Capture, restoration quality opinion? (sample clip)
 

Hi all,

I've been working on building a workflow (thank you @Lordsmurf) and slowly getting round to some VHS capture, current set up below. I've attached some sample clips (apologies the video is a clip of the Pope's funeral, only tape I have that isn't family videos). No filters have been applies to this, clip has been trimmed and Huffy compression applied for ease of upload.

I am looking for your expert opinion re the capture, is it decent? Are there any obvious issues before I start capturing further?

In terms of restoration I am thinking maybe some colour adjustment for my VHS-C family videos and deinterlacing. I'm messing round with VirtualDub filters, I haven't had a chance to check out AviSynth but know it's an option. I appreciate restoration will vary widely on the actual footage but based on the attached clips what would be your initial thoughts if it was to be restored?

Any thoughts are kindly appreciated!

Current Setup
Video Standard: PAL, 25 FPS, resolution: 720 x 576, all capture via S-Video
VHS: Panasonic NV-HS1000 (TBC on, 'Picture sharpness' set half way between soft and sharp)
TBC: KeyWest Big Voodoo TBC 10 (all proc amp settings set to default)
Capture card: Pinnacle 710-USB via S-Video
PC: Windows XP for Capture, Windows 10 for Editing and all other activities
At present I capture clips in uncompressed RGB/YCbCr (Virtualdub default) as I am ok for storage but may start to use Huffy as I capture full tapes

Seems fine. :congrats:

Nobody cares if you post clips of family. Literally nobody. It will always be videos of people that look nothing like that anymore, or have since passed. This is about you getting help with your videos. The idea of "privacy" is sometimes taken way too far. "OMG, you put me on the internet!" (Meanwhile, has photos plastered all over Facebook. It's amusingly stupid.)

Why?

Hybrid also integrates a lot of Avisynth and Vapoursynth, great for basic needs.

On tablet now, can't look yet. But wanted to reply some initial thoughts. :)

The capture is OK.

Some strong halo present sometime, try to play with "Picture sharpness" setting in the VCR:
Attachment 15501

LineTBC sometimes not properly correcting straigth vertical line, but is not invasive, and you cannot fix it with the same hardware anyhow:
Attachment 15502

Not much restoration needed (which is good); a generic deinterlace + denoise + sharpening in AviSynth
produces this: https://imgsli.com/MTE5MDEy

Thanks @lollo2 for feedback and images. Will look at sharpness on VCR, when increased to max sharpness felt it was very harsh at some stages in the video but might be a better balance to be had

In terms of lineTBC, is there any hardware you would recommend? (I thought this was more relating to interlacing issue, how do you distinguish this?)

Thanks again! Some more playing around in order!

The opposite. Reduce sharpness in th VCR to decrease halos.

Not really. Your VCR is ok. You can try to add a Panasonic ES10/E15 or similar, having stronger correction, but you have to disable the lineTBC of the VCR and probably remove the frameTBC later in the chain. Better to stay with your workflow, the "wiggle" is marginal and tape dependent.

Interlacing is jaggies geometries (especially in the borders)
Attachment 15506

while a bad/no lineTBC correction means the vertical lines not beeing straight: https://forum.videohelp.com/threads/...bo#post1882662

Great thanks, hopefully it was mostly the tape, I've yet to start any capture of my VHS-C tapes, be interesting to see of it carries over. If its not too bad I may just live with it. Main purpose is to capture and preserve family videos so while I would like the best results possible, I'd be fooling myself to chase perfection

Ha very true! It was mostly because it was the closet tape to hand, hoping to start on the VHS-C tapes in the next few days, will post samples at that stage.

I thought it looked better after seeing the deinterlace filter before and after on virtualdub. Maybe it actually looks worse to a trained eye?

Thanks for reply no rush, any feedback is much appreciated!

VirtualDub deinterlace will look worse, as it uses old Yadif at best (not QTGMC, the current best).

The blacks are a little crushed. the whites are also possibly blown but it's hard to tell for sure:

Attachment 15508

Thanks for reply, what software are you using to generate that image histogram?

traal used AviSynth:

There is a bit of accumulation on the left side of the histogram (black levels), but it may be appropriate for that shot.
A clear situazione where blacks are crushed is when you have a "long" vertical line at the left, at or near Y=16.

I'm just curios to what codec is used for the attached samples in the original post?

huffyuv-multithreaded

Strange choice, I always prefer the original, especially for capture.

You can open it with FFmpegSource2

I captured in uncompressed RGB / YCbCr and file sizes were massive as expected! I'm still messing around and discovering as I go. I compressed using huffyuv-MT post capture for upload to here

So is original huffyuv compression sufficient? Any pro or con either way other than what software you can use to view the compressed file?

There is no reason to capture uncompressed. Capture YUV 4:2:2 with a lossless codec, such as HuffYUV. It is always better to use original not hacked codec, rather than a mod for multi threaded or for CCE encoder: those changes are meant for functionality outside the capturing goal, and imo better do not risk to have a broken primary capturing function

And the only way to know 100% for sure that there's no black clipping is to have NO pixels at y=16 (no pixels because y=16 is where all those clipped pixels go). You can always adjust levels after capture.