There are a number of ways to get rid of color noise, but a lot of us are using a plug-in called "NeatVideo." It is easy to use and is very effective, but it costs $99 and can take a moderately long time to render.

http://www.neatvideo.com

There are other techniques (primarily those devised by a long-time forum member, John Meyer) which can also be very effective. They use third-party tools external to Vegas and a series of steps and are more complicated to implement than NeatVideo, but unlike NeatVideo, they are free and render faster. You can search the forum and find lot of discussions on noise reduction.

There are lots of plugins for AVISynth and VirtualDub that will do this. The one I use, and which I highly recommend for all VHS work, is CNR by Giles Mouchard:

CNR

While designed as a VirtualDub plugin, and therefore not normally run within Vegas, you can in fact run it from within Vegas via Satish's debugmode Wax plugin:

Wax

You download and install Wax. Put it in the Plugins folder for Vegas, NOT the default folder (which is set up for Vegas 4).

You have to enable "Dummy Host Media" to make this work. You can do this during installation or do it later using the Wax program (from the Windows Start menu).

You then open the fX dialog for the event, track, buss, etc. Select Wax. If the dialog appears and then immediately disappears, click on the event to which you are assigning Wax (don't click on the fX button; click on the event).

Then, select the Host media. on the Wax timeline. Just above the timeline, you'll see various things you can assign. Choose the VirtualDub Filters. If you correctly assigned the location of Virtualdub during Wax installation, you should see all the VirtualDub Filters located there. You should have previously copied the CNR plugin to the Plugins folder for VirtualDub. If you didn't, you need to close the fX, go back and install CNR, and then try again.

You then drag the CNR pugin to the HostMedia track header and drop it on the words HostMedia1. This should give you a child track below the HostMedia track (all of this is taking place in the Wax fX dialog, NOT on the Vegas main timeline).

Finally, you click on the "...." button on the "chroma noise" child track header, and this should bring up the CNR plugin dialog. Here are the settings I use, as shown in the AVISynth version of the CNR plugin:

Cnr2("oxx",8,16,120,90,255,32,255,false)

I just found from a post five years ago where I provided the VirtualDub dialog equivalent to these settings, which is what you want here:

Luma(Y) 15.98% Wide (checked) 75%
Chroma1 (U) 100.00% Wide (not checked) 100%
Chroma2 (V) 31.7% Wide (not checked) 100%
No chroma shift

As you can see, the Luma and Chroma Shift are set at the default values. The Chroma1 is increased dramatically, and Chroma2 increased slightly.

I can guarantee that this will absolutely nail the chroma noise found in all VHS transfers, but without introducing any artifacts. It is pretty much magic. The only problem I have ever observed is that sometimes reds get smeared. If you see this (and I have only seen it a few times in hundreds of hours of transfers using this setting), decrease the aggressive Chroma1 setting.

[Edit] After I posted, I saw the other two posts about Neat video. This is a wonderful general de-noiser, but is not specific to chroma noise, which is what I thought your question was about.

See, I told you John Meyer knew all about this noise reduction stuff! :)

Putting my VHS on DVD with a set-top Panasonic combo does a better job with video noise than by any NLE means I have found, and a lot quicker.* Often, even with 12 year old tapes, the DVD comes out cleaner than the tape. It is then a simple means to pull the .vro files in for editing via VideoReDo.

*Disclaimer: Although I have not tried johnmeyer's methods which I'm sure are excellent!

Well...shoot. John M, since you posted all this, I guess I'm going to have to go ahead and try it. :) Will let you know how it works. Still mystified as to why there's no color noise-specific plugin for Vegas...

UPDATE: putting this all together wasn't as much trouble as I expected. I did get the Wax Plugin working in Vegas 9b. Kind of awkward all around, but it worked. What didn't work, unfortunately, was getting the color noise out. Guess this old tape is just too pitiful. I could filter out all the color with CNR, but just getting the noise only didn't happen. Thanks anyhow for the suggestion! I'm going to call this effort before I sink too much time into it.

Two plugins that have been helpful on this task are New Blue's noise reducer (for general analog noise) and the Mercalli image stablizer. That said, wow we've come a long way since the days of full-size VHS camcorders!

I had no luck in Vista 64 Ultimate, 9B-32 bit. CNR filter OK in Virtual Dub 1.88. Wax 2.0E installs OK and the stuff appears in the FX and Tansition folders OK . If I use the Wax FX vegas closes. If I open Wax the CNR filter appears OK. If I open an AVI file in WAX there is no video and no sound.
JJK

Seeing as no one has mentioned it Mike Crash has a noise reduction plugin on his site. I've used it from time to time with some success on really bad old VHS.

One tip I've picked up over the years but never been able to afford to try is this. Get hold of an old VHS deck, one built before LP mode was added. These VCRs have a wider head and this could improve the signal to noise ratio coming off the tape. The best units seem to have been made by Panasonic, designed to mount in a rack and are friggin heavy. I've bid on them at auctions but dropped out of the race at $800. Clearly someone thinks there's some magic in the old beasts.

I've been using a JVC Super VHS VCR. Head width would not be optimal but it does give me S-Video into my ADVC-300. I can't say if that helps much or not, sure can't hurt though. Getting as much of what's on the tape into the A/D converter is the first step. The ADVC-300's time base corrector and 2D + 3D noise reduction is also quite usefull. Still there's only so much that can be done.

Bob.

Links on the Crash Plugin were dead last time I checked. I did demo the Neat plugin; it's nice. Works better than the New Blue plugin to my eye, and definitely helps a little on the color noise, though that's not primarily what it's for.

I think the critical frame of mind to get into with these old VHS to digital projects is to shoot for good enough and not get dragged into spending hours fighting for minimal gains. I say this, but of course I'm a total perfectionist and every time I look at my capture, I think, well maybe if I tried a little of that...

If you want to post a few seconds of some of your problem video, I'd be happy to take a look.

I tried to find some VHS footage with really bad chroma noise, but I don't have any in the computer at the moment. However, I did have a really bad 6-hour VHS (it might have been S-VHS) video taped off the air many years ago. I have encoded it to MPEG-2 and uploaded it to the following site:

Noise Reduction Example

In this video, I provide four seconds showing the original capture, with no changes whatsoever. After a short 1/2 second gap, I show the same footage after applying CNR. The results in this case are pretty subtle. The place to look is in the large, plain background on the left side of the video. If you stack the before & after, and A/B, you'll see some reddish noise disappear in the CNR version. If I had time, I'd show you some really awful VHS from the early 1980s, using 6-hour mode that positively shimmers with chroma noise. After applying this filter, it is gone.

The final part of the uploaded video shows the combination of CNR plus the MDegrain2 filter applied to each field independently, and using motion compensation. In other words, pretty sophisticated. If you go through this on the timeline, both in real time, and frame-by-frame, you should notice several things. First, there are no details lost. Spatial denoisers (which is what the main part of Neat does) often loses details. You may at first think that some detail is lost because, strangely, random dot noise somehow imparts the sense of details that aren't really there. It takes a lot of repeated viewings to determine if real detail is lost. In this clip, I really can't see anything missing.

Second, there are very few artifacts. Most temporal denoisers (which is also included in Neat, but for my money isn't very good) often leaves a sort of "screen door" effect on top of the video. That is, it looks like you are viewing the video through a screen door. As the camera pans, there is a sort of screen that seems to lag behind the motion. This particular sample doesn't have camera movement, so you can't tell if this problem is present, but I can tell you that the problem is far less apparent here than when using the Mike Crash noise reduction.

If someone ever wants to find a really good test video, I'd be happy to take a crack at showing the differences between Mike Crash (i.e., the VirtualDub Donald Graft temporal denoiser); Neat; fft3dFilter (an AVISynth filter), and Mdegrain2. And, of course, there is the "ultimate" noise reduction I wrote about in this forum almost five years ago when I first started doing this. It is still the best, but takes so much time that it only makes sense if you are doing something for the National Archives (it involves averaging multiple captures of the same VHS tape).

Finally, if you have noise dropouts (those white dots or streaks), I have a procedure for eliminating those.

