Picture enhancer/TBC/stabilizer?

[daysaf00]

Can someone recommend a good analog video picture enhancer? I'm copying home videos, and things I've recorded from TV (I'm not copying commercial video). Some of my tapes that are anywhere from 10-20 years old could use a color correction/enhancement, etc.

I'm not sure if I'm in search of a TBC or something like that. What I'd like to do is run the video rca cable from the vcr to a stand alone enhancer or stabilizer, then to the dvd recorder in hopes that the picture would be a little clearer, less jittery, and perhaps sharper?

I'm not really sure what I should be searching or looking for? Any links, brands, product #'s you could suggest would be helpful. Thanks.

[sanlyn]

Recording very old, aging, faded, often damaged VHS directly to DVD isn't a great idea. Even VHS in decent shape requires some level of post-capture processing, while some tapes need serious work. Recording directly to DVD involves line- and frame-timing problems, not to mention bad tape noise and outta sight color, that are made worse by recording to lossy compression like DVD or DivX. Post-processing is a tricky business. It's a learning curve, but many (even stupid me) have caught on to much of it using Avisynth and/or VirtualDub. Both of these apps have hundreds of filters that work veritable miracles with VHS. But they work with AVI format. Once noise and other disturbances get digitized into lossy compression, they're nearly unfixable. This is especially true of tape with the "jitter" and other problems you describe.

Old VHS should be captured to lossless compression (huffyuv or lagarith) into AVI format. There are many outboard image processors that can enhance color, etc. (BTW, never sharpen old VHS during recording. You'll be sorry you did. Mostly, you'll just sharpen noise). These enhancers can solve many problems and can help insure that you capture with proper luma levels. But cheap $50 to $100 processors won't help that much. There are capture adapters that have decent proc amp controls, but none of them can match the quality of an outboard proc amp like the SignVideo PA-100. But these come at a price, even in used condition. A substitute, although the not the best but still workable, are the simple capture controls in VirtualDub capture; not extensive, but useable -- especially if you can't afford a good proc amp.

TBCs can solve many problems, notably jitter, tears, frame dropping, crooked verticals, wiggling edges, and even some color bleed. But a line-level tbc is more valuable than a frame-level unit with VHS. Here are two recent discussions of various ways to get a line tbc into the capture circuit:
https://forum.videohelp.com/threads/342735-Capturing-VHS-Advice-appreciated?p=2135250&v...=1#post2135250
https://forum.videohelp.com/threads/336137Questions-concerning-archive-project-restorin...=1#post2087682

Many people don't want to go through this much trouble. But many do, and successfully. I don't know if you've seen the intro information at the digitalfaq site, but here's an intro page that can get you started: http://www.digitalfaq.com/guides/video.htm
You can get an idea of some post-processing possibilities with Virtualdub here, or even with Avisynth here or here (the latter link discusses processing anime, but many of these techniques can be used with any genre of video).

On the other hand many people just run a one-shot deal with any of the retail copy adapters on the market and just take what they can get from that method. But if, like most people, you have some real "problem" tapes, the longer way is the only way to get what you want.