Capture image quality (does this look right?)

[DB83]

Then the test is not representative of the recordings you actually want to restore. Reverse logic.

[sanlyn]

Yes, that's a case in point. Many retail tapes are in fairly good shape and transfer rather easily. Your JVC is a decent VCR but how it handles home-made videos is a major question. Still, keep that capture around if it isn't too large. I don't know how your capture software affects video and audio rates, but audio for DVD/BD is generally 48KHz at 16-bit. If you're capturing with VirtualDub, that can be set in VDub's capture menus. Huffyuv comes in several flavors, so those settings are up to its configuration menu in your "compression" dialog. You might, however, want to try Lagarith lossless compression and capture to YUY2, which is more "like" the way VHS color is stored. Lagarith is more universally compatible across systems. Some flavors of huffyuv don't match up so well.

A short cap of more representative video would probably be better. You can cut from a sample you've already captured, if necessary.

[jagabo]

Your sample looks "normal" for VHS from a consumer VHS deck with no line time base corrector. But you should capture as YUY2 (or other YUV 4:2:2 format), not RGB. By converting to RGB you have lost some of the darkest details. Don't filter while capturing, do it later. Aadjust the capture devices proc amp to raise the black level a little. If you want really superior results you'll need an SVHS deck with line TBC to eliminate the horizontal jitter.

[nicknick]

I have attached a clip recorded from a old home-video.

[sanlyn]

Thanks for your post. Adding to jagabo's suggestions:

The homevid.avi could serve as examples for several classes in avoiding the usual errors in photographing and capturing. Of course everyone has done the same thing in the past, so don't feel alone. The handbooks that come with cameras and PC's don't mention any of this stuff. Anyway, the vid has some noise at the bottom that likely won't go away entirely, even with the best of filters. The biggest problem is that the hue and levels change every few seconds (for exmple, at 7.4, 14.8, and 19.0 seconds). These are impossible to fix. Most highlights are burned away, so bright detail is destroyed; that's a way of saying that the capture is too bright and contrast is too high to be able to record bright detail in your captured video. In most of these shots, the grass is at the same high brightness level where you'd expect to find bright sky. It may also exist that way on the original source as well. One factor that affects this burn-out is over-saturation in the video.

Brightness, contrast, and saturation controls can can be used during capture because they are very fast-action filter. Denoisers/deinmterlacer5s, etc., are out of the question, unless you can afford a few hundred thousands in currency for pro equipment (I sure wish I could). Obviously you can't control the quickie multiple auto hue and levels changes. The best one can do is set light/dark controls to handle the worst-case scenarios, then correct individual cuts later with software.

Bright/contrast controls don't work the way most people think -- at least, most of them don't. "Brightness" raises or lowers the darkest color. we call it the black-level adjustment. Yes, I know: can't really go by names alone. "Contrast" is mostly active with the brightest colors. The two of them actually interact somewhat, so often you have to fiddle to achieve the best balance of darks and brights. If necessary, it's better to have somewhat subdued blacks and brights during capture: they can always be "pumped" later in software. Once those extremes are clipped or burned away, they don't come back. They're gone forever.

Hope these tips prove helpful. There's much more info in the capture and restoration forums. You should also look into some sort of line-level tbc, either built-into a high-end VCR (and good luck finding one that still works!) or using some of the older DVD recorders recommended as tbc pass-thru devices. Don;t confuse line-level tbc's with the easier-to-find frame-level tbc's that manage only frame-timing and audio sync. A "line" tbc controls the timing of individual scanned lines within frames. Your video shows poor line timing in the player, meaning that some lines arrive earlier than they're supposed to, others arrive microseconds later. If you don't think this is a problem, look at vertical and angular lines and edges in your video, and look at the side borders: they are ragged, marred with"wiggles", and they "bristle" and "sparkle" with constant noise. A line-level tbc will do a great deal to calm those problems (they are really difficult to fix with filters). A frame-level tbc will have little or no effect on those problems. I'd also suggest that your tape heads are showing signs of wear, or else they need cleaning.

[nicknick]

Thank you for the advice, i will try to tinker with the settings this weekend.

About the TBC. Since the main reason i want to transfer my recording is because i don't have a VCR hooked up to my tv any more.
I have a lot of home video's, and having them transferred would cost a lot of money. I'm looking for a affordable way to transfer my tapes without losing a lot of quality.


