How to improve a VHS transfer to DVD?

ADinelt wrote on 7/17/2006, 5:09 PM
I am in the process of transferring several very old VHS tapes to DVD. I am using Vegas 5 for software, a Sony 4 head Hi-Fi VCR and a JVC Mini-DV camcorder for the analog to digital passthrough to the computer.

As I mentioned, the VHS tapes are very old and the quality is not the greatest. On top of that, they were recorded in EP mode. I seem to be getting some color and brightness flucuations, shearing (?) along the sides (most noticeable when vertical lines are present in the video).

Does anyone have any tips or suggestions on how to best clean up the video before putting it on DVD? Is there any software (preferably free, but open to suggestions) that would help?

Thank you in advance...
Al

Comments

Dan Sherman wrote on 7/17/2006, 5:45 PM
If the quality is poor to the point of distraction try B&W or sepia.
Beyond that you could play with colour curves, film grain etc.
But I'm not aware of any magic wand treatment.
farss wrote on 7/17/2006, 6:14 PM
Your Mini-DV camcorder lacks time base correction.
A D8 camcorder or deck that'll do passthrough will have this as will the Canopus ADVC-300. These can vary between making a spectacular improvement to none at all depending on just what's wrong with the tapes. I have and use both devices as the TBC in the D8 gear is different to the one in the ADVC-300.

PS, lots of very good info on this forum about this very topic, some of it from people who've done a huge amount of research, try the Search function for some excellent free advice.

Bob.
Opampman wrote on 7/17/2006, 6:19 PM
I don't know what you're doing, but, my work is normally for broadcast or cable. Recently, I have been making DVD's from VHS tapes for the kids to watch on a 3 week trip to NYC and Boston. I've been using the Mike Crash dynamic noise reduction filter. The renders are long but...WOW! I've never seen VHS look like this. Vegas and Mike Crash + DVD-A...what a combination! I also use the bitrate calculator referenced here in the past, and when you put them all together...how could you ask for more from a VHS? I remember the days with local 644 and Kodak 5254. Why didn't we jhave this stuff then????
johnmeyer wrote on 7/17/2006, 8:48 PM
I seem to be getting some color and brightness fluctuations, shearing (?) along the sides (most noticeable when vertical lines are present in the video).

As others have said, the shearing is best handled by trying to get a VHS deck that has a timebase correction circuit. This is the only way to fix this (you cannot deal with it in post production).

Other VHS artifacts (such as chroma smear, and residual "snow" noise) can be dealt with pretty well in post product. People often recommend using Mike Crash's adaptation of a VirtualDub denoising program:

Vegas Video Denoise for VHS

If you know VirtualDub, you can do lots of denoising in that program. I've posted some ideas here:

VirtualDub Filter Chain for VHS

If you know AVISynth, you can achieve some miraculous things with these scripts:

AVISynth VHS Denoise Scripts (multiple scripts

If you search for "VHS" under my name, you will find lots of threads that have recommendations from other users on things you can do. Since this is something I do a lot, I usually participate in these threads, so it's a quick way to do a search.