Whenever people do noise reduction, especially when they first have a go at it, they are so thrilled to see the noise disappear that they don't realize how much violence has been done to the video. For me, noise reduction must follow the first line in the Hippocratic Oath: First, do no harm. Whatever noise reduction you use, look critically for contouring, screen-door effect, halos around bright objects, loss of fine details, color shifts, and block artifacts. I've seen them all with the dozens of noise reducers I've tried. No one noise reduction works with all videos, unfortunately.

John, thanks for posting your sample. The retained detail in your final edit is very impressive. I do still see a lot of color/moire patterns in blank areas even with the CNR at work, but you've helped me develop a more realistic idea of what is and isn't possible.

Andy, download the free trial of Neat Video and see what this plug-in can do. Most of us think the results are fantastic. (Use the Advanced options).

Jøran Toresen

[deleted]

I usually use "Dynamic Noise Reduction" filter by Mike Crash. It's free, it's a LOT faster than NeatVideo, a LOT more easy to use (no area sampling, no noise profile, just one slider) and it can get very very good results. The drawback is that if the correction is heavy it can introduce some motion artfacts (ghosting effects).

NeatVideo can get better results, but it's slower and a bit more difficult to use.

"I tried to find some VHS footage with really bad chroma noise, but I don't have any in the computer at the moment. However, I did have a really bad 6-hour VHS (it might have been S-VHS) video taped off the air many years ago. I have encoded it to MPEG-2 and uploaded it to the following site:

Noise Reduction Example

In this video, I provide four seconds showing the original capture, with no changes whatsoever"

-----------------------------

When I click on the link I get a page not found error.

This is NOT because of your site but due to a bad bug in Internet Explorer 8.

Note: When I first installed IE8 all was well but if I install anything that has its own player or another player such as VLC player then this problem will occur.

I've read a number of posts on the internet about it and apparently there are those who can no longer view wmv or any video that Windows Media Player is suppose to play automatically when this happens.

There were posts about registry hacks that might work and then again...

Also there was simply uninstalling the player and all would work again but then one no longer had the player and its benefits.

My web page depended on wmv files and I discovered this. Imagine finding out that when visitors go to your site and click on a link for a video and get a page not found error? They go away, say nothing and you wonder why no-one views your videos. At least no one with IE 8 and another player installed.

Solution I just started was to abandon anything that would play with Windows Media Player and went with FLV.

Not to hi-jack this thread but I thought you and others should know that it is quite possible that there are those who cannot view your videos and will not tell you about it!

Danny Fye
www.vidmus.com

there are those who can no longer view wmv or any video that Windows Media Player is suppose to play I cannot say anything about IE8, because I'm still using IE6 on all my computers. I guess I'm going to be forced to change to something else.

I just tried again, and the files play just fine. You should be able to right-click, save the file locally, and then play.

Finally, the file in I linked to above is an MPEG-2 file, not WMV, FWIW.

I just started a project today that involves transferring 23 hours of VHS video, spread out across 49 VHS-C and standard VHS tapes, much of it shot in low light at EP speed. It is a great test for all this stuff I've been posting about.

John, I came to this thread today because I captured an old VHS for a friend that seems to be a dub, so I tried CNR with your suggested settings and I can tell a big difference in many areas of the footage. The problem is, I followed your steps for making it work in Wax, and it just doesn't for me. Most times it crashes itself, some other times it takes Vegas down with it, but even the few times I managed to make it work, either I don't know how to use it or it's just no working as designed.

First of all, for some reason I have 5 Wax Plugins listed in the filters, "Wax Plugin 1" all the way to "Wax Plugin 5", and choosing any of them has the same result. The Wax window sometimes appear as it should, but sometimes there are missing elements. But when I get it to show normally, and I drag the CNR plugin from the VDub tab to HostMedia1, configure the plugin with your settings and close the Video Event FX window, I don't see any difference in the footage. I even play it while clicking on the bypass filter button over the monitor and I see no change at all. Even worse, next time I open the Event FX window again and I see the Wax window, the CNR plugin is gone from HostMedia1.

Am I not using this right, or is it because Wax is old and not compatible with Vegas 8 and 9? If it will work, I can install XP and Vegas 6 if it will work for sure, I just don't want to waste all that time if it doesn't work.

Are there are other ways of running CNR in Vegas without Wax?

