Help Improve VHS-C Video Quality

[Lioned]

Hello everyone,

I want you to help me figure out what these clips need for visual improvement as I myself don't have much experience identifying the problems.

If it matters, videos were shot from a Panasonic VHS-C Movie Camera NV-G101(goes back 1992) and were captured by connecting the camera to RCA>HDMI and HDMI>USB(1080p) respectfully, 5$ each

software used OBS codec: SVT-AV1 (CQP: CQ level 23) 60FPS

any help would be gladly appreciated.

[lordsmurf]

That looks as awful as expected, when using that cheap gear.

Deinterlaced/aliased mess.
Stretched mess.
Extreme overexposure (aka brightness is blown out completely), or dark crushed to a muddy mess.
Dropped frames are obvious even with camera shake.

This is what you get when you try to buy video gear with the budget for a cheeseburger. You will never get any quality results of any kind with what you have.

Proper conversion workflow is
- quality camera/VCR (ideally recommended JVC/Panasonic S-VHS with line TBC)
- some form of frame TBC (ideally Cypress/DataVideo type)
- quality capture card (ie, not some $5 junk, but something more in the $100+ range)

VCR > TBC > capture card

You'll probably followed the hack advice from that Youtuber that doesn't know his ass from his elbow about video topics, and cluelessly advises newbies to buy junk to convert videos. This is the sort of advice you get from Youtubers. I hate to see folks like you get burned by these bozos.

But we can try to get you on the right track now.

[Lioned]

Thanks for the reply no actually it was my own idea to not invest much into it.
I'd rather not spend any more money on gear if that's okay... I'm leaning more on the software side improvement for this thing. is it meaningless?

[lollo]

is it meaningless?

Yes. The starting point for a restoration is a good capture. Otherwise you can only marginally improve, or do not improve at all.

[lordsmurf]

Thanks for the reply no actually it was my own idea to not invest much into it.
I'd rather not spend any more money on gear if that's okay... I'm leaning more on the software side improvement for this thing. is it meaningless?

Spend nothing, get nothing.

is it meaningless?

Yes. The starting point for a restoration is a good capture. Otherwise you can only marginally improve, or do not improve at all.

Or make it actually worse. That's easy to do when the source is garbage.

[johnmeyer]

"Spend nothing, get nothing."

That needs to be at the top of this forum.

I couldn't get either video to play all the way through.

You might consider simply spending a few dollars and sending your tape to a transfer service. For a lot of people, the learning required to get a good transfer is too much time and effort. Using a commercial service may not give you the ultimate transfer, but it will likely be done correctly, and you will then be able to enjoy your old videos. Most of the commercial transfer services do a decent job.

[dellsam34]

If the OP lives in Greece, I assume the standard of the tapes would be PAL, Not sure why it ended up in a NTSC frame rate, Also explains why chroma resolution is only every other line due to this conversion from PAL chroma to NTSC chroma. Resolution is neither SD nor HD, 1280x720 served a purpose back in early 2000's when people want 30p/25p, but since it cannot be done at 1920x1080 the choice was pseudo HD 1280x720, it has no benefits today and no native 720p display panels available anymore, Leave the original resolution or go 1440x1080 4:3 AR.

A recapture is a must if quality is important, Full budget would be to get a working S-VHS VCR with built in line TBC/DNR and a well known USB capture device ($50-$60), use S-Video for capturing. Mid budget a S-VHS camcorder with or without line TBC/DNR and well known good USB capture device. Low budget get only a well known good USB capture device, this last option will fix the capture problems but the camcorder problems cannot be fixed such as low quality composite, line wiggle, chroma noise ..etc.

If you want to capture the same way, there is no need to mess with the files, just watch them, you are not going to improve anything without further degradation of the original quality.

[jagabo]

I agree a good cap with the correct frame rate could get you better results. But here's one of the videos with the aspect ratio adjusted and sharpened a bit.

[Alwyn]

Extreme overexposure (aka brightness is blown out completely), or dark crushed to a muddy mess.

Easily fixed, of course, by adjusting the Brightness and Contrast before capturing.

In OBS: click your Source ie your digitiser, then click Properties. On the next screen, click the "Video Proc Amp" tab. You can adjust the Brightness and Contrast with the sliders. You want "bright" white areas and "dark" black areas, but not Whiteout or Blackout. Any total white will contain no video info at all.

If you want to get a little more technical when setting the "levels", check out my tute here.

The levels can be further adjusted in VDub post-capture.

Re the comments about 60fps, have a watch of Tim Ford's OBS tute on YT. Note his comment in the Comments about PAL captures. For a PAL capture, choose 25fps.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G2CIEE8kjSU

Note: I don't use your workflow and as already pointed-out, it is not recommended, but if you're are cost-restrained or not prepared to spend more, you can still improve your captures quite a bit, both before capture and after. I would caution against using AV1 as the capture codec though; some programs, including Virtual Dub, can't open that codec. X264 is a good choice.

[dellsam34]

The level of destruction of those two "$5 each" devices is beyond any software proc amp capacity of re-adjustment. Try to manufacture a $500 car and see how it drives.

[Lioned]

thanks for the replies appreciate it guys!