#1  
01-06-2010, 10:28 AM
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LordSmurf,

I will more than likely be sending you tapes every few months to restore. This is 2 much work, and with these videos I have 2 many issues.

Since you introduced me to VirtualDub / Avidemux 2.5, it is leading to massive confusion. No idea what the effects do or how to set things up.

I would like to get a set pattern going to create a process to restore some of these videos.

VirtualDub creates massive files which creates a problem with room on my PC. My recordings are usually 1:30 to 2 hours, each recording basically fills up a disk. Plus it takes forever to save the files. Than I have no idea what filters to use.

Avidemux 2.5, has a lot of filters, but I don't know what they do, nor do I see a lot of difference when the project is saved. I don't even know what M-Peg to use TS, PS...What to set the video or audio.

The audio seems to be worse even on copy mode. Than I just tried to copy a mpeg file and than posted the frames next to each other in MovieEdit Pro 15, and the frames do not match. This happens a lot. With different programs saving my mpeg files. What this causes in a 2 hour video is a messed up audio track in the end.

Well, lets get to main point of this topic.

I am working on 2 many projects at once, each have issues what I am going to do is post pictures of the problems and any advise and settings to use in the filters will help out a ton.

I just go in a 2 betamax machines, these are old tapes from the 80ties. Who knows the reason, but the tapes are going bad. I haven't viewed them in years. The problem is like picture looks like it is getting eaten by decay. On long range shot it is very blurry. Close up or interviews it looks ok.


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  #2  
01-06-2010, 10:46 AM
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Here are more of the betamax issues.

This one I recorded to the SVHS player from Betamax and it has the same problems.

1st Picture is a close up shot and it looks amazing. Than the long range shots have a massive blur.


Attached Images
File Type: jpg problem2.jpg (42.8 KB, 16 downloads)
File Type: jpg problem3.jpg (45.4 KB, 13 downloads)
File Type: jpg problem4.jpg (41.6 KB, 13 downloads)
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  #3  
01-06-2010, 11:09 AM
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Broadcast Lines. How do u remove them?

The 1st picture is not that bad it was one that I worked on. I basically re-recorded this video than put it on DVD and did some basic edit work.

The other pictures, I can't really figure out. Parts of this tape has really good quality than in other parts it has this line problem. I think it was a problem with the cable company to be honest.


Attached Images
File Type: jpg N1.jpg (32.8 KB, 13 downloads)
File Type: jpg N2.jpg (36.0 KB, 9 downloads)
File Type: jpg N3.jpg (42.2 KB, 7 downloads)
File Type: jpg Same Broadcast Good Picture.jpg (51.4 KB, 8 downloads)
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  #4  
01-06-2010, 06:37 PM
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Preface: Still images can be very misleading, as many video errors are only seen (or best seen) when in motion. So it's possible to miss the errors, or errors, from mere JPEGs. But Ill give it my best shot anyway...

Problem 1 is not too terrible from the still image I see. It's very average to Betamax/VHS 240/250-line quality. At most, a detailer or resolution booster in the analog chain -- prior to capturing -- may help. I don't know what you can do a lot with this in post-processing in VirtualDub.

Pictures 2-4 still look fine. There is more blur present, but it may be optical blur, meaning the cameras in use were inferior (or are inferior to what we're used to today). Same solution as above, pre-capture hardware processing could help with this. The built-in sharpening in the Panasonic AG-1980 may help, although it can be noisy compared to a detailer since it has no anti-noise filter to counteract the sharpening processing.

The color in those above signals needs tweaking, and I see definite chroma noise. Again, this is best done in hardware. You can tweak the color in VirtualDub, using one of the basic color filters for saturation, but Colormill may work better (but be aware Colormill can mess with interlacing).

VirtualDub denoise will help take out at least half of the herringbone noise (the "N" images), but you'll need to test various other temporal and intra-frame filters to remove the rest of that noise WITHOUT harming the "good" signal portions. I recently dealt with a tape like this, took almost an hour of testing, but it came out good in the end. I forget the setting right now, a mix of Temporal Cleaner, Static NR and the MSU noise filters. Processing is slow .. very sllllllooooooowwwwwwwww .... takes many, many hours, even a quad core would often only process a few frames per second. A 2-hour video may take 1-2 days of non-stop encoding.

When you restore videos, you also need tons of space. The smallest system here has just under 1TB internally. Some systems have as much as 6TB for processing. For a 2-hour video, you're looking at 30-40GB/hour for lossless HuffYUV, or 75-80GB/hour for uncompressed YUY2. You'll need more space for the source captures, and the subsequent re-encodes to MPEG. If space is an issue, It's just another good reason to outsource the projects. You'll spend just as much buying multiple hard drives as you will paying for those tapes to get professional worked on.

I don't see any need for Avidemux here.

Curious what you're using for MPEG conversion, too -- not all encoders are equal, some will butcher the quality pretty bad.

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  #5  
01-07-2010, 03:55 AM
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The pictures, pretty much looks like what the video looks like during playback from the vcrs.

On the betamax issue, I found if I turn super beta off, it takes out some of the noise in the picture and the quality has been improved. (It is still not perfect) This was in the manual which I just read.

Those picture above with the blur were re-recorded to a Panasonic AG-1980. However it was with super beta turned on. I set the sharpen button a few notches below full. The beta machine has a sharpen button.

The VHS tapes in the Panasonic AG-1980, is really bad for sound quality it picks up to many crackles in the video and than I need to switch it to off running the video with no speaker channels and a massive hiss. One way to get around this is to re-record the video to that machines playing with the sound settings on the AG-1980 before. Out of the 2000 VHS & Beta tapes that I