Help with filtering pictures problems from VCR capture

[jagabo]

Good work sanlyn. I agree the video is over sharpened. But that's what people like.

[sanlyn]

Yeah, kind of over-filtered a bit, too. Ran out of tweak time. Sorry.

[sanlyn]

All of three images you posted above are examples of color noise called "rainbows". They are common to VHS, even with expensive players. Rainbows are VERY difficult to fix. There are plugins designed for this. All you have to do is tell your script to use the plugin. Sometimes you might set a value for filtering strength, or use the defaults. But there is nothing to program. In that sense, most plugins are "automatic". Unfortunately, bad rainbows often require strong filters, strong enough to badly affect other elements of the image. It's one of those video defects that requires compromise: clean as well as you can, then tolerate the remainders.

Some questions:
1)how many Manual repairs you have done in this video?
2)How long such a raiper should take Without any mistakes or learning?
3)How match it can be difficult to reach this state With your help?
*Whatever it is, I do not want to work more than two hours on one hour in the tape.

Oh my. So many questions.

You could say that all the ReplaceFramesMC() statements were "manual" steps (I used cut and paste for each, changing the numbers myself). But the other plugins were single statements that process the entire clip. I spent a total of 5 hours on the clip from .m2v to MPEG, including analyzing problems and running quick tests. Video in terrible condition always requires more time. I could use similar filters and settings for the rest of the video; that would greatly reduce the effort. Still, two hours of time and effort on 1 hour of damaged video is unlikely, even if you're willing to live with very few repairs. Many strong filters designed for "problem" video would take several hours to clean an hour of "bad" source. Of course, no one could make that effort on every video they own. It's impossible. One tip: for a slow filtering job, set up video and filters on your way to bed, and let it run all night. Wunderbar!

Yet I can gather 3 TV episodes from my DVD hard drive, copy to disc and then to my PC, open in an MPEG Editor, remove the commercials, join them into a 1-hour 40-minute movie, make DVD menus, and burn it to disc -- in less than 2 hours. But that video needs no cleaning. A clean video source (and a better tape player) can make life livable.

I can't say how long it takes to learn all this. I used VirtualDub exclusively for years, except for simple Avisynth edit and color conversion scripts. But I encountered a demanding project that required more than VirtualDub, so members here drew me to Avisynth's advanced features. That was two years ago. I made many mistakes (some of them were hilarious!). I also followed every challenging restoral project I could find in the forum. I learned by doing. I'm still learning, following the lead of the real experts here.

[QUOTE=gil900;2177817]
And that's because you did change to the colors. What exactly did you do to the colors of the video?
It looks much better ..
Would love to have the filter you used, explain how to use the filter and of course, the settings you used![QUOTE]
Those colors and levels need more work, but time was limited. If you haven't worked with advanced color filters, the settings will seem like nonsense. Typing out the values is difficult; one those filters has many settings. Better to send you a .vcf file for VirtualDub, which loads the filters and settings I used. I can do that tomorrow.

First, I slightly lowered red saturation in Avisynth using ColorYUV(). In VirtualDub I lowered red in the middle and bright range, and raised it in the dark range. I did the same with blue. Flesh tones still look too red to me; but I think I mentioned this earlier, concerning some tape players. I used two VDub color filters: two copies of gradation curves, located here (Msharpen is at the bottom of the same web page), and ColorMill can be found here (download is near the bottom of the the page).

It's difficult to adjust color by merely looking at it. You need a measuring tool similar to the pixel readers of high-end software. A popular desktop tool is Csamp.exe. No installer. Just click. Free. Reads the RGB values of any pixel on your screen. Why VirtualDub doesn't have this feature is a mystery to me: http://www.netreach.net/~gavin/gavsfreeware/csamp.htm. There are other free ones, but Csamp is simple and easy. You also work with histograms and waveform monitors, such as the ColorTools Plugin for VirtualDub. The best articles on how to use histograms are free internet tutorials for Photoshop. These are about photography, but the color principles for video are identical. Here is one good site: http://www.sphoto.com/techinfo/histograms/histograms4.htm . There must be similar websites in other languages, I could only find some English sites.

You wrote a few things I could not understand them. (Even with google translate)
1) what you meant when you wrote - "motion smear", "skin tones", "discolored shadows", "cyan stained or fringed"?
2) What is "auto winder"? What is "ruins" I think you said there's something important I must not miss ...

Oops, I don't remember what I wanted to remember. Oh, well...it will come to me later.

Hm, never saw an autowinder? Small, cheap machines that held a VHS cartridge. They could rewind tape very quickly. They were horrible toys, notorious for damaging tapes.

