Best way to restore and convert captured footage?

[Patrick_S]

Now that I've captured most of my families VHS tapes, I wanted to to convert the large uncompressed .avi files into a smaller deinterlaced web-video format and cut them them by event. So I can easily share the content with my family members on a USB/external drive and/or online cloud (or something like that...).

I was planning on doing this in Premiere Pro, but I didn't see that option suggested on this forum. This got me thinking: Is this the correct next step? Or do I need to do some restoration on the footage first, but if so, what and how?

I've seen people discussing AviSynth here, but I have never worked with this, so I'm completely clueless on this. Hopefully you guys can give some tips.

To summarise it, I guess my questions are:
- Do I need to restore my footage? If so, what kind of restoration would you suggest and what's the best way to do that? I think the footage needs to be deinterlaced?
- What's the best way to splice and convert the footage into a web-video format like .mp4? I was thinking of Premiere Pro.

I've added a few samples of my footage. I've also seen other people sharing the following information:

Current Setup
Video Standard: PAL_B, 25 FPS, resolution: 720 x 576, all capture via S-Video
VHS: JVC SR-VS30EK
TBC: Green AVT-8710
Capture card: Pinnacle 710-USB via S-Video
PC: Windows 10 (capture), macOS preferably for editing.

I've used HuffyUV in VirtualDub to capture the footage.

[BarryTheCrab]

Sample 3 looks like it needs a recapture, with some tearing relief from a PAL ES-10 or 15.
I also see the samples are both RGB, not YUV, and uncompressed, not HuffYUV or Lags, etc.

[Patrick_S]

Quote:

Originally Posted by BarryTheCrab

Sample 3 looks like it needs a recapture, with some tearing relief from a PAL ES-10 or 15.
I also see the samples are both RGB, not YUV, and uncompressed, not HuffYUV or Lags, etc.

Haha well, that's a good start. So I didn't even capture it properly. - These are the steps I followed when I started capturing:

- Go to capture mode (AVI)
- Select Device (Pinnacle USB)
- Put Video in Preview Mode
- Select Capture pin:

• PAL_B
• Frame rate: 25.000
• YUY2
• 720 x 576

- Check capture filter:

• Videodecorder also PAL_B
• Videoversterker: Default (standard)

- Compression: Huffyuv
- raw audio format: 48 stereo (16-bit)
- Check capture timing:

• enable main options (drop and insert)
• Sync audio to video

- Set capture file
- capture > capture video

Where did I do wrong?

And how do I fix the tearing? I thought it was because the tape was old, so impossible to fix.

[Hushpower]

Something's cock-eyed somewhere, Patrick!

If you have HUFFYUV selected on the Compression screen, it should capture as that.

I have one of those 710-USBs (from Lordsmurf). My driver version (on the initial Capture Filter screen) is 4.0.46.0.

As for the tearing, this is a common problem with poor quality recordings. The TBC in your VCR in most cases, I understand, should deal with it, but sometimes not.

Try capturing with the VCR TBC switched off (leave the 8710 ON and in the chain). If no joy, try taking the 8710 out and trying the VCR by itself, VCR TBC on and off.

If none of those options fix the tearing, you can try another VCR or if that's not feasible, the sure-fire way of fixing it is to acquire any of the following (these are PAL boxes): Panasonic ES-10, ES-15, EH-55, EH-57. You then put them in the flow after the VCR, before the 8710. They can cause slight overbrightening, but that's acceptable if it means fixing the tearing. There are a few videos on YT showing the effect that those units have on bad video: search for ES-10 TBC.

[Patrick_S]

Thanks for your reply Hushpower! I've looked into it and it seems like when I cut these samples to show in this thread I converted the files to RGB somehow. The original full captured files have the HUFF YUV codec thankfully.

The tearing also only seems to happen on only a few parts of 2 different recordings (which also seems to be the oldest footage, so I guess there's a connection there...)

I will try to see if the tearing will stop with the suggestions you mentioned.

As for the other recordings I have, what restoration would you suggest (I guess based on the 'videoband' sample, or do I need to re-upload some samples with the HUFF YUV codec?)? Does it need to be deinterlaced? And what would be the best way to do that?

[Patrick_S]

So a few months later and I finally tried capturing the footage again without having the TBC from my VCR turned on. It does look like it fixes the tearing on the footage. So thanks for the tip! But I'm unsure when turning it off affects the overall quality of the capture. In some shots it seems like actually having the TBC off makes the picture looks better, in others it looks less sharp. So now I'm not sure. In most cases you would consider turning the TBC from the VCR on, right?

[aramkolt]

You are correct that in most cases you want the VCR's line TBC turned on unless you are using an ES10/15 which does the same thing and some more. Issue is that the line TBC also has digital noise reduction which will remove some details and "film grain effect" no matter what. My understanding is that it temporarily converts the analog to digital and then back to analog so that it can re-align the start of each line, and you'll get some detail loss when doing that no matter what method, possibly other than with "VHS decode" which records the raw RF signal at a high bandwidth and processes it later - that only would have one analog to digital conversion.

Since eventually most want to convert to a more portable format, removing some "noise/detail" at capture makes for less software noise reduction required later. Benefit of the line TBC is that it's going to preserve the geometry a lot better (straight lines look straight, edges of objects smooth, and no tearing effects) - unless it's a second generation tape (tape recording off of the original tape shot on say a camcorder) where there would be amplifications of errors with each recording that you can't really fix maybe other than with some sort of image stabilization software.

If you want to watch something fairly entertaining as to how errors pile up each time a copy of a tape is made from a different copy, have a look at this (and yeah, it's Rick Astley): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G8GOcB6H0uQ

Ironically the original Hifi playback isn't even there all the way through the first playback, so audio was kind of doomed to begin with lol

[Patrick_S]

Thanks for your response! Interested to learn more about how the VCR's TBC seems to work. I would argue most of the tapes I have are second generation (a recording off an original tape shot on a camcorder), though I'm not always sure. You mention image stabilization software could help in these cases. My VCR does have a video stabilizer, which you can turn on when you don't use the TBC function. But I've seem to read on this forum that using that option seems to cause more errors than fix them?

I've now tried some capturing with VCR's TBC on and off, and overall I feel like having it turned on is more preferable. Though sometimes you do seem to lose a bit of colour and detail.

I've also noticed that the tearing I had on some tapes isn't fixed when I put the VCR's TBC off. And with the the TBC turned off some parts of one one tape also seem to lose colour (shifting from color to black and white in some frames). Will the ES10/15 fix this in addition to fixing the tearing? Or will I just have to choose the lesser evil?