Anyway to remove video drop-outs?

[Jerry1964]

Hello,

I have an important music tape of John Lennon that's rare, problem is that it was stored on 3/4" u-matic tape for 30 years and the tape has shedded. What I'm left with, is a dub with lots of drop-outs. The tape will not make another pass, so I need to figure out if there is any software that can detect drop-outs in the picture and remove them without taking out anything else. The only other option is a frame by frame deal, and that is not possible. There must be something by now. The drop-outs are horizontal white lines.

Thanks for any advice

J

[guns1inger]

Possibly despot and/or descratch for avisynth. Otherwise you are looking at more expensive payware options. RedGiant Software has one, NeatVideo might work on some of it.

[AlanHK]

Post a few screen caps and someone may suggest a suitable filter.

Maybe DeScratch - Scratches Removing Filter
"This plugin removes vertical scratches from films. Also it can be used for removing of horizontal noise lines such as drop-outs from analog VHS captures (after image rotation)."

[lordsmurf]

I've never found anything that worked, aside from harsh temporal restoration filters. All that did was mostly hide it by merging before/after frames. And it only really works on mild cases, not severe ones.

I have no doubt something exists at the studio level, but I would imagine it to be hardware, and expensive. I've heard of the device before, but I forget the company and the product name.

[filmboss80]

If you are the copyright owner of a rare, one-of-a-kind video, you need to take care to do it right. There are companies that re-master old and damaged tapes. One is www.specsbros.com. Otherwise, you should incorporate a time base corrector (TBC) that has dropout compensation, but like lordsmurf said, it is a hardware solution that may cost you some bucks. Even then, perfection may not be a realistic expectation. Good luck.

[themaster1]

You'd need something like a tape checker(vhs)see here

And for umatic tapes see here

There is a good chance it help rather than not in my opinion, i never tried this kind of device though.

[zoobie]

Which performance is it? The Toronto concert? There's a lot of Lennon stuff out there. It may not be all that rare and available on vhs/dvd...unless it was bootlegged

[Jerry1964]

Thanks for all the tips,

I have heard about AVISYNTH, and I even downloaded the thing and could not for the life of me figure out how to get the thing to work. I am fairly new to NLE and have Vegas Pro 8 along with a bunch of other Sony Software. I have TMPGe and a few other programs. I understand AVISYNTH is script, but I have no idea how to use this. I have searched for a step by step guide, but no luck. Can I use it within Vegas? When I install it, it has nothing to launch it, just an un-install?

To answer the previous question, its worth the work as only about 5min of the 40 have ever be released.

[AlanHK]

Thanks for all the tips,

I have heard about AVISYNTH, and I even downloaded the thing and could not for the life of me figure out how to get the thing to work.

Avisynth makes almost any kind of video look like an uncompressed AVI file.
Most usefully, it allows all kinds of filters and programmatic operations to be applied on the fly, as specified in a simple text file (an AVS script) and the result also appears as an AVI file.
You can view the result in many apps, but VirtualDub is pretty good.
Then you can save the result as a real AVI file or encode as MPEG, etc.


http://avisynth.org/YourFirstScript
http://guide.zhentarim.net/6/avisynth.html
http://avisynth.org.ru/docs/english/
http://atlas.kennesaw.edu/~dhirschl/avisynth.html
AvsP is designed for editing Avisynth scripts, and adds a lot of features.

[Jerry1964]

Thanks for all the tips,

I have heard about AVISYNTH, and I even downloaded the thing and could not for the life of me figure out how to get the thing to work.

Avisynth makes almost any kind of video look like an uncompressed AVI file.
Most usefully, it allows all kinds of filters and programmatic operations to be applied on the fly, as specified in a simple text file (an AVS script) and the result also appears as an AVI file.
You can view the result in many apps, but VirtualDub is pretty good.
Then you can save the result as a real AVI file or encode as MPEG, etc.

Thanks for the links, I'm on it. Here a link to some video captures I'm working with. Let me know it any of you have tips on how to tackle this one. This is John Lennon and George Harrison working on the anti-McCartney song "How Do You Sleep" this is not the small bits put out, but most of the session!

http://s306.photobucket.com/albums/nn262/WilburyJeff/

thanks!



http://avisynth.org/YourFirstScript
http://guide.zhentarim.net/6/avisynth.html
http://avisynth.org.ru/docs/english/
http://atlas.kennesaw.edu/~dhirschl/avisynth.html
AvsP is designed for editing Avisynth scripts, and adds a lot of features.

[AlanHK]

Here a link to some video captures I'm working with. Let me know it any of you have tips on how to tackle this one.

If you go the Avisynth route, try Descratch.

You do have to invest a few hours to get into the Avisynth mindset though.

[deuce8pro]

Could be tape damage. It would be impossible to transfer it in that case.

[zoobie]

for something like this, you may be better off having a pro lab handle it

[Spiny Norman]

Yes just for ONE tape, let a lab handle it.