"motion smear" means objects being blurred when people or cameras move. It also means serious pixel disorganization with motion, such as when a face turns to the left and some of the facial pixels either don't move for a frame or two or, sometimes, actually move the opposite way! It can also mean low bitrate artifacts, where there is are not enough data bits to track the movement, so that details disappear or become distorted.

"skin tones": flesh hues and shades...including shadow, midtones, and skin highlights.

"discolored shadows", "cyan stained or fringed"?

In the image below, skin looks sunburned. Although the skin is overly red, the shadows have too much blue. The boy leaning beside the baby has shadows on his reddish arm that are almost maroon (bluish red), or reddish purple. All of the skin shadows are grainy and coarse. In the image on the right, heavy cyan (blue+green) stains mar every 3 or 4 frames at certain times. At the right, note the younger boy in the shadows; he is on the verge of becoming purple.


[Attachment 13345 - Click to enlarge]

In this small image, where the camera has a view of the back of the younger boy's head, the very dark brown (or black?) hair has grayish/blueish discoloration at the border of skin and hair. The skin is smooth, but the stain looks more grainy.


[Attachment 13346 - Click to enlarge]

[jagabo]

4)Is one of the filters you've given here can filter Automatically color problems As shown below:

[Attachment 13340 - Click to enlarge]


[Attachment 13341 - Click to enlarge]


[Attachment 13342 - Click to enlarge]

I gave you something for that several posts ago.

MergeChroma(last, McTemporalDenoise(settings="very high"))

https://forum.videohelp.com/threads/348054-Help-with-filtering-pictures-problems-from-V...=1#post2177383

It will get rid of a lot of the chroma noise. But it's very slow.

You can also try flaXen's VHS filter (in VirtualDub) with the chroma noise reduction cranked up.

[sanlyn]

I used that suggestion myself, jagabo. I'll have to get my script together for post. There are so many commented-out lines to remove, you'd never find the real code. There must be at least a handful of boo-boo's that could be improved.

[gil900]

4)Is one of the filters you've given here can filter Automatically color problems As shown below:

[Attachment 13340 - Click to enlarge]


[Attachment 13341 - Click to enlarge]


[Attachment 13342 - Click to enlarge]

I gave you something for that several posts ago.

MergeChroma(last, McTemporalDenoise(settings="very high"))

https://forum.videohelp.com/threads/348054-Help-with-filtering-pictures-problems-from-V...=1#post2177383

It will get rid of a lot of the chroma noise. But it's very slow.

You can also try flaXen's VHS filter (in VirtualDub) with the chroma noise reduction cranked up.

Ok
I had all sorts of errors with the command and got rid of them.
But it all the this is- ERROR to new ERROR ..

And the time this ERROR:

I can not fix.

[sanlyn]

Error understood. You haven't installed masktools for Avisynth. Hold back from MCTemporalDenoise for a while (sometimes called "MCTD"). It is many filters in one and requires several plugins and scripts. I will be posting more info soon.

[sanlyn]

The usual delays !

Attached is a "Plugin_files.zip" file. It has Avisynth and VirtualDub plugins for filters I used. The Avisynth plugins are commonly used by many Avisynth filters, including MCTemporalDenoise, QTGMC, TemporalDeGrain, RemoveDirt, and many others. Many of the plugins can be used by themselves.

The .zip will expand into 4 folders:

1. Avisynth plugins: Copy all of the dll's, scripts, etc. into your Avisynth plugins folder.

2. VirtualDub plugins: Copy all of the vdf's and help files into your VirtualDub plugins folder.

3. For Win7-64bit SYSWOW64 folder: copy the 2 files in this folder to the Windows SYSWOW64 folder. If you are using a
32-bit version of Windows, they should go into System32. But I believe you stated you have 64-bit Windows. The two files have different names, but they are really the same file. Some plugins call one or the other name. These are used by several plugins and other software. They are not Avisynth plugins, so don't add them to Avisynth's folders.

4. Some Documentation: Plain text versions of MCTemporalDenoise and QTGMC. Starting in November, you can hibernate into your warm cave and spend all winter reading them.

I am working on clean copies of the scripts and VirtualDub procedures I used. Back soon (again).

[sanlyn]

Attached is a .zip file containing three .avs scripts and a VirtualDub .vcf file. Because you don't have NeatVideo, I revised the steps from 4 to 3. Rather than use NeatVideo, I replaced it inm my script in Step 3 with temporal smoother and DeFlicker. I had to modify the color corrections slightly, because many filters affect some chroma errors.