You are suggesting to use a dvd-recorder as TBC device. This sounds like a affordable way to stabilize the image a bit. Any suggestions on recorders? I searched the internet/forum a bit and have seen some Panasonic DMR-E50 recorders, are those any good?

[sanlyn]

Several Panasonic and Toshiba DVD recorders have been suggested, along with some other devices. Most models were made before 2005. They include the Panasonic DMR-ES15 and the Toshiba RD-K2, -K3, -K4, -K5, and the RD-XS series. Most later versions have far weaker tbc's, and many can't be used for pass-thru. Here is a rather long and often techy thread about pass-thru's, with many links to other posts:
Who-uses-a-DVD-recorder-as-a-line-TBC

My own arsenal includes an ES15, ES20, and a couple of Toshiba's -- all acquired as used or refurbs. The older ES20 won't record or play discs (dead optical drive) but the tbc circuit still works. The ES15 and Toshiba's are better.

[nicknick]

I see there are some used ES15 recorders on sale for acceptable prices. I will try to buy one of those and post back when i have it.

It's not that i want the worlds best image quality, i just want the best possible quality with affordable equipment. And if this recorder can help, i'm happy to try it.

[jagabo]

The Panasonic ES15 line TBC function will definitely help with the horizontal jitter:

https://forum.videohelp.com/threads/306272-Computer-video-capture-vs-vcr-to-dvd-combo?p...=1#post1882662
https://forum.videohelp.com/threads/319420-Who-uses-a-DVD-recorder-as-a-line-TBC-and-wh...=1#post1983288

Not only does the video look better without the jitter, it compresses much better too.

[nicknick]

Update.

I purchased a Panasonic ES15. This one was like brand new in the box and got it quite cheap.
Today i recorded a tape from 1995. See the attached file for a short clip.

[jagabo]

I've only seen a second or so at the start of the file but it doesn't look like the TBC is working. Are you using the rear composite input? If I remember correctly, the front input doesn't use the TBC.

Also the levels are bad. Can you adjust your capture device to get them more in line? I recommend you also turn of the noise reduction feature (if you haven't done so already) as it is too heavy handed and causes ghosting.

[sanlyn]

Agreed. With Panasonic, tbc works on Line 1 only. Yes, the capture is too bright.

[nicknick]

I used the front ports. What ports should i use?

http://cdn-static.cnet.co.uk/i/c/rv/e/dvdplayers/panasonic/dmr-es15/440x330_2.jpg

[jagabo]

The s-video or composite input on the rear.



Or the SCART input if that's all you have.

[nicknick]

The s-video or composite input on the rear.

It doesn't have composite in at the back, only out.
Please bear in mind that i have a european unit. This means i have 2 scart connectors on the back. Should i try to use those?Or is that a multi-use port, and am i able to use it as in and out?

[jagabo]

Ah. Yes, use the SCART input on the rear.

[nicknick]

Yes, use the SCART input.

I will try that tomorrow and post a new clip here (it's 1:39AM here now). Thank you for your time.

[Brad]

Has the European ES15 been confirmed by anyone else to feature line TBC functionality?

The service manual shows that the DMR-ES15EB/EBL/EP/EC/EG PAL models use a main video processor (IC3001) identified as C1AB00002379, as opposed to C1AB00001979 in the DMR-ES10/15/20/25 stateside.

[sanlyn]

I've seen no complaints from the UK, and I just re-read all of the "who uses pass-thru?" thread. The main processor numbers are quite similar and might just indicate region or format codes (???). As the ES15 was DVD Recorder Of The Year in the mainstream price category in the U.K.'s Sound&Vision for two years, I'd say tbc is likely. Sound&Vision reviewers are far more picky and technically detailed than the reviewer clowns over here in NTSC land.

[nicknick]

I have attached 3 clips recorded trough AV1,AV2 and AV3.

I also saw someone selling a ES10. If the ES15 i have does not have the TBC, would it be worth trying to get the ES10?

The model i have is the DMR-ES15EG-K

[sanlyn]

Excellent, and a vast improvement over earlier captures. While you might not yet be accustomed to analyzing video glitches, I think you can easily see a vast difference. The image below is frame 307 from AVI2. It's a bit fuzzy because it's a capture of an interlaced frame with camera movement (it will not be so fuzzy played on TV). This is the sort of scene that is difficult to capture well because of the contrast range. However, your settings have preserved useable dark and bright detail quite effectively.


