advice on restoring using a DVD source

[Jerry1964]

Hello,

I have a 48 min NTSC DVD made from an (old) Pal 3/4" U-matic. The DVD is now 29.9 Interlaced even though the original source is 24 Progressive film. To make matters much worse. This thing needs all kinds of restoration. I am planning on several passes in programs like Vegas and After effects to use certain tools like. Neat Video. DE:Noise and maybe Topaz. To clean the video and remove drop-outs, fix colors etc. I see Topaz will not help the video unless I De-Interlace it first. My main question is:

How should I rip the DVD to be able to stand several passes and renderings. In Mpeg2, I'm gonna lose quality each time I do something to the video. I really don't have the space for many versions of a 48min AVI. I'm thinking maybe there is a certain program and settings that will do the best rip from the DVD so I can work with it over and over. I've been working on this for months, I even have some other posts in the forums regarding removing drop-outs. I work and work on this thing, and I can make it look better at the expense of creating artifacts. Also any advice on the order process should take place would be great. I need to do the following and maybe somethings can be done with others

1.Color Correction, Contrast adj
2.Time-Stretch. (the original runs to slow) I think this is a major reason for quality loss. I use Sony Vegas to time-stretch
3. Clean Video. To remove major color noise. Seems Neat Video and DE:Noise do a good job on this?
4. Remove Video Drop-outs. I think DE:Noise can do this. Maybe not so good with interlace footage?
5. Apply a border to hide the mis-frame of the film transfer

I'm sure there are a few things I left out, but it needs alot

There are some examples of the video here

http://s257.photobucket.com/albums/hh224/beatles12345/

[redwudz]

You could try using DV_AVI, since it appears to be the proper frame size for that. DV uses about 13GB a hour of video. Not lossless, but takes up a lot less space than Lagarith or HuffyUV codecs. I use VirtualDub for that most times. Lots of filters available and all freeware.

[mpack]

DV uses about 13GB a hour of video.

I calculate that 48 mins of Huffyuv (lossless) compressed YUY2 video (as a video-only AVI) would take about 18GB of disk space. Is that really such a big problem on a 300GB drive? If yes, then perhaps consider getting a second larger drive to remove considerations like these if you intend to do this a lot. I bought a 1TB second drive for my new home PC, they are quite affordable these days.

Frankly, I wouldn't want to use any lossy format if I intended to process/edit the video in multiple complex ways. I would use VirtualDub-MPEG2 to convert the DVD video to AVI compressed as mentioned above, this AVI becomes my original as far as later work goes. In my own projects I might then only have one or possibly two other copies (denoised version, denoised+edited version). So, no more than 60GB total. However, since all of these can be generated from the original DVD capture I don't need to keep them after the remastering project is finished.

[themaster1]

Personnally i work with mpeg2s on a daily basis. I use virtualdub mod

Rip your dvd normally, maybe demux the video and audio if you judge it necessary and just work on them. You might consider the usage of deblocking filters at first.Then: neatVideo, HSV/contrast-brightness/resize

in this order

Well this is my advice

As an example, this is what the result can be with my method: before after and this satisfy my current needs.

[Jerry1964]

You could try using DV_AVI, since it appears to be the proper frame size for that. DV uses about 13GB a hour of video. Not lossless, but takes up a lot less space than Lagarith or HuffyUV codecs. I use VirtualDub for that most times. Lots of filters available and all freeware.

redwudz,

DV-AVI is a program?

[2Bdecided]

A format - an AVI file with standard DV video in it. 25Mbps. It's the format used in most consumer video editing.

You're quite new to this, aren't you? I don't say this to be unkind - I just worry that you might quickly be in over your head - or else it's going to be a great learning experience!

To get the original film frames back (highly desirable) you need to use some clever tricks in AVIsynth (software). Depending on how it was transferred to "NTSC", this could be quite easy or completely impossible. Learn more about digital video, and how to use VirtualDub first though I think - AVIsynth scares lots of people - it's a scripting (programming) language which works on video - very powerful, but it can be confusing at first.

btw, the "best" way to get the video off the DVD is as its native MPEG-2 without transcoding. The first operation you do next (whatever that is) will use the MPEG-2 as the source, and you'll store the output in a lossless or DV-AVI (lossy) file. People really familiar with AVIsyth and VirtualDUB can often do the whole process in one go without resorting to intermediate files - but the manual frame patching you want to do will prevent this. Manual video touch up using consumer software isn't very easy at all. You can go Video > frames > photoshop > frames > video, if you have to - only loading the "bad" frames into photoshop. Lots of files and disc space involved!

Hope this helps.

Cheers,
David.

[mpack]

DV-AVI is a program?

No, DV-AVI is a file format, specifically I believe DV is a subset of MPEG2 in which only keyframes are used - which makes it suitable for editing, and at a very high bitrate, which reduces the lossy compression damage. The advantage is that it takes less space than uncompressed or lossless compressed, which makes DV a popular format in digital camcorders. Some PC capture devices can also capture to DV-AVI.

Note that lossy compression damage is reduced, and not eliminated. Hence I prefer a lossless format myself if the video is going to be processed several times, despite the extra space required.

[2Bdecided]

DV is not a subset of MPEG2, though it is similar to I-frame only MPEG-2, but highly restricted (specific resolution, frame rate, colour sampling etc). In the broadcast environment, people would laugh at the idea that DV is high bitrate - it's "only" 25Mbps - they have their own "professional" 50Mbps variant, and even that is considered comparatively low end - it's not used for multi generational editing by serious broadcasters for hi-end content.

Cheers,
David.

[mpack]

people would laugh at the idea that DV is high bitrate - it's "only" 25Mbps

Which is high compared to a stream ripped from a DVD, ie. the context of the current discussion.

[2Bdecided]

Whether it's usefully high, even in this context, depends on how many generations you intend to bounce it, and whether you keep the colour in DV native format, or keep jumping to 4:2:2 or even RGB and back.

You had this covered though - you've already said "I prefer lossless"!

Cheers,
David.

[Spiny Norman]

Topic has gone old but in general, try to find the umatic tape. Always start from the master tape, if possible. The other one is a derivate and has already been transferred and re-encoded once.