Step1.avs starts with deinterlacing using QTGMC. It is a very slow plugin, but probably the best deinterlacer in Avisynth. It helps fix many problems, interlace noise, and some low bitrate artifacts. You are asking these plugins to perform many repairs. Big repairs take time. The running speed will be between 1fps and 2.25 fps. It's good that all of your videos won't need such repairs. Save the output in YV12 as "Step2.avi". Comments are in the script.

Step2.avs takes Step1.avi as its input. It runs MCTemporalDenosie and RemoveSpots. It should run twice as fast as Step 1. There are comments in the script. I used MCTD at "low" settings; this will not clean as well as the plugin is able to, but we must work within limits because your video is so soft and has no detail to work with. Stronger settings with MCTD (try changing "Low" to "Medium" if you wish) will clean more but will soften the video. RemoveSpots also does some chroma cleaning and a few other repairs. Every piece helps. Save the output as Step3.avi.

Step3.avs uses Step2.avi as input. It makes another slight color correction and opens the video in RGB for use with VirtualDub filters. When the video opens in VirtualDub, click "File...", then click "Load processing settings...". VirtualDub's "open" dialog will want you to find a .vcf file. Navigate to the location where you saved Step3.vcf and let VirtualDub load the filters and settings. You should have all of the required VirtualDub filters in your VirtualDub plugins folder.

In VirtualDub, open the Filters window and click on each filter to see what it looks like and how it's set.

Browse the scripts briefly before trying to run them. You can see that there is plenty of "automation". Let me know if you have problems.

[gil900]

You forgot to include the file - aWarpSharp.dll

So I downloaded it myself ..
Now it works.

But I can not see any change except for a slowdown.
Meanwhile, I have not checked the Step1.avs and Step3.avs.

I checked just Step2.avs Without the additional settings on VirtualDub.
And saw no change ..

These problems:





Still remained.

So what changed in setup2?

And I did something a bit different ..
My files are not avi. My files are VOB (that means MPEG)
So I changed the line:
AviSource("E:\forum\whatfilters\Step1.avi")
to:
mpeg2source("VTS_01_1.d2v")
(I created the file DTV)

So I loaded the file this way (with the plugin for MPEG that was missing too in your downloads)

EDIT
I see a difference!

The change is only in the dark parts ..
The dark parts are without noise and with True black color.

It's all change should be *only* in setup2.avs?

I just want to be sure I'm in the right position.


---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
EDIT2:
Now I noticed that it is not only in the dark parts!
Have less noise at all!

But the problems which appear in pictures not resolved.

[sanlyn]

You forgot to include the file - aWarpSharp.dll

So I downloaded it myself ..
Now it works.

But I can not see any change except for a slowdown.
Meanwhile, I have not checked the Step1.avs and Step3.avs.

I checked just Step2.avs Without the additional settings on VirtualDub.
And saw no change ..
. . . . .

Ooops. Sorry about anything missing, but you did well in correcting it. There's ALWAYS something missing with complicated plugins. But once you get plugins together, they can be used anywhere. Recall that when you first used VirtualDub, there was a period when you had to locate and install the extra plugins you wanted.

The scripts are customized for your example1.m2v. The final product requires all 3 steps, run in order: Step1, Step2, Step3. Usually you don't need that many procedures, but this section of your video needed special treatment. The .d2v I used was made from your original .m2v. If you don't have it, here is a copy of your original download: http://dc434.4shared.com/download/pbyNvMNm/Example1.m2v
. It's faster to make a new .d2v for it than to edit the old one.

All of the plugins are "automatic", in the meaning that they process the entire clip in one statement. But as noted earlier, individual frame repair is a special case. Most plugins and color correcting filters can't recognize bad frames or missing frames. They just look at noise, which is everywhere.

The idea with the demo of Steps 1, 2, and 3 is to show you some basics about how the filters work and how they are loaded in scripts. The VirtualDub color filter settings are designed for Example1.m2v. If you have other parts of your video are too light or too dark, etc., you can always tweak the filters.

In many cases you can same plugins for the same video, but individual settings might have to change. What you can do is run the entire video with only the noise reduction plugins. For fixing individual damaged nor missing frames, you have to customize plugins such as ReplaceFramesMC. Plugins like MCTemporalDenoise, RemoveSpots, QTGMC, etc., are autonatic in nature because they process all frames.

You have posted one example of very bad discoloration, worse than any simple rainbow problem. It might be necessary to replace some individual frames. But we haven't seen that video.

