VHS restauration and upscalling

[RomainD2]

Hi,

I found this nice forum after searching for some advice to restore a personal VHS video which was recorded a long time ago, about a trip in Ireland with my classroom in 2005. Then, I have burned it on a DVD to bake up this film, and I have just found it again inside my closed.

I would like to restore it, and even, if it is possible, upscale it in 720p or 1080p

If possible with free software... But it seems a little bit complicated for the upscall, as many software are expensives...

I tried some things with AVIDEMUX, an upscall filter with lancoz3 algorithm, and a deinterlacing filter, but the result was not so good...

I have attached a sample of the mkv fike ripped from the DVD to this post.

Do you have some ideas ?

Thanks for your help.

[lordsmurf]

You must submit an unmolested sample. Not a "rip" (conversion) from DVD.
Not even DVD.
It needs to be a quality lossless capture of the original VHS tape.
What you have here is a bad/corrupt file, and one of really low lossy quality.

The good news is that the original tape probably can be restored to excellent quality. But the entire process must be quality, starting with the tape transfer. Otherwise, no, not happening.

[aedipuss]

unless you're willing to spend a lot of money and time to start over capturing the vhs tape again with better equipment, it's not really going to make any sense trying to work with that dvd as source material. i'd just convert it to a more modern format than mpeg-2 and call it a day. it should be re-encoded to 768x576 for square pixel mp4 and de-interlaced. upscaling it is just going to make all the faults more visible.

[Sharc]

[QUOTE=aedipuss;2578661 i'd just convert it to a more modern format than mpeg-2 and call it a day.[/QUOTE]
Why? It will only get worse by the reencoding.

[RomainD2]

Thanks for your answer.

Unfortunately I don't have anymore the original vhs.

I have recorded the vhs on a DVD+r disk with a combined vhs - DVD recorder, a long time ago!

I just found again this DVD, and I have just copied all the video files available into the video_ts folder, joined them, and saved them into mkv file with mediacoder, with the copy video and audio option, so without any further compression.

[davexnet]

Thanks for your answer.

Unfortunately I don't have anymore the original vhs.

I have recorded the vhs on a DVD+r disk with a combined vhs - DVD recorder, a long time ago!

I just found again this DVD, and I have just copied all the video files available into the video_ts folder, joined them, and saved them into mkv file with mediacoder, with the copy video and audio option, so without any further compression.

Upscaling is usually discouraged in this forum, mostly because TV's will usually upscale the video to fill the screen, and do a reasonable job.
There are a few techniques using an Avisynth script; a better deinterlacer, upscaler & sharpen, etc. but results tend to be disappointing.

[braveheart3158]

Thanks for your answer.


I just found again this DVD, and I have just copied all the video files available into the video_ts folder, joined them, and saved them into mkv file with mediacoder, with the copy video and audio option, so without any further compression.

How did this turn out?? Why did you save them as a mkv file? Why not just leave them as DVD files?

[braveheart3158]

It needs to be a quality lossless capture of the original VHS tape.

Sorry if this is an amateur question but what type of file format should that be and what hardware would you recommend for this?

[johnmeyer]

When you say you want to "restore" it, what are you trying to do? The video looks OK to me. I would leave it alone. Here are some things you should know:

1. Upscaling does NOT produce new detail or make the video look better in any way.

2. Any changes you make to the video will require re-encoding. Re-encoding ALWAYS degrades the video by introducing new artifacts. To justify this unavoidable degradation, you have to be able to make improvements that are sufficient to offset the reduction in quality that re-encoding will introduce.

As I glanced at your video, the only things I saw which might be improved are:

Reduction in shakiness
Contrast reduction

It looks like someone may have attempted to deinterlace this footage and not done it well, but I didn't take a long enough look to verify that.

Bottom line: rip it from the DVD, put the VOB files onto some other media, and be done with it. Also, don't throw away the DVD because it has better longevity than any other media I know of. If it is decent media, it could last 100 years. No disk drive, thumb drive, or anything else I know of can make that claim.

[davexnet]

In case the OP returns here's my attempt, using mdegrain2 from the MVtools doc examples
I didn't bother with the edges

mpeg2source("C:\Users\davex\Desktop\avs_test\DVD_6_Voyage Irelande - 2005_sample.d2v")
AssumeTFF()
qtgmc(preset="slow") 
ColorMatrix(source=2,dest=0) # 601 > 709
super = MSuper(pel=2, sharp=1)
backward_vec2 = MAnalyse(super, isb = true, delta = 2, overlap=4)
backward_vec1 = MAnalyse(super, isb = true, delta = 1, overlap=4)
forward_vec1 = MAnalyse(super, isb = false, delta = 1, overlap=4)
forward_vec2 = MAnalyse(super, isb = false, delta = 2, overlap=4)
MDegrain2(super, backward_vec1,forward_vec1,backward_vec2,forward_vec2,thSAD=400)
NNEDI3_rpow2(rfactor=2,cshift="spline16resize",fwidth=960,fheight=720)
AddGrainC(uvar=0.5,var=1.5)

[lordsmurf]

It needs to be a quality lossless capture of the original VHS tape.

Sorry if this is an amateur question but what type of file format should that be and what hardware would you recommend for this?

Huffyuv or Lagarith, in AVI container. It doesn't need to be long, or large. Few seconds, under 100mb.

[RomainD2]

Thanks for your answer.


I just found again this DVD, and I have just copied all the video files available into the video_ts folder, joined them, and saved them into mkv file with mediacoder, with the copy video and audio option, so without any further compression.

How did this turn out?? Why did you save them as a mkv file? Why not just leave them as DVD files?

I thought that it will be better to have only one file, so I choose a mkv container, with the option "copy video" and "copy audio" in order to doesn't have any compression.