Ok, lets compare notes on using virtual dub for capture and conversion.

I do a lot of captures from VHS, as I have an large collection showing its age. I capture using my Hauppauge PCI capture card, into virdutal dub with a resolution of 640x480, using the PicVideo MJPEG codec set at 18 or 19 (which gives 10:1 and 4 or 5:1 compression). Where the VHS tape has iffy sound in the first instance, I capture audio using MS ADPCM compression at its highest setting. Where the VHS has great audio (rare, really) I use raw PCM. I'm able to capture using these setting on my SLOT A Athlon (TBIRD) 900 at 29.9697 frames per second with the system dropping only 1 or 2 frames per every 15,000 or so.

But lets talk filterchains!

I'll start off with one of my higher quality filter chains and settings for creating regular "compliant" VCDs out of aging VHS tape. The final VCDs look pretty great!

These are the order I put them in on the virtual dub filter menu, which processes them from top to bottom (the order is important!).

1. Levels: Take 15 to 20 off of each end on the slider. Take a little less off of the "white" side. This makes sure that black areas really wind up being black!

2. DEINTERLACE - Don't use the default VirtualDub filter. I use the "Area Based" filter that is distributed as a plug in. What this filter does is a find the "jaggies" in certain frames (i.e., the "comb" effect), and it only blends THOSE areas of the frame. This causes only the jaggie areas to be softened, and is much better in my opinion than the default deinterlace filter "blend" option. (There's also a "smart deinterlacer" filter available that deinterlaces based on a motion analysis, but I've not had the best luck with figuring out good settings for it). Do not use the "duplicate field" or "disgard field" in the default Virtual Dub deinterlace filter EVER. You might as well capture at 320x240 since you're disgarding a full field of detail for every frame in each instance.


3. RESIZE upwards to 1280 x 960 (double resolution in each direction). For this upwards resize, we're not disgarding any data and for our purposes, "nearest neighbor" is a good setting. Using any of the other options slows this filter chain down even more than it already is! If you have to use a different setting, try "bicubic" although, it doesn't really help (and the mathematical artifacts that will be present on a bicubic resize upwards may cause problems in the next step).

4. 2D cleaner (AMD Optimized version): Gets rid of some vhs noise and MJPEG artifacts, if any. Defaults to a threshold of 10 and 2 pixel x, y radius settings. Sometimes I use the defaults. Other times, I use 6 - 8 for the threshold and a 1 pixel radius on the x & y. This filter is often overdone. Don't! It will wash out your video. That's one of the reasons we resize upwards, which lessens the actual impact of the filter.

5. 2:1 REDUCTION (high quality) - This bumps the frames back down to 640x480. As the size is reduced, the filter "squeezes" out noise.

6. SMOOTHER - Noise prefilter on, set the strength to 1. No more. Removes some more noise.

7. 2:1 REDUCTION (high quality) - Again. This brings us down to 320x240 which is suitable size to be fed into TMPGenc. (TMPGenc. will resize it to 352x240 while correcting the aspect ration back to 4:3 so it looks "right" when played back). At this stage, a LOT of noise has been removed, but detail is still great!

I next use VirtualDub to frameserve into TMPGenc. In TMPGenc, I do only two things: First, I use "noise reduction" with the top setting set to zero (we've already removed as much "in frame" noise as we can). The second setting set to 1. And the third set to 6 or 7. This third setting blends pixes between frames and is similar to the "temporal smoother" in Virtual Dub (but that filter in V-Dub doesn't work when you're frameserving). The other thing I do in TMPGenc is make sure that any VHS head switching noise is cropped off. I use either of the "full scree, keep aspect ratio" options, depending on what looks best.

Set your encoding options and start.

This filter chain is slow! Virtual Dub serves the finished frames to TMPGenc at no more than 5 - 7 frames per second. It is not necessary when doing a digital source conversion, but when you're working with VHS captures (and especially home videos, it is really works well!).

What filter chains do YOU guys and gals use?!