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  1. Member
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    Hello all, I am new here so this is my first post. I had a very valuable VHS recording and I saved it to DVD. The clarity is not great but it wasn't on VHS either. What my question is, is there any way to clean up the recording as far as focus/fuzziness? The recording was made using an old video recorder that was a state of the art for it's day. It had a shoulder pack with a camera via cable. I paid a lot of money for it at the time but the recording quality was not the greatest. So, now that the movie is on DVD, is there any software that I can use to clean it up? Does all this make sense? Keep in mind that I am 70 years old but I am fairly tech saavy. Just keep the lingo simple so I can digest it. Thanks for your patience and any help that you all might give me..

    Ray
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  2. Originally Posted by Oldretiredguy View Post
    So, now that the movie is on DVD, is there any software that I can use to clean it up?
    It would be way better for you to capture it to the computer first in some sort of lossless codec, rather than direct to DVD which has degraded it further. Then it could be worked on with the real prospect of improving it considerably. Of course, all that takes time, money, capturing equipment, and has a learning curve. For a single tape it probably wouldn't be worth it, depending on how much importance you attach to it.

    Can it be improved from the DVD you have? Maybe. Probably. Can you post a sample?
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    Thanks Manono for your help. I no longer have the original vhs tape. All I have is the dvd that I created using a LiteOn combo dvd player/burner a few years back. So, with that said, how would I go about posting a sample as you suggested?

    R
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  4. Open a VOB in DGIndex. Use the [ and ] buttons to isolate a short section (10-15 seconds of steady movement will be plenty). Then File->Save Project and Demux Video. Upload the resulting M2V here. Discard the audio and D2V file it'll make at the same time.
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    I'm sorry to appear ignorant but you went way past me here. I don't have any idea of what you are saying. VOB ??? DGIndex ??? Demux Video ??? Please go slow and explain it to me. Thanks.

    R
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  6. Put your DVD onto the hard drive. Drag-And-Drop. A DVD is made up of IFO, BUP, and VOB files. Open one of the VOB files from the video in DGIndex. Are you sure you want to attempt this? Preparing a sample is the easiest part of all.
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    I'm not afraid to give this a try but I will have to learn the lingo. I am just not familiar with the terms you have given me. Tomorrow is another day and I will see what I can do. Thanks for your help.

    R
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  8. Are you sure you want to attempt this? Preparing a sample is the easiest part of all.
    Lol
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    Ok guys, so I am a joke. But I will still give this a try. I have never done it before and I don't know all the terminologyy so it's a bit confusing but I will keep trying to figure it all out with or without your help. I usually get where I'm going even if it takes me a bit longer. Oh well...........
    I wasn't born wealthy but I finally got there too.

    R
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  10. Install DgMpgDec package. Start DgIndex (part of that package). File -> Open, select a VOB file from your DVD (depending on how it was recorded it may have another extension, look for a big file). Press the OK button back at the File List dialog. Use the slider at the bottom of the DgIndex window to locate a 10 or 15 second representative section with a mix of motion and still shots. Use the mark-in ("[" button) to mark the start of the section, mark-out ("]" button) to mark the end of the section. File -> Save Project and Demux Video, to a suitable location on your hard drive. That will create a few files including a .m2v file. Upload the .m2v file here. Note the Upload Files/Manage Attachments buttons below the Quick Reply box at the bottom of each thread (and some of the other edit dialogs at vh.com).

    That's the easy part. From here on out it gets difficult...

    And generally, you are not going to get your VHS sourced videos much sharper than they are already. Just a little bit. They are never going to look like a good, sharp, commercial DVD. Here's a thread dealing with a situation similar to yours:

    https://forum.videohelp.com/threads/360414-What-would-you-do-to-improve-this-video

    There are dozens of threads in these forums dealing with sharpening VHS recordings.
    Last edited by jagabo; 29th Nov 2013 at 13:18.
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    Well...a little more detail might help. IF you place a DVD disc in your computer's optical drive, you can look into its contents with My Computer. Open My Computer and find the optical drive in the list of drives and folders, just as if you were looking for any other document. In the contents of the optical drive you will see a folder called "VIDEO_TS". Open or expand that folder; you'll see a bunch of files inside the VIDEO_TS folder. Some of the file names will look like this:

    VTS_01_1.VOB
    VTS_01_2.VOB
    VTS_01_3.VOB
    etc.

