VHS Channel Colour??? Er... Help

[kelwinwong]

Hi all,

I'm not new to encoding, but I am to capturing from VHS. Shifted through the forums to get an answer about hissing on the sound (fixed now) but the other problem I am having, which I couldn't find on the forums because I don't know exactly what you'd call it.

Here's a screenshot to illustrate my problem



I captured the video by running the video out of my VCR player to my Sony digital camcorder. I then captured the video back onto my computer through the firewire on the digital camcorder. However, the video originally has this "offset" in the colour channel (is that the right term?) so you see blue shapes of the video offset to the right (as shown in picture) can this video be saved? Thanks for any info guys.

[SatStorm]

Hmmm...
Change cables to a better quality ones.
It seems that you use composite to link your VCR to your camcorder. Can you use S-Video? If so, do it!
A full frame TBC can help on this.

Finally, there is a filter called "Exorcist" for Virtualdub. It is about Luminance offsets and it might help a bit in this case

BTW: Nice girl!

[pfh]

This should be a sticky!!!!.............................
So we can look at it whenever we want!!!!

[kelwinwong]

Thanks for the info, downloaded the program but don't see the exorcist filter pre-installed. will hunt that down. By the way, for the sake of newbies (myself included) you talk about using a S-Video. What's that?

[kelwinwong]

SatStorm,

I downloaded the Exorcist filter, but it doesn't address my problem that I'm having. Even tried on TMPGenc using their 'Remove ghost' filter but that too doesn't seem to help remove the problem on my video. Is there anything else you could recommend please? I'm running on both Mac and PC, so it wouldn't matter what platform the solution is available on. Thanks

[fmctm1sw]

I'm failing to see the problem...

[kelwinwong]

The problem is on the screenshot. You can see a blue "ghost shadow" to the right of the girl. This thing is there for the entire video.

[SatStorm]

About S-Video: It seems that you connect your VCR to your camera using the RCA Composite video jack. If your VCR output S-Video then connect your VCR with your camera using the S-Video in cable (some cameras/vcrs andress to this as "SVHS in" or something.

Anyway: With the exorcist filter you can adjust the luma offset, when that occur. If you tried it and you don't see any improvement, then it doesn't do the trick for you.
Search for a filter called "Flaxen VHS". It has a colour shift fuction, for the NTSC users, that may do a better job for you. Combine it with Exorcist.
Read how to set those filters correct.

I can't help you further, sorry!

[kelwinwong]

SatStorm. thanks kindly for the help you gave so far. the filter works in the sense that I can shift the "ghost" channel colour, but it shifts all the channels together. Now if only there was a way to shift specific colour channels

[thermie]

SatStorm. thanks kindly for the help you gave so far. the filter works in the sense that I can shift the "ghost" channel colour, but it shifts all the channels together. Now if only there was a way to shift specific colour channels

Flaxen has a FX VHS filter can be downloaded for VirtualDub that shifts color bleed, it can be googled instantly... I've used it to fix up some laserdiscs whose reds were visibly off by a wide margin. All colors are affected by color bleed, but typically reds. The FXVHS filter has other tweaks that might help you out too.

[kelwinwong]

I think I've downloaded pretty much every colur correction filter for VirtualDub. I'm spent!

I'll give the S-Video suggestion a go after which I'll take my VHS and see if its easy to flush them down a toilet bowl

[pfh]

That new ACE video processor that SatStorm is playing with might be your last resort?

[thermie]

Hmmm. In that flaxen VHS filter, there are 4 sections. The lower left one there are 2 filters - shift chroma i and shift chroma q.

I forgot which one controls red (I or Q) but if you did one pass to get red of the red color bleed on the left edge (using a value of 2 or 3 for horizontal, 0 for vertical) then re-process using -6 (?) for the blue, that might work. But don't do both I and Q at the same time because one color is bleeding a little to the left (red) and the other is bleeding considerably to the right (blue).

I think I've downloaded pretty much every colur correction filter for VirtualDub. I'm spent!

I'll give the S-Video suggestion a go after which I'll take my VHS and see if its easy to flush them down a toilet bowl

[kelwinwong]

Hi, seems the red shift works somewhat. But the blue not at all. Or maybe i just don't know how to bleed right

Here's a short clip from the original film. AVI format, 1mb.

http://www.kelwinwong.com/Scream.avi

[kelwinwong]

What a world of difference a newer VCR model and S-Video can make! I the colour now comes out great! Thanks for the suggestions. Now I just got to figure out how to get rid of those VHS "smear" lines you get from degrading tapes.