove it) then I add 8 to the top and bottom.

This "centers" the image with equal amount of black on the top and bottom.

I do this because if I left 16 black on the bottom you might be able to see it on some televisions due to overscan. Some TV's show more on the bottom than other's etc.

- John "FulciLives" Coleman

[andie41]

I have found an 8 pixel crop eleiminates this noise on my captures. I use TMPGenc "clip frame" in the Advanced tab, select the bottom box and adjust until the noise disappears. Then select add bottom mask and the video will keeps its correct size. The noise doesn't show on the TV anyway, but I find it is better for the encoder to not waste bitrate dealing with this noise.

[sacajaweeda]

I get an annoying "shooting star" type line 10 lines up from the bottom on the stuff I cap from my VCR. It's just one line but I have to crop all the way up to it. One of these days I'm gonna break down and get a better VCR but for now this is a standard entry on all my AviSynth scripts when I'm manipulating VHS caps...

AVISource("whatever_clip.avi")
Crop(0,0,0,-10).AddBorders(0,0,0,10)

Anybody know if there is a way to remove just the one bad line with AviSynth?

[sacajaweeda]

Bueller?
Bueller?

[jdlabelle]

I'm getting the same lines at the bottom of vcr captured video. Does anyone know why this happens?

Thanks
Jeff

[troyvcd1]

It is always there you just dont see it because of the overscan on your tv. Easily removed with a aviscript to crop.