    You'll have one or more of those VTS_01_x.VOB files. That's where your movie is stored. The other files are menus, indexes, chapters, etc. You won't need those. The VTS_01_x.VOB's are never more than 1GB in size, but could be smaller, so if you have a long movie you'll have a handful of these VOB's. The VOB's are what you want to look at using the DGIndex preview window.

    A picture and a step-by-step guide posted earlier might also help: https://forum.videohelp.com/threads/359295-Record-without-interlacing?p=2272359&viewful...=1#post2272359
    Last edited by sanlyn; 19th Mar 2014 at 08:49.
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    Thanks folks. Now you are talking. I'm not dumb but I am ignorant about this subject. I hope not to be after this is done. When I copied the VHS tape onto dvd, I never got the opportunity to check it out to be sure it copied ok. So, yesterday I wanted to show this old movie to my daughter and it would play a while, jump around a bit and then stop or freeze. It got to a point where the screen finally just turned all blue and would not go again. I don't know if the disc is corrupted or what. I can't seem to find the original VHS tape and I'm hoping that I still have it. The movie was copied onto two dvd's. The second one plays fine for a while and then it does the same thing. Maybe I'm wasting my time here but I'm hoping that I can save the movie. It has stuff on it that can never be duplicated. So, I am truly appreciative for the help you are giving me. I have found the files that you talk about so I will try to go from there and get back to you.
    Thanks again,

    R
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  13. Originally Posted by Oldretiredguy View Post
    yesterday I wanted to show this old movie to my daughter and it would play a while, jump around a bit and then stop or freeze. It got to a point where the screen finally just turned all blue and would not go again. I don't know if the disc is corrupted or what. I can't seem to find the original VHS tape and I'm hoping that I still have it. The movie was copied onto two dvd's. The second one plays fine for a while and then it does the same thing.
    It's likely your DVDs are corrupt. There are really only two reliable DVD+/-R media manufacturers these days, Verbatim and Taiyo Yuden. Even with those don't count on long term storage. Keep multiple copies. Test them every year or two. If there are any problems make more copies.

    Oh, one other thing: do your discs have paper labels on them? If so, remove the labels by soaking them in soapy water for half an hour (some of the glue will remain behind but that's ok as far as reading the disc is concerned) or use a commercial product like Goo-gone. Sticky paper labels are notorious for causing problems.
    Last edited by jagabo; 29th Nov 2013 at 13:36.
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    Update,, I just tried playing the dvd again on my laptop and it seems that all the content is there but it is playing in chuncks. It plays for a few seconds then it freezes. I can hear the player whirring and then it will jump again. I see the text up in the right corner alternating between "title" and "chapter xx". The chapters change as it chunks along. I'm just happy to see the content. Now if I can just get it to play without freezing up all will be good in the world. Any suggestions with this info?

    R
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  15. Is the physical disc clean? Any smudges, dirt, lint ? Scratches? Flip it over and have a look

    Do you have another DVD drive to test instead of the laptop ? Maybe on a desktop PC or neighbor's computer? Some drives can be "finicky" with certain media
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    Poisondeathray, I first tried to play it on our Sony home theater blue ray player. It played some but very unstable so I tried it on my desktop machine with a LiteOn dvd burner and pretty much the same thing. So, this morning I decided to take another stab at diagnosing it and put it in my laptop. I never have problems with the laptop and it does seem to be playing although very unstable. I think the main problem goes back to the original machine that I created the discs with. This was in 07 so I am testing my memory here. I played the vhs tape with a tape player and routed it to the dvd copy machine. It seemed to go ok if I recall but that machine had it's quirks too. Anyway, I'm happy to see that the content is there so all I have to do is make it play. Right now, I am copying the disc to my hard drive. I thought maybe it might play from the h/d smoother. Just hoping. I am learning here so please bear with me.

