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  1. Hello!

    I've been capturing and converting my family's home video collection on and off for the past 18 or so years. I did all the oldest early 1980s VHS tapes back in about 2005 when I knew very little about the process and used a DV capture card with Sony Vegas.

    I've got a much better setup now and just finished doing dozens and dozens of 8mm and VHS-C tapes, so I wanted to go back and try redoing the VHS tapes. I now use VirtualDub to capture, and have a JVC S-VHS VCR, an ATI600, an ES10 just in case, and am using AviSynth scripts with QTGMC, cropping/masking, etc etc etc, all thanks to this awesome forum.

    I just recaptured my first 2 hour clip on the oldest tape from 1982 (which is only part of a nearly 6 hour long tape...), and noticed some new issues that are not in my 2005 capture. I am assuming that the issues are your typical VHS tape degradation issues popping up after 40 years, but wanted to just double check before I give up to see if it could be anything else (dirty tape heads or something like that?)

    There are 2 main issues I see:

    1. A few clips have a complete red cast over them (see attached screenshot). The red clips start and end where the original video camera was stopped and started, if that makes sense... In my 2005 capture, the colors are fine.

    2. The audio sounds muffled, and if I increase it during capture, I get a high pitched underlying squeal and it still doesn't sound great.

    Fortunately/unfortunately, the video quality obviously looks better overall doing it with my current setup, but the muffled audio makes it very unpleasant to watch and the red parts of course look terrible.

    If it is the tape itself, it probably doesn't make much sense to redo it all. If it could possibly be anything else fixable, please let me know. Thank you!

    PS. I tested another VHS tape and the audio seems fine, so sadly I think it is the tape. I also tried fast forwarding all the way and rewinding, as I read that can sometimes help, but it didn't seem to do anything.
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  3. Capturing Memories dellsam34's Avatar
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    I can tell you one thing, when tape degrades it doesn't change color, it develops signal noise due to weak RF, anything like white or black comets, scrolling snow stripes, full frame noise, and similar behaviors, It looks like a player issues to me.
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  4. I would try with another VHS player.

    Can you exclude the capture device from being the culprit? Does it look the same when you watch the tape directly on the TV (the analog VHS original)?
    Also, as a test, separate the fields of the capture and step through the fields. Are both fields suffering from the same damage?
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  5. Muffled audio playback is generally due to misalignement of the AC head
    solution here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fazLIPQqKLk
    *** DIGITIZING VHS / ANALOG VIDEOS SINCE 2001**** GEAR: JVC HR-S7700MS, TOSHIBA V733EF AND MORE
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  6. I'm a Super Moderator johns0's Avatar
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    If the audio is good on another tape then it's not the player,could be that the tape was recorded that way.
    I think,therefore i am a hamster.
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  7. Originally Posted by dellsam34 View Post
    I can tell you one thing, when tape degrades it doesn't change color, it develops signal noise due to weak RF, anything like white or black comets, scrolling snow stripes, full frame noise, and similar behaviors, It looks like a player issues to me.
    Could VCR issues only cause problems on certain parts of the tape but not the whole tape? And while other tapes are fine?
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  8. Originally Posted by Sharc View Post
    I would try with another VHS player.

    Can you exclude the capture device from being the culprit? Does it look the same when you watch the tape directly on the TV (the analog VHS original)?
    Also, as a test, separate the fields of the capture and step through the fields. Are both fields suffering from the same damage?
    I don't have an immediate answer on this one as it requires disconnecting and shuffling a few things around as I don't have a TV near my setup. But as for the audio problem, other tapes are completely fine, and as for the video problem, other parts of the same tape are fine. So I don't suspect the capture device. But I could try and eliminate it as the culprit.

    I will have to look up how to separate the fields of the capture and step through and will report back when I have time to do so. Thanks.

    Edited to add: I am not even sure if I have another VCR in the house to try, and certainly not a S-VHS VCR. But for testing purposes I will look around. That might be the easiest way to know if it's the tape or the player.
    Last edited by Christina; 2nd Feb 2023 at 14:00. Reason: adding
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  9. Originally Posted by themaster1 View Post
    Muffled audio playback is generally due to misalignement of the AC head
    solution here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fazLIPQqKLk
    Even if other tapes are fine?
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  10. Originally Posted by johns0 View Post
    If the audio is good on another tape then it's not the player,could be that the tape was recorded that way.
    The audio sounds good in the capture I did 18 years ago so I'm not sure what's going on if it's not the player.
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  11. Maybe the phase locking with the reference color burst gets intermittently lost. It could be caused by the player or by a damaged color burst (=color reference signal) on the tape.
    Something like this:
    https://www.avartifactatlas.com/artifacts/subcarrier_phase_error.html
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  12. Hi all,

    I figured I would attach some files to help illustrate the issue and compare it to my original captures from ~2005.

    I attached 2 files from my current capture that show the pink/red hue issue and the low audio. There are several clips from the same day on this tape but only one "clip" from that day turns red. I'm not sure if clip is the right word, but by clip I mean a continuous clip recorded without stopping. So the part 1 and part 2 attached are where that affected clip start and end, and you can see that the clips before and immediately after look ok. It changes when the camera was stopped and started recording again. So, my hunch says it's the tape because of that, but I was hoping it might be something else fixable.

    When I looked back at my older capture (labeled OrigDV pt1 and 2, which is exported as a mp4 here) the same red clip looks a lot better, but actually looks like it was starting to show some signs of discoloration as well. It's not nearly as bad but I wouldn't say it's without any issue at all.

    Seeing this, do you still think it could be the player?

    And the audio issue was much more noticeably terrible when I played the file on my tv compared to my computer, especially after watching the old capture on the tv.

    Thank you!
    Image Attached Files
    Last edited by Christina; 2nd Feb 2023 at 17:47. Reason: typo
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  13. The colors from the new clip can be made similar to those of the older clip:

    Image
    [Attachment 69022 - Click to enlarge]
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  14. Originally Posted by jagabo View Post
    The colors from the new clip can be made similar to those of the older clip:

    Image
    [Attachment 69022 - Click to enlarge]
    Wow, it looked so bad to me, I did not even try to color correct. That leads me to wonder if I did some sort of color correction back then but I can’t remember that long ago. I was using Sony Vegas and I don’t think I have the unaltered original captures.

    Did you color correct using AVISynth? If so can you let me know what you used?

    Also, any ideas on the audio?
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  15. Yes, I used AviSynth:

    Code:
    ColorYUV(off_u=-20, off_v=-40)
    ColorYUV(gain_y=70, off_y=-20, cont_u=-100, cont_v=-125)
    This was just a crude adjustment to make it look about like the other video. It could be done in one ColorYUV but I centered the U/V channels first (off_u/v), then adjusted the saturation (cont_u/v) and black/white levels.
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  16. Thank you jagabo, always appreciate your insight and help.

    Do you have any ideas about the audio? Could that part be tape degradation since it does seem to affect the entire tape, while other tapes are ok? Or could the player cause an issue with certain tapes and not others?

    I’m sure the vcr could use a cleaning as well but I’m not sure it’s something I can tackle right now, unless I use a head cleaning tape, but I’ve read here that those shouldn’t be used.
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  17. Could it be a linear vs. HiFi audio track issue?
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  18. Originally Posted by jagabo View Post
    Could it be a linear vs. HiFi audio track issue?
    I didn't know what that was so I looked it up and after reading a bit about it, I still have no idea if that could be the issue or how I would go about troubleshooting that.

    I think I'll try swapping out some cables just to eliminate that. If it becomes too much or I can't figure it out, I may just stick with my original captures and move on. I don't have another quality VCR I can test on, and my only other capture devices are DV.

    I uploaded 2 clips, again one from the old capture (dv audio.mp4) and one from the new (audio 3 louder.avi). I changed the A97.... registry setting for the ATI600 ever so slightly to boost the audio a little and recaptured a short segment. It still doesn't sound as good as the original, and the high pitched noise is more apparent. In terms of audio levels (but not sound quality), which file is better?

    Does AviSynth have any audio processing? Denoisers? Equalizers? It sounds to me like it needs more treble, and a good denoiser. I wish I knew what the culprit was. But when watching the videos back on a tv, the audio in the newer capture is worse than the video quality of the original capture so unless I can figure this out or fix it without too much brain damage, it's probably not worth redoing.

    THANK YOU!
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  19. Capturing Memories dellsam34's Avatar
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    Your new captures have more details compared to your old captures that are very blurry, If the audio is an issue just extract it from the old clips and mux it to the new captures, Now seeing the videos, it's the camcorder that shot them is no good, You must have done some color correction back then and forgot. JVC VCR's are known to have issues with linear mono audio, You can tweak the stationary head block to get better audio if you have the skills but other tapes may not playback perfectly so you will have to reverse it to its original position.
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  20. Comment on the OrigDC pt1.mp4:
    It looks to me like the "original" variant has been (Vegas-)edited. The first half of the clip (first scene) is ok, apart from some ghosting/tearing beyond the normal motion blur. The second (problematic) scene has huge flicker with color shifts between the even and odd field. Also, when the boy reappears in the foreground there is a transistion part which blends his hair with the background (for the even and odd field). So the basic problems seem to have been baked into the "original" (probably edited) version already.

    (Also, there is a discrepancy between the elementary stream rate (25fps) and the container frame rate (29.97fps). Has a framerate/standards conversion been applied at some point?)
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  21. I agree I most likely did color correction on the old capture and forgot.

    As for the audio, I thought about extracting it from the old clips and muxing to new but that sounds a bit tedious and might be difficult to sync for each clip. If I had the original capture without edits (I assume I edited the original on the timeline because there’s fades between each clip and, like we said, color correction, and probably just saved another DV avi file with the edits, and scrapped the original capture) then I could have tried muxing the whole capture at once and hoped for no sync problems. But I’d have to do each and every clip on a 6 hour tape. Do you have any tips for doing this?

    Originally Posted by Sharc View Post
    Comment on the OrigDC pt1.mp4:

    (Also, there is a discrepancy between the elementary stream rate (25fps) and the container frame rate (29.97fps). Has a framerate/standards conversion been applied at some point?)
    I did a quick trim and export using mpegstreamclip without paying attention to settings and it was creating an invalid mpeg if I just tried to save so I had to do an export to mp4. I didn’t pay attention to any of the settings when I did this so that’s probably why. I don’t know why my original video capture would have been 25fps though. That part seems weird to me unless that has something to do with DV that I’m forgetting about.
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  22. Originally Posted by Christina View Post
    Originally Posted by jagabo View Post
    Could it be a linear vs. HiFi audio track issue?
    I didn't know what that was so I looked it up and after reading a bit about it, I still have no idea if that could be the issue or how I would go about troubleshooting that.
    There's usually a button on the remote to switch between the linear and HiFi tracks.

    Originally Posted by Christina View Post
    Does AviSynth have any audio processing? Denoisers? Equalizers?
    Yes: http://avisynth.nl/index.php/Category:Audio_filters
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  23. Capturing Memories dellsam34's Avatar
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    Judging by the quality of the footage I don't think the camcorder is a high end with HiFi stereo, He should forget about Hi-Fi stereo. Not to mention that the tape is obviously a second gen dub from several camcorder tapes, so a lot can go wrong in that process.
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  24. Originally Posted by dellsam34 View Post
    Judging by the quality of the footage I don't think the camcorder is a high end with HiFi stereo, He should forget about Hi-Fi stereo. Not to mention that the tape is obviously a second gen dub from several camcorder tapes, so a lot can go wrong in that process.
    As far as I know, it's the original tape, not a second gen dub. The camcorder was my father's first VHS recorder. He probably still has it. All I remember about it was that it had the separate player/recorder that you hung over your shoulder, like carrying around a VCR, and the camera plugged into it. I'm sure it wasn't the best available at the time but it was 1982 and he did record all those first tapes on SLP mode which I'm sure also doesn't help things.

    I'll play around with some things when I have time and see if I can't get the audio working better before I try muxing the old with the new video or giving up altogether. Thanks.
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  25. Capturing Memories dellsam34's Avatar
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    Oh, I see, a tube camera, This was before CCD imaging sensor came along, It makes sense now to why the tones are all screwed up. But a valuable tape indeed if it goes that far back.
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  26. I did some more testing on the audio. It's the VCR. Or rather, the VCR combined with this tape.

    For some reason, my JVC S-VHS VCR (SR-MV55) is having a problem with this particular tape's audio. To my ear, other tapes I try sound fine. This tape has the highs muffled and also has a constant high pitch noise.

    I found another VCR that I had. Also JVC but just a regular VCR (HR-VP58U) with composite outputs. This is the VCR I used nearly 20 years ago when I did my first round of captures and the other old clips I've been sharing on this thread. I did another capture on the same part of the tape. I had to run it through my Panasonic ES-10 as well because without it, the video was not stable. (When I did the original captures in 2005, I used my Sony DV Camcorder as a passthrough into a DV capture card. I did not have the ES-10 until recently.)

    On the old VCR, the audio sounds clearer and without the high pitched noise.

    I also ran another test on the S-VHS VCR with different cables and I got the same result as with the cables I've been using all along.

    I'm attaching 2 clips from this round of testing here.

    I looked at settings on the S-VHS deck and cannot find anything about switching between linear or hi-fi audio, or any audio settings at all really. So aside from making internal physical adjustments (which I'm not willing to do, no skills in taking apart VCRs), I assume there isn't really anything else I can do to get good audio out of my S-VHS deck. Is that correct? Any other tips or tricks?

    So, I can:

    1. Recapture the tape using the old VCR, passing through ES-10, with composite cables. It would be better than original DV capture overall, but video quality would suffer somewhat.

    2. Capture twice, once on each deck and mux video and audio, so I get the S-Video quality with S-VHS deck with stable video without using ES-10, and the audio from the old deck.

    3. Just live with the original captures!

    In my test uploads, is the video quality much better in the S-VHS deck than the old VCR?

    If I do 2 captures on 2 decks and mux audio and video back together, SHOULD it stay in sync for the duration or will other variables possibly make it go out of sync?

    I'm thinking about trying to sync 6 hours of audio and video clip by clip and I don't know if I am up for that challenge (or have the time). If I can sync the whole tape at once successfully, or at least 3 2-hour segments, then do my editing afterwards, that wouldn't be as bad.

    Thank you.
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  27. Me and some others have also noted issues with linear audio on the late JVC (S)VHS decks, maybe yours have the same problem. Not sure what the cause is but it seems to be present on many or all of the very late JVC-made decks from like 2002/2003ish and later.

    If syncing up ends up being too difficult the older JVC + ES10 shouldn't be that much worse quality than the SVHS deck really. Using the ES10 with the SVHS may also help with audio sync as well as it should help avoid audio/video desync on the capture side at least.
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  28. Capturing Memories dellsam34's Avatar
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    I would go with option 2, It's only one tape, I know some members who did this for several tapes, You need a remote control to switch between HiFi and linear audio, but since your camcorder is from an era that predates HiFi or HiFi was just around the corner you don't have to worry about that.

    As I mentioned previously newer JVC VCRs have the linear audio problem including my own VCRs and all the senior members here are aware of it, I havn't gotten around investigating the problem myself, but my guess would be a tape tension problem, I believe JVC tuned down the tape tension slightly in those models to save on head wear and probably because of the dynamic drum mechanism where the head physically tilts sideways and also JVC didn't give a rats a$$ about linear audio at the time when HiFi was main stream, even the cheapest VCRs had it, who can blame JVC for that, As we all know linear heads with no pressure pad require more tape tension than say an audio compact cassette equiped with a felt pad. Some had success getting better results tilting the audio head inwards against the tape which gives it a little more tension, This is all guess on my part unless I have to sit down and experiment with it.
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  29. I could live with option 1 (old VHS+ES 10) with a rock solid picture (no wiggling) where the audio is ok, and focus a bit on the video (noise, colors ...). I don't really see that the S-VHS has a significant advantage for this tape regarding recovery of details.

    Edit: Any particular reason why it was captured in RGB rather than YUY2?
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    Last edited by Sharc; 4th Feb 2023 at 18:20.
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  30. Originally Posted by Sharc View Post

    Edit: Any particular reason why it was captured in RGB rather than YUY2?
    Whoops, I just forgot to change the setting to Direct Stream Copy in Virtualdub when I extracted the short clip to upload here. I had it on Full Processing Mode when I saved avi. I got nervous for a second there that I had something set up wrong! Here is the same clip with direct stream copy. Original capture is YUY2.

    Appreciate everyone's input here!
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