Advice on capture setup for NR, deinterlace?
 

I have my setup for my small VHS conversion project mostly drawn up. I'm stuck on one or two questions and I'd appreciate anyone who looks at it giving advice if they spot any obvious problems.

PANASONIC NV-HS830B-S VCR
S-Video cable to ->
TBC (exact model should be decided by next week)
S-Video cable to ->
SAA7133HL S-Video capture card.

The capture PC is a Win XP machine running Virtual dub. I've allotted 25GB per hour of captured footage. (there's a guide on here for that which I can follow)

The capture PC will transfer the captured files across the network to my main PC. My main PC will then process the video and save it as H.265.

The last bit I'm stuck on. Should I use Virtual dub for this? I want the best possible deinterlacing, and just a bit of a noise reduction. I've seen lordSmurfs preloaded Virtual Dub version, but there doesn't seem to be a guide on configuring this. I'm not looking to tweak every video to perfection, just a small bit of noise reduction.

Best possible deinterlacing = QTGMC in Avisynth. Lordsmurf recommends Hybrid for this. Alternatively, I've seen a long YouTube tutorial that walks through installing & setting up Avisynth & QTGMC.

Hybrid. Run the installer. Done.

Is this the tool you're talking about? https://www.videohelp.com/software/Hybrid

I assume it is, as I notice it supports QTGMC.

Is there a guide on setting this up for VHS capture conversion?

On another note, I was bidding on eBay on a decent Kramer TBC and the seller took down the auction at the last minute :<
Just said f*uck it and bought Panasonic ES10 for £20 :D

Also, does anyone have any good examples of royalty free test footage I can use to test my setup? Is there an easy way to fudge a badly made tape so I can test this stuff?

Hybrid = http://www.selur.de/

No. But it's on my to-do list. There's really not much different for captured sources, using Huffyuv input, and FF-Huffyuv output. But the tool has a learning curve, just nowhere as steep as Avisynth. And I actually prefer to use Hybrid Vapoursynth for only QTGMC; and the Vapoursynth learning curve (not in Hybrid) is worse than Avisynth.

That may have been a mistake to bid, a blessing to lose. There is only 1 confirmed good model, and a 2nd suspected good model. Do not buy any Kramer TBC and expect it to be useful. Several Kramer versions are confirmed unwanted/bad.

But you have to realize 2 things:

1. ES10/15 are not TBCs, and only contain some line(ish) TBC functionality. No frame TBC. The unit has some weak frame sync (not frame sync TBC), but it's mostly useless beyond internal DVD conversion. The line function is active on passthrough, but line TBC is not enough. No more than a S-VHS VCR with TBC is not enough. But worse than the S-VHS VCR, the ES10/15 will choke on both anti-copy (artificial video errors) and false anti-copy (natural video errors).

2. The ES10/15 have posterization (color palette compression, resulting in banding, especially noticeable in gradients), and NR that never truly turns "off". The "off" NR is just weaker. However ES10/15 NR is strong than JVC NR, and certain folks already gripe about it being "too strong". The ES10/15 is especially heavy handed with the temporal NR.

That won't work.

@lordSmurf

Cheers on the Hybrid link. I'll get to work on getting my head around that!

I had seen an earlier comment by you (many years earlier!) on the ES10 and was aware that it's not great. I'm just not able (financially) to get a good TBC at the minute, so I had to make do with what I can I get. It's possible to get some of the lower end TBCs for <£100 on eBay.co.uk (like a For A FA-300P), but it's tough. I'm not especially clear that these lower end TBCs would be much better than the Panasonic ES10 with a VHS source either.
I'm going to have to settle with the ES10 being better than nothing. It should at least help stabilise the input to the non-recommended capture card I'm using (SAA7133HL based card). I am a bit dismayed at what looks like a loss of colour (like you've described point 2) from this test video I found on Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9_xue8-gGLM
I wasn't aware that there's NR constantly on either, I was hoping to get the video as raw as possible to the PC.
With all that said, I want to get this backup project off the ground before those tapes spend another decade in the attic.

I have 0 commerical tapes that I'm aware of that I need to back up, so I'm not worried about copy protection!

Considering my old setup was:
old Sharp VHS VCR -> €8 Composite to HDMI - > HDMI capture

I've certainly improved on the original plan, but I just can't afford to go any further financially with this at present.

It's also worth noting, that no one's actually sure what's on those tapes in the attic! They might be full of junk, or even just all degraded to nothing. I'm waiting until I have a setup before even touching them. So spending more money could be just money lost on eBay fees...

Agreed. :congrats:

Have you tested this LordSmurf? I'm not seeing any evidence of Macrovision on any DVD I try and I'd assume it's the ES10 removing it.