    R
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    Ok, I think I have a file to upload to you all. Here goes.

    r
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  18. Thanks. It's a good sample. It's jumpy from a tripod not being used. The whites are completely blown out so, for example, you'll never regain any detail from those yellowish-looking bushes in the background. The colors are off and it drifts a little bit towards having too much yellow.

    But, jerky camera movement makes the video hard to compress. Interlaced video is hard to compress by its very nature. Yet your DVD is encoded at a very low average bitrate and a lot of the blurriness is due to that and just compounds the earlier problems mentioned.

    I work in AviSynth and usually with movies and not home video and there are others here much more versed in correcting as much as possible the kinds of things wrong with this one. But, to go any further you'll need to acquaint yourself with the use of Virtual Dub and its filters and with AviSynth. Until someone else shows up to help, start reading and researching.
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    Hi Oldretiredguy

    If your disks are damaged this may help. https://www.videohelp.com/tools/IsoPuzzle I used it on a backup disk I had a few years ago, it took a long time but it worked. Its old but free. Then I had a fire 2 years later and all my disks were destroyed.

    Another free program called Deshaker used with virtual dub might be helpful to steady the video. http://www.guthspot.se/video/deshaker.htm I haven't tried it yet.

    I actually ran your test clip through a program called Mercalli Easy. http://www.mercallieasy.com/ It's $20. The demo leaves a big X on your video. I think it does a pretty good job though. Video is much smoother and the program is simple to use. Drag and drop wait for analysis and save.

    I also ran it through Photoshop CS6. Just threw a few adjustment layers on it. I'm using the 30 day demo. Can't see that it has any restrictions. If your interested I'll post my results, and what I did.

    I'm working on some old VHS tapes of my boys when they were little. Stuff there Grandma made. The quality is horrible, that doesn't make them any less priceless.
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    @RWh Indeed it would be interesting to see some before/after results of cleaning up bad VHS transfers with Photoshop CS6.

    retiredguy's sample has some bad levels and bright clipping, color layer problems, low bitrate artifacts, head switching noise at the bottom of the frames, some stained borders, line sync errors. I would guess that spending what's left of a couple of retirement checks on Photoshop CS6 to fix the problems I mentioned might sound cool, but I'd like to see a demo of how it's done with DVD-compliant interlaced video (and so would lots of other readers). Meanwhile, everything I did below in 10 minutes made use of free software. So it's possible to get some improved results, if far from perfect....

    Image
    [Attachment 21506 - Click to enlarge]

    Image
    [Attachment 21507 - Click to enlarge]


    But whether you spend a ton of money or use more specialized low-cost stuff to get just as good (or better) results, it would take a lot of work, time, and patience.
    Last edited by sanlyn; 19th Mar 2014 at 08:49.
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    sanlyn

    My only intention was to be helpful to this man, Oldretiredguy. I certainly mean no disrespect to you (sanlyn) or anyone else. The man said he's wealthy. He's 70 years old. I thought maybe he would rather spend $20 dollars than spend precious time learning how to use avisyth or Virtualdub plugins. I think that smoothing out the video is important. Mercalli works.

    I suggested Photoshop because its a gimme for 30 days.

    Disclaimer I'm not claiming perfection only improvement. Maybe it isn't.

    I did deinterlace it. So if anyone cares I'll post it without.
    Image Attached Thumbnails Click image for larger version

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    So just to prove I'm stupid. I posted just the Photoshopped only version video. I will post the stabalized version with Mercalli soon.
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    Well....no one said you were stupid, of course, just that I (some of us, anyway) might be skeptical. To start, the mp4 doesn't look like an improvement, at least not with oversaturation, green cats, crushed darks, 20% of the image cropped off, resizing without denoising, etc. But RWH's sample isn't the final product, so I'm jumping to conclusions. But I would assume that a seasoned Photoshop Pro user probably know how to monitor valid NTSC video luma and chroma values and to use PS histograms, gamma adjustments, and curve filters to resolve color balance and out-of-range contrast issues, rather than pump Brightness and Contrast controls up and down. The latter considerations are areas where I thought Photoshop would prove most useful. I often use it for that myself, but I transfer the PS settings to video software.

