Could I get some advice on which VirtualDub filters to use?

[ryangarfield]

I have lordsmurfs arsenal of filters at my disposal from his custom VirtualDub and was just wondering if I could get some suggestions of filters or settings to use based on the following screenshots. I think i'll be better able to get my feet wet if at first I get some guidance. Cheers. The tape quality is not great so I'm not expecting miracles, just hoping to get rid of some ghosting maybe and stuff. I could post video too if needed.

[lordsmurf]

I've had to get an actual video clip to test with.
That actually doesn't look too horrible, to be honest. I've seen far worse.

What show is that?

For future reference, find me here: http://www.digitalFAQ.com/forum/forumdisplay.php/restore-filter-improve-17.html
Or here: http://www.tvpreservation.com/forum/video-recording-tech/

It was pure luck that I came across your thread here.

[jagabo]

We need to know your intentions? Are you making DVDs? Do you need progressive video? The two fields in those images are not completely separate. Is that the state the video is in or is it just the way you prepared the images? Short clips would be preferable (VirtualDub, Video -> Direct Stream Copy). Are these YUY2 captures?

In general you want to look at some of the usual suspects for VHS: 2D Cleaner, Neat Video, VHS, Temporal Smoother, Chroma Noise Reduction, IVTC or Deinterlace (if you need to deinterlace).

Or just buy the DVD: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Dino-Riders-DVD/dp/B000WC8QX4/. That will look far better than anything you can do from VHS caps.

[ryangarfield]

I'll attach a small clip. Due to the 30mb limit I can only post a quick 3 second clip, hopefully thats enough. Its from an old show called Dino-Riders, part of the Marvel Action Universe lineup. Yeah this site has always been my go-to site for video related questions, I always forget about digitalFAQ (sorry) even though its probably more appropriate for these types of questions. Cheers

[ryangarfield]

Its actually a Beta tape from the 80's. I do already own the DVD as well, its just that this tape has the complete Marvel Action Universe lineup on it with commercials and RoboCop TAS (which I also own the DVD of) so I'd like to preserve it as best I could. I don't really have any intentions to make DVD's, just want to store it on my hard drive. To get the images I just used MPC-HC, so thats the way it did it.

[jagabo]

I don't have time to do a better example right now but here's the result after an IVTC and "quick" heavy Neat Video (unfortunately, not free, try 2d Cleaner and Temporal Smoother). I would normally go softer on the Neat Video but this should give you some idea of what can be done in VirtualDub. I would also mask out the head switching noise at the bottom of the frame. And I would try to remove the "comets" that appear sporadically, using AviSynth filters. Xvid AVI attached:

[ryangarfield]

Alright well I've been playing around with the various filters you suggested, and while I have been successful at improving the picture quality I can't quite get it up to the quality of your sample which was quite good. How much of that is Neat Video? What settings did you use for each filter? Cheers, thanks.

[lordsmurf]

Most of that is due to NeatVideo. It's $50 at http://neatvideo.com/purchase.html

My VCF file is in the RAR. It has the Vdub settings.

1 was Avisynth to deinterlace with YadifMod+NNEDI2, denoise in pure Vdub (not so good compared to NV)
2 was Avisynth to deinterlace, denoise in Vdub + NeatVideo
3 was IVTC in Vdub, denoise Vdub + NeatVideo

Here's the interesting thing: the "comets" (dropouts) are completely gone in the IVTC version, while present in the deinterlaced version while all other filters and settings remained the same. Very interesting.

In the future, attach M2V files with high bitrates, maybe even I-frame only -- not AVI
More video, less file size.

All in all, this was an easy one.
I didn't spend lots of time tweaking, just ran a few quick things that I knew would make it MUCH better.

More of my examples of correcting video at http://www.digitalFAQ.com/forum/forumdisplay.php/restore-filter-improve-17.html
Which is again the best place to find me for these more advanced restoring topics.

Take care.

[redwudz]

Moving to Restoration Forum.