[sanlyn]

I have over 200 hours of old VHS tapes to restore and transfer. When I clean those tapes I start with noise reduction filters. Usually, I can use the same filters for an entire tape. That's where I begin. But it is always frustrating to find a few sections that require special treatment. It is a pain in the neck, but I extract those segments, fix them, and patch them into the original. This is common with tape, especially old and damaged tape. Avisynth and VirtualDub are flexible tools that handle many situations. But sometimes you must help them. They are smart programs, but they aren't smarter than you are.

[gil900]

OK

[/QUOTE]
You have posted one example of very bad discoloration, worse than any simple rainbow problem. It might be necessary to replace some individual frames. But we haven't seen that video.[/QUOTE]

You mean this?

No problem.

hear Is downloading for Example2.m2v:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/5zglhgylq14tx2o/Example2.m2v

EDIT v2
setup2.avs filter such problems.
But not in this huge scale.
even on high settings!

[jagabo]

Yes, you will have to replace those frames, at least the chroma.

Temporal filters work by averaging together multiple frames. This can work really well when there is no motion or other change in the picture. If there is motion or other changes you start getting ghosting artifacts and blurring (crank VirtualDub's Temporal Smoother all the way up to 10 and you'll see this). So temporal filters adjust to this -- if the difference between frames it too large they assume it is due to motion (or some other important detail) and don't include it in the smoothing.

[gil900]

no super ultra high settings?

[sanlyn]

jagabo is an expert in the matter of rainbows and motion, with much experience. Your example1.m2v had similar blue stripes. Most of the "blue stripes" were fixed with ReplaceFramesMC. In some cases there wre too many affected frames or too much motion to repair with that plugin. The orange and pink rainbows appear almost everywhere. Some of them were fixed, but you can very strong filters to clean more of it -- and get results you might not like.

As was suggested You can try the following (without trying to use all the other plugins):
Make a .d2v of this damage segment, open it with Avisynth. The few statements you need for this test:

AssumeTFF()
SeparateFields()
MergeChroma(MCTemporalDenoise(settings="very high")
Weave()

[gil900]

OK
If I set "very high" then I get a good result.

I have an important question which I forgot to ask ..
How do I know if the video (tapes machine) is not "auto winder"?
I do not want to destroy the tape in the machine ..

You need to repack your tape. It has probably been played and partially played many times, so that it is wound onto the reels with many bumps, ridges, and irregularities in the windings. Literally, it is rattling through the tape path. To repack a tape: use fast-forward (without playing) all the way to the end. Then use fast-rewind (without playing) to the beginning again. Repeat this once or twice, until you see that the tape is wound more smoothly on the left-hand feed reel. This doesn't solve all playback problems -- especially with a very unstable tape player -- but it can help.

OK
Thanks for the tip .. I think too - before trying to fix the problems in the computer, Better fix them on the tape itself ..
It can save lots of time and the result can be better.
But I have a question -
After I do that, can I fast-forward (without playing) to the point at which I want to record?
I know you recommend to record it all again.

But to the first part in the tape was made ​​with another video camera witch is much better. So this part is perfect and i was worked on it six months ago. I did not need to know all what I learned on this forum because there was nothing to fix. This part were just perfect!

Like a digital camera! Like it was filmed yesterday. So I say with complete confidence - no need to record this part again .. It's unnecessary.

So I just want to pass it. But how? How best should forward?
With fast-forward or witch normal play?

I learned alone on another tip for recording. With DVD.
I learned that i should to stop recording on DVD every half hour.
That's because it turned out that in the beginning the DVD recorded good but later had the audio sync problems and a problems of frams that i do not know how to describe witch my English. (I can only upload an example of this).

So it's really good idia to record all what i record again.

[sanlyn]

Your VCR should have a fast-forward button and a fast-rewind button. Play your tape, then hit "STOP". Fast-forward or fast-rewind the tape while it is NOT playing. Your VCR should have some sort of fast forward indicator, such as a doubl;e "<<" button or ">>".

Auto-winders cannot play tapes. They are small boxes. All that they can do is rewind.

Your chances for better playback are better if the tape is played on its original recorder. Otherwise, you should find a better tape player.

[gil900]

OK
Now I do your tip.
After that I start to record on DVD.

But not only on DVD!
I will record the audio on the PC with Easycap!
This will be an additional backup audio.

[gil900]

i did you tip and it seems that this problem:


Now solved.

And that problem:

Changed to LITE problem

I should have known this TIP long before ...


Better to fix the problems in the tape itself before trying to fix the problems in the computer

[gil900]

https://forum.videohelp.com/threads/348261-audio-sync-problem-with-DGIndex-and-VirtualDub