    It would take more than 30 days to repair this video. Not that it can't be improved in some ways. Stabilizing the image is far from the only problem. I'd have to ask the owner how much time he's willing to put it into a project, as several tapes seem to be involved. It might be better to invest in the services of a pro shop -- and I mean a real pro shop, and the forum can recommend a few. IMO that would be expensive. But it would certainly be quicker. I suggest this not because I don't think the owner is capable (after all, he figured out from scratch how to get a sample here from a VOB, and IMO that's something that looks simple, but you'd be surpised how impossible it is for some newcomers). But time and effort and a learning curve are involved. One could always use typical consumer software for convenience, but the results won't be an "improvement" -- at least, not by very much. And even with the clcik-here-click-there simplified GUI of something like Movie Studio, etc., you still need some idea about what you're doing and how limited such software really is -- or how much new damage it can inflict.

    The best remedy would be to capture the tapes properly. Transferring damaged VHS directly to DVD without benefit of a tbc or input level control is one of the world's worst ways to digitize VHS. It created most of the problems that the owner is rightfully complaining about. But if the tapes are gone, then of course that argument is purely academic.

    I'd say it's up to the owner. It would take a while to work up a trial solution with the sample m2v and to document the methods used. I'm certain other members will take a look at the owner's post as soon as they recover from turkey and Black Friday. I didn't see the posted sample until late last night.
    Last edited by sanlyn; 19th Mar 2014 at 08:49.
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    First I want to say thanks to everybody for trying to help me. I really appreciate the help. Now for the good news. I dug around in my stuff and found the original vhs tape. So, my next question is this. Can you more learned folks give me some suggestions on how to go about making a better quality copy on dvd? My neighbor has a vhs player that they use to show all their Disney movies to their grandkids. I can play my tape on that machine. Is this a place to start? What do I do next. If I have to buy something, I will. Just guide me in what and how to do it. Thanks again people.

    Ray
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    I'm guilty, I carelessly threw that clip into Photoshop and pummeled it with adjustment layers. Didn't use the curves filter though. Could not find it. Didn't set black and white points. Just bashed sliders around with reckless abandon. Believe it or don't, it looks pretty good on an old tv.

    I do think the most severe problem he has is that the DVD may be damaged. He did get the cute cat clip. So maybe (hopefully) not.

    That brings up my next concern. sanlyn, you might disagree but I think the shakiness is a huge issue. This can be improved with some type of motion stabilization software. You can pay a pro hundreds of dollars. You can spend a lot of time learning to use some very good and free software. Or you can use Mercalli Easy for $20. So you sacrifice 20% or more of the video. And you will, free software or not. As long as the important parts are left, who cares? You miss out on seeing this women's back. You see the cats. They are the focus. Even if some bonehead makes them greener than they already are. It's smooth and calming. It's not chaotic it's neat to watch.

    I'm super cool with free software. However, VirtualDub and Avisynth are not for everyone.

    I'm only trying to help. I have to admit I probably take sanlyn's criticism a little to seriously.
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    Good for you Ray. Except now you will be pummeled with Time Base Correctors, S-VHS, capture cards....

    If no one else is helpful, it sometimes happens, I will send some links your way. Honestly you might be happier just searching and reading. Doom9 also has tons of info. Good Luck

    But while I have a shred of dignity left. I will step away and leave this to the gurus.
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    I keep waiting for a guru to show up, myself. Maybe they're still working on their turkey leftovers.

    Agreed, this tape looks like a toughie. All I did was one quickie denoiser and and some basic levels/color stuff. That leaves a loooong way to go. I'll try something later today. There's more than one way to go about it, yep.
    Last edited by sanlyn; 19th Mar 2014 at 08:50.
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    The attached trial run demonstrates several rules about VHS->DVD transfer:
    - Bad noisy damaged faded discolored VHS should not be recorded directly to lossy DVD.
    - Low bitrates = more video on disc = quality loss that cannot be recovered.
    - We mere mortals cannot re-create details that don't exist in VHS->DVD recordings.
    - Detail that doesn't exist can't be enhanced.
    - You can't improve lossy encodes by working with lossy media. Go lossless.

