Color bleed, oversatured reds on VHS tapes?
 

Hey everyone,

After taking in a lot of great advice on this forum, I think I've been able to restore many of my basketball tapes to a good level (see attached sample). I am having trouble with one particular aspect, however...

If you look around the half-court line on this sample clip, you will see that the red/orange is 'bleeding' into the court. Can anyone provide any suggestions on how to fix this?

Many thanks!!

Your chroma is offset by a few pixels. Your need either ChromaShift in Avisynth, of the SP version of x64+ Avisynth.

It's not just the line with slight bleeding (actually offset).

All tapes have some bleeding, even when aligned well. But it's worse with offset.

Post-shift, look at VirtualDub CCD (Cam Color Denoise) filter, remove residual chroma noise. But be careful, with all the tiny crowd details, you may lose some color in there as well. So be conservative with the settings, not aggressive.

EDIT:

- What capture card did you use for this?
- What is the entire workflow, exact devices? VCR > etc > capture card

If you are using Avisynth, there are several filters at your disposal. The video you uploaded is progressive, but I assume you still have the interlaced version. Try it on the interlaced version first. If so, you can see if FixChromaBleeding(), Cnr2(), as well as MergeChroma with aWarpSharp. You can use the MergeChroma with aWarpSharp twice to see if it helps. SmoothUV() also seems to have an effect, but I did not play with it. Here are some examples of how it is used, but not necessarily best for your video:

If you are only using VirtualDub, chroma noise reduction may also help, but I find it much easier to use in Avisynth, ironically.

I don't like Cnr2 much, CCD (VirtualDub) is better. Cnr2 is always weak, too temporal, somewhat smeary. In the situations where I'd want to use Cnr2 (not this thread, temporal needs), I found KNLmeansCL much better.

I don't think I've ever run FixChromaBleeding(). sanlyn likes it (where is he anyway? I'm getting concerned).

MergeChroma with aWarpSharp ... eh, maybe.

All good suggestions. :)

Thanks; I never had much luck with FixChromaBleeding, but it's worth a shot. I have had better results with the Mergechroma +aWarpSharp routine that others posted on here in the past.

Yes, maybe you should send him a PM. I recall a few months he wrote that he was quite busy helping people in his community during this time, so that could be a possible reason for his absence.

Then again, if an elderly, obese orange whose diet consists mostly of fast food could beat COVID, perhaps my fears of the virus need re-adjustment :confused: