tracking help

[nemsese]

I have a VHS tape with bad tracking lines on it will an SVHS with a TBC help to clear it up for me
because I want put on a dvd? or is there software out there I have been told it is tape damaged

[johns0]

Nothing will help if those tracking lines are permanent,can you try another vhs to see if you can adjust the tracking lines out?

[nemsese]

what will a time base corrector and SVHS vcr do in any case?

[aedipuss]

if the tape has horizontal lines throughout they were most likely caused by dirty heads scratching the tape. the lines are permanent and a better vcr won't do anything. a tbc can help correct wavy lines on the sides and straighten the picture out.

[nemsese]

Will any thing help my damaged vhs tape

[sanlyn]

Probably not, but perhaps the phrase "bad tracking lines" could be confusing. Do you mean horizontal lines/scratches that run through the length of the tape? Have the lines always been there, or did you recently notice them?

[nemsese]

I burnt it to dvd yes the horizontal have alway been there is there software out there could help me or something online to help me?

[sanlyn]

If the scratches are continuous and have always been there, and if they are as I described them above, then that kind of damage can't be repaired. If you can, post an image that shows the noise. But it seems permanent.

[nemsese]

What I need is photoshop for video?

[sanlyn]

We have no idea. We don't know what your video actually looks like. If you burned it to DVD as you say (not the best way for VHS, but so be it), you can open one of the VOB's directly in VirtualDub if you have their MPEG2 plugin, and you can copy a frame directly to the clipboard, then make an image in any photo app. There are a dozen ways to capture a video frame or a short chunk of video for posting, if you have a digital copy such as DVD. If you aren't familiar with doing this, just ask.

Offhand it sounds like tape damage, but we don't really know what "tracking lines" means. If the tape was scratched or scraped, and the damage is visible throughout the tape and never changes shape or position, there's not much you can do.

[smrpix]

What I need is photoshop for video?

You can drag video into photoshop (I believe going back to at least CS3), but unless you are very skilled you are likely to be replacing annoying white lines with annoying colorful blurry ones.

Folks who do this generally use very short segments.

[poisondeathray]

As the others have suggested - it would be helpful if you provided a better description or video sample. It's difficult make suggestions or point you in the right direction without knowing what you are looking at. "Bad tracking lines" can mean very different things to different people

Do they move ? Are the lines persistent in location? e.g. always in the middle ? or are they the "scrolling" type ?
How many "lines" typically? and what is the distribution? Are there any "clean" frames or fields?
How thick are they ? How wide are they ?
Do they remain the same size ? or change ?
Is the opacity complete (does it completely obscure), or is there visible picture "beneath" ?

These are some of factors that affect how you might manage this , whether or not there is something you might do with hardware or combination of software , techniques, and/or filters you might use, which facilities you might send it to , etc....

It's better if you post a video sample, as a single screenshot doesn't demonstrate the temporal relationships of defects