    The attached took about 3 hours to analyze and to devise a filter method. About 25 to 30 bad horizontal rips, tears, comets, and streaks were repaired, but some still remain. It would take a while to clean the rest. The use of autocolor and autogain in the original camera footage is the reason why the colors and levels change several times in the woman's clothing and hair, the cats, the vegetation, the shadows against the background wall, etc. -- these auto-generated color and contrast fluctuations can't be repaired. Overall, the original DVD capture is too bright, which added to oversharpening has destroyed much highlight detail. More detail and cleaner motion was lost by using a bitrate too low for the desired format.

    Improper VHS captures to lossy formats (including DV-AVI) are extremely difficult if not impossible to improve. The best that one can do is to keep them from looking worse. Except for the h264 encoder used here, all the software I used is free. If you want to pursue a repair such as the attached demo, we'll be glad to help. But it will take time, and the possibilities for improvement are limited. Otherwise, members can advise about the usual budget software packages from Walmart, BestBuy, Amazon, and the like (but output quality can be very iffy). There are many free tools listed in the forum tools section, but IMO they aren't all that easy to use.

    Here is the basic method I used for the attached demo (and don't worry about lingo at this point -- the lingo is the easy part):
    - Decode the m2v video into a lossless format using lossless Lagarith compression.
    - In the video's original YV12 colorspace, adjust to a valid NTSC contrast and color range using various Avisynth image filters.
    - In the original colorspace, deintelace the video and apply denoising and motion smoothing filters.
    - Re-interlace the video and convert to RGB using recommended methods, then use VirtualDub filters to tweak and improve color and contrast.
    - Re-convert to YV12 for encoding to DVD and/or BluRay/AVCHD.
    Last edited by sanlyn; 19th Mar 2014 at 08:50.
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    Good morning folks. Thanks so much for your time and efforts here. I never dreamed that there would be so much involved in getting an answer to what I thought would be a simple question. I was wrong. Anyway, I am greatful.

    Since I now have the original vhs tape, what is my next step? Any suggestions? Is there a good, proven method for copying the vhs to dvd? If so, would be better off taking it to someone that does it professionally? Or can I learn here how to do it using simple equipment? I do have access to a vhs player but not a stand alone dvd burner. I have a LiteOn burner in my desktop machine and a burner in my laptop that I would assume is a Toshiba.

    Sanlyn, thanks for taking the time to work on my clip. It does seem a lot better. At least on my laptop. I don't know what it would look like on a big screen tv. From what you have said. it seems like you did a lot of time consuming stuff. I'd love to know what you know. How would I go about becoming more knowledgeable? Where should I start. How do I go about learning the basic fundamentals of video? Any help or suggestions would be appreciated. I'm 70 years old but I really do try to learn as I go along and I am fairly saavy on most of the technology that is available to us all. I just haven't gotten involved with this subject until now. I'm very curious!!

    Ray

    Well, Imust be really showing my age. It seems that I am being redundant here. I posted stuff that I had already posted before so I apologize for taking up valuable time and space.

    Ray
    Last edited by Oldretiredguy; 1st Dec 2013 at 13:20.
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  30. Originally Posted by Oldretiredguy View Post
    Since I now have the original vhs tape, what is my next step? Any suggestions? Is there a good, proven method for copying the vhs to dvd?
    There's the best way and there's everything else. As RWH so delicately put it:
    Originally Posted by RWH View Post
    Except now you will be pummeled with Time Base Correctors, S-VHS, capture cards....
    SVHS VCR with line TBC (or a DVD recorder that has one included, in the chain), capture card capping lossless AVI, with some way to manipulate the levels/gain while capping.

    Failing that, there's not much else you can do about improving the initial capture. As jagabo mentioned earlier, there's a recent thread from another fellow who followed the same learning curve you may or may not attempt:

    https://forum.videohelp.com/threads/360414-What-would-you-do-to-improve-this-video

    sanlyn would have followed some of the same steps and used some of the same filters on yours although, of course, every capture is different and requires different fixes.
    Last edited by manono; 1st Dec 2013 at 17:30.
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