Can this be improved?

[thomasj]

I have 12 year old video (VHS) that I've captured using my ADVC-110. It's very dark and poor quality. I've tried various filters and even tried both the 7.5IRE and 0IRE settings on the ADVC-110. It was shot using my uncles old VHS camcorder--not sure of the model anymore. I know it wasn't new even 12 years ago. I know from reading here for a couple weeks that I'm not using the best VCR. It a fairly new, cheap Samsung--my options are limited here. The ADVC-110 feeds into my computer via firewire. Captures are done using WinDV. I'm leaning toward encoding to MPEG-2 using HC with a CBR of 9000--no filtering as I've not really noticed any significant improvements with what I've tried.

Any suggestions? Thanks...

Here's a 10-15 second sample.
http://www.megaupload.com/?d=IEKGQ4YB

[jagabo]

It could still use some fine tuning but...

[thomasj]

Thanks jagabo, I've been reading a lot but I guess I haven't developed an "eye" for this yet... Also I haven't gotten too much of a feel regarding how to stack these multiple filters together. I'll have to give this a try tonight.
Thanks! Good stuff.

[jagabo]

I used the levels filter to set the black and white levels and adjust the gamma (mid tones).

HSV was used to saturate the colors a bit.

White Balance to remove the greenish tint.

Temporal Smoother to reduce noise. This one is the toughest -- too much and you get motion blur artifacts. My general preference is not to remove too much noise because you end up removing detail as well as noise and you get other artifacts.

The bracketing Deinterlace filters weren't really necessary since none of the filters used any spacial filtering. But I was also playing with 2d Cleaner which does spacial nose reduction. In the end I decided against it.

[edDV]

Use the 7.5 IRE swich position when capturing American NTSC VHS.

[lordsmurf]

The VirtualDub filtering looks terrible compared to what could be done with the tape in hardware. Running it through one of my setups, for example, which has an Elite Video BVp-4 Plus proc amp, you'd get a far higher quality out of it. Then it could be tweaked further in VirtualDub as needed.

The good news is you have the tape! If this tape is important, then consider outsourcing this one to a service that specializes in restoration -- it's probably not worth the expense of buying more gear, unless you have many more tapes like this.

[thomasj]

Thanks to everyone for your help. I've read many of your past posts that they have been very useful. I'm new to this, but I'm finding this to be a lot of fun.

Yes, this is the only tape like this I have. I also have to convert about 20 VHS-C tapes, but I'm sure they will present their own challenges...

Thanks everyone... It's nice to get feedback from the experts.

[jagabo]

Smurf is right about using analog filters before capturing. I was tying to bring out some detail in the bride and groom's faces. The difference in brightness between the black level (jackets) and the faces is very small. The gamma stretch to bring out detail in the dark areas greatly enhanced the inherent VHS noise as well. Further, the capture card (I believe) has introduced some vertical stripe noise in the dark area. It wasn't visible in the original AVI but the large gamma stretch has brought it out.

If you're serious about wanting to filter this video look into the Neat Video noise reduction filter.

[Soopafresh]

Also try Camcorder Color Denoise for VirtualDub. It's really good for noise caused by camera autogain compensating for dark areas.

Find it here:

http://acobw.narod.ru/

[jagabo]

Also the VHS filter for VirtualDub.

[thomasj]

Thanks everyone. I tried a number of filters. My "untrained" eye didn't see munch improvement. I do appreciate the help though.