Don't use Wax. I only gave instructions for that because someone asked how to make it work. The much better way is to use VFAPIConv. Search on my name and VFAPIConv and you'll find instructions on how you can read AVISynth scripts back into a second instance of Vegas. What you do is frameserve out of one instance of Vegas; point to that frameserved video in your AVISynth script; use VFAPIConv to convert the AVISynth script to an AVI file, and then open that AVI file in a second instance of Vegas where you can encode to anything you like.

More information here.

Thanks, John. But wouldn't it be easier to frameserve to VDub directly? Or would there be any problem in VDub opening the frameserved AVI from Vegas?

Right now, I'm having trouble even making Frameserver to work at all. On 9.0c it does nothing at all when I click the Save button, and it used to work fine in Vegas 8 but now, even though I uninstalled it completely, and then reinstalled it specifying the Vegas 8 folder, it doesn't even appear in the list of modules.

One thing I'd like to know is what happens if I color correct a part of the captured VHS where the white balance is off, let's say a bit on the warm side. If I run it through CNR after I color correct, will I not get the same results? I know that me correcting the white balance will alter somehow the colors in the color noise, but I don't know if it would still work or not. Can you tell me?

Thanks

I cannot say anything about IE8, because I'm still using IE6 on all my computers. I guess I'm going to be forced to change to something else.

I still have IE6 on all my computers as well, but the only reason it's on them is because Microsoft won't separate IE from it's operating systems (thereby ensuring eternal security problems).

Why don't you try Firefox and Opera? I like them equally well and I don't have to deal with IE.

John

But wouldn't it be easier to frameserve to VDub directly?Of course it would. I guess I'm confused about what you are actually trying to do. If you are willing to frameserve into Virtualdub and run CNR there, then there is absolutely no need to use either Wax or VFAPIConv. As to getting the frameserver to work in Vegas 9.x, there are some posts elsewhere in this forum about others who had problems and I think they found a way to make it work, although since I don't have 9.x myself, I can't comment.

As for what CNR does, I think you are confused on that as well. I guess it could be used for color correction, but I'm not sure how to use it that way. Its main purpose is to reduce chroma noise, something that is unrelated to color correction. It is particularly good at getting rid of the well-known red-bleed artifact of VHS video (and NTSC video in general).

Why don't you try Firefox and Opera?You are responding to something I posted almost three months ago. I didn't want to change because I didn't need to change. However, YouTube eventually refused to deal with my IE6 installation. So, I finally sat down with the one computer running Firefox and tried to figure out why Firefox was grabbing 99% of the CPU all the time (which is why I wasn't eager to upgrade despite many recommendations about how wonderful Firefox is). I never did figure out what was causing the problem, but went ahead and did a complete uninstall, purged the registry, and killed all the plugins, then installed the latest version of Firefox. The CPU problem was gone. I then backed up my main computer and installed Firefox 3.5. That was about a month ago. So far it has worked just fine and the various sites that were complaining about IE6 have shut up. As to whether Firefox is fantastically better than the old IE, I don't see or feel much difference. It definitely does load some pages faster; tabs are nice, but is used to open new links in a separate browser so all tabs really do is to move the links from the toolbar at the bottom of the screen to the toolbar within the browser.

Basically, I don't notice any substantial improvement, but it didn't break anything and I can continue to browse the Internet without having to learn anything new.

"But wouldn't it be easier to frameserve to VDub directly?"

Well, the reason for me to use Wax would be to be able to use CNR directly in the Vegas timeline, because from VDub I cannot encode to either Mpeg-2 or h.264, while I can from Vegas. I was confused when I posted before, I thought that VFAPIConv was to frameserve from Virtual Dub whatever was being output from it into a signpost avi file, but I think it's not after reading more about it. Then I saw that VDub has a frameserver, but I still haven't succeeded in using it with Vegas, since it creates a signpost vdr file instead of an avi one.

I didn't mean to imply that I wanted to use CNR for color correction. I meant, if I have a region in the tape that has the white balance off, and I correct it with Vegas' own Color Corrector, and then I run the result of that through CNR, will it still work, or will it mess up the colors?

That's SPAM for products unrelated to video. Reporting.