You might have noticed that the "brightness" control usually controls black levels, while "contrast" usually affects highlights. In practice they interact somewhat, so you've likely found that a bit of twiddling is involved to achieve a balance between the two. Well done. The camera's auto gain control (AGC) can be problematic at times, but as long as you can maintain a manageable range of levels it will be the best compromise. I think you did quite well with this difficult scene. Some software tweaks later can help with even more improvements where required.

To demonstrate more graphically what is happening, two types of histogram are shown below. The image to the left is an Avisynth YUV levels histogram that shows how video data is stored in YUV. On the right is a VirtualDub RGB histogram showing how the same video data is interpreted and displayed in RGB. Both histograms have common attributes: the darkest colors are at the left, brightest at the right. Each has a border marking at the right and left edges that indicate areas to be avoided for the usual video levels and chroma.


In the YUV histogram on the right, the top white bar shows luma ("brightness") levels. The shaded areas on the left and right are the darkest and brightest luma values respectively: you would want avoid those two shaded extremes most of the time. It's not always possible to do that exactly with a video that's in constant motion between dark and bright shots, but this shot shows that you've used settings that "protect" the darkest and brightest areas from being crushed or clipped. In both histograms you'll usually see a "peak" of some kind on the far left: that peak would indicate the darkest areas such as black borders and objects that are too dark to have any detail anyway. In a YUV histogram like this one, the blue and red channels don't really say that much because in this particular histogram they aren't all that accurate anyway. Avisynth has other histograms that get into more detail with color.

The RGB histogram on the right shows how the dark and bright extremes are slightly "expanded" when converting YUV to RGB. There is a small amount of overshoot into the left area and some chroma overshoot into the right-hand edge. But in this case you're fairly safe; and black borders on the left will almost always creep into the left-hand side. Most display devices allow for a little leeway on either side; what you want to avoid is luma or colors smashing against the left and right walls and climbing up the sides. The two side markings in the RGB histogram are set to indicate RGB 16 (on the left) and RGB 235 (on the right).

TBC: it's definitely working. I think you can see the results in the absence of wiggles and shimmer, especially with the head switching noise and mistracking at the bottom of the video, which the tbc has smoothed. This bottom border noise exists on almost all VCR's; it can be cleaned up later. Don't worry about it during capture. Except for some dot crawl on edges (the result of composite connections), you can see that the ES15 has calmed down a great deal of the former motion "disturbance" and even some chroma noise. Edges are straight, as you can see from the edges of buildings and the small poles in the image.

Good work. You should be able to see many definite improvements. It will save much time and grief later. You might want to try using the VirtualDub histogram to watch its response and changes as the video is played in VirtualDub. That filter is the ColorTools plugin and can be downloaded here: http://trevlac.us/colorCorrection/colorTools.html. I have attached a copy of the ColorTools.vdf, below. Unzip the file and copy ColorTools.vdf into your VirtualDub plugins folder. I set up its interface in VirtualDub to display "PAL" for a range of "RGB 16-235", and at the bottom of the setup dialog I selected "IRE 100". You'll be able to see what the AGC control was doing as the camera moved. You can't control everything that happens here, especially with a scene that varies as much as this, but your settings should work well most of the time. And remember: you can fix a lot of stuff, but you can't fix everything.

BTW, playing interlaced video in most editors like VirtualDub will display interlace artifacts, but that's to be expected. They don't appear in deinterlacing players or on TV. If you use VLC player, make sure you have deinterlacing turned on (it's off by default). Most users would set VLC's deinterlace mode to "bob"or "yadif".

[nicknick]

Thank you for your comprehensive answer. I have learnt a lot.You use a example from AV2. Does this mean i have to use the AV2 connector on the recorder? The name of the clips correspond with the connector on my recorder.


I will install the plugin and fiddle a bit with the contrast/brightness settings to get some more feeling in what those settings do.


One last thing, is it worth it to buy a used DMR-ES10 for about $15? I read somewhere that the TBC is a bit more thorough on that one and it might be useful as backup device if the ES15 dies (we are talking about aging electronics).

[jagabo]

The time base looks better than homevid.avi in post #34. All three of the new clips look about the same though. So either the earlier video was in worse shape, or all three inputs use the TBC.

I would adjust the capture device's proc amp some more (?). There are still lots of blown out brights and crushed darks.

[sanlyn]

If you want , it's not absolutely necessary, but an ES10 as backup isn't a bad idea. I have a backup unit myself. Haven't had to use it yet (knock on wood).

I'm not that familiar with SCART here in NTSC land. Avi3 seems to have very slightly smoother edges. But there is dot crawl in all the samples. That cuts down on perceived sharpness. Dot crawl is difficult to clean. If your capture device will accept s-video (ES15 has s-video output and a decent composite-to-svideo circuit), that would be the best way to address that issue. If not, Avisynth has plugins that can help later.

I didn't make a full-fledged effort with the attached mkv sample from Avi2. I fixed dark and bright levels a bit, but I agree with jagabo: I had to raise black levels a bit more than I'd like because some darks are on the verge of being crushed and a few highlights are clipped. I'd raise black levels a tad more, and lower brights a bit. That will "shrink" luma and chroma values more neatly inside the RGB 16-235 borders. You can see the effects of nearly-crushed blacks in the attached mkv -- look at the noise in the trees when the camera moves. One effect of crushing is to clip off some video data, which simply becomes noise when it's encoded because some of the missing data can't "fill in the blanks", so to speak. You can also see the effects of some remaining dot crawl during motion. One could do more with this difficult scene, but I did manage to stabilize some vertical camera jiggle. Doing so means removing a few pixels of border and replacing them with black, but it's better than the watching the jiggle. However, I also suspect that some of the highlight damage comes from VHS playback itself, and some brights might have been clipped in the camera (one can often thank AGC for that, for what it's worth).

The mkv looks OK in players MPC-BE and even Windows Media Player. It's bit juddery in VLC PLayer, but I just don't think VLC deinterlaces so well. To get relly picky, one could addsome fine grain in Avisynth to make it look more film-like, create some "simulated" detail, and avoid a little posterization that I see in the mkv. Those are the kinds of tweaks that come later, with difficult video.

[nicknick]

That clip looks quite nice. Did you use Avisynth or Virtualdub? Could you tell me a bit more about the filters you used and what settings?

I have ordered the ES10 and expect it in the course of the week to arrive.


Of course there is the possibility that the scart ports are not connected to the "TBC" in the unit at all. The ES10 i ordered also has composite in connectors on the back.

[sanlyn]

Sorry for the delay. I used Avisynth. But the script was unusually slow (just under 4 fps) and I used very few filters. I'm delayed by a PC repair client but will look into it again soon tonight.

[jagabo]

Of course there is the possibility that the scart ports are not connected to the "TBC" in the unit at all.

Unfortunately, you didn't capture the same clip with and without the ES15. So there's no direct comparison. See if you can find a still shot with some sharp, smooth, vertical edges. Capture with and without the ES15 passthrough, then compare the two. See the examples of what a line TBC does in these posts:

https://forum.videohelp.com/threads/305506-Hauppauge-HD-PVR-USB-questions?p=1876983&vie...=1#post1876983
https://forum.videohelp.com/threads/306272-Computer-video-capture-vs-vcr-to-dvd-combo?p...=1#post1882662
https://forum.videohelp.com/threads/319420-Who-uses-a-DVD-recorder-as-a-line-TBC-and-wh...=1#post1983288

Removing that jitter can't really be done after capturing. Not only does it look bad, but when using high compression inter-frame codecs like MPEG 2 and AVC that jitter eats up bitrate. You need ~twice as much bitrate to get the same quality.

[sanlyn]

...and I;m struggling with two oddities concerning AV1, AV2. AV3 -- all 3 look-alike videos of the same scenes.

1. Play any of the avi's deinterlaced or using SeparateFields(). Play hem one field at a time in VurtualDub. You'll see that alternate frames have a different color balance, one red, one green, one red, one green....

2. What appears to be dot crawl all but disappears after deinterlacing, then returns as before after reinterlace. Or, deinterlace and then use SelectEven() or SelectOdd(0). "dot crawl" is really difficult to spot in progressive mode. But frames still alternate: red, green, red, green.

[jagabo]

The alternating field colors may be related to Hanover bars. Or it may be a bad head on the device that recorded the tape, or the device that's playing it.

[sanlyn]

The red/green effect doesn't appear on the other samples. It's easy enough to contend with, but I'm baffled by the "disappearing" dot crawl or serrated edge effects. I deinterlaced/reinterlaced three ways: QTGMC (various presets), yadif, and bob(). The clearest and sharpest was bob(0,1), and the edge fuzz never returned. I didn't try this with earlier samples, but I'll give it a whirl.