Halo effect on old vhs videos

[banaguitar]

Hi, where does the halo effect come from? I got a bunch of old vhs tapes from a friend which all have halo effects.
Is there a way to reduce or remove this ugly fault? Use a better vhs machine?
Thanks for help!

[Alwyn]

Best to do a quick lossless capture of 15 seconds or so and attach here so the experts can take a look. Max attachments 500mb.

[banaguitar]

It's more a general question

[lollo]

1- use a high-end S-VHS VCR (basic VCRs tend to highlight edges for “better” playback)
2- disable all sharpening features in this VCR, and preferably use “edit” mode
3- disable all sharpening features in the capture card
4- sometimes the halos are baked in the video master (I found all my recordings of Thunderbirds series suffering of excessive halos in the source)

[jagabo]

Hi, where does the halo effect come from?

Because of VHS's inherently low resolution most players apply a sharpening filter during playback. The result is oversharpening halos.

I got a bunch of old vhs tapes from a friend which all have halo effects.
Is there a way to reduce or remove this ugly fault? Use a better vhs machine?

If these are first generation VHS recordings you can just use a player that doesn't apply the sharpening (some have a "sharpness" setting which you can turn down or off). If these are multigeneration tapes the halos are probably burned in. Removing them can be done with AviSynth but that doesn't work as well as avoiding them in the first place.

[banaguitar]

Thank you, guys. @lollo: Which S-VHS VCR would you recommend?

[lollo]

Thank you, guys. @lollo: Which S-VHS VCR would you recommend?

Some info here https://gleitz-info.translate.goog/forum/index.php?thread/48526-%C3%BCbersicht-%C3%BCb..._x_tr_pto=wapp and here https://www.digitalfaq.com/forum/video-restore/1567-vcr-buying-guide.html

In general a single VCR being best for all purposes does not exist, and for optimal results you may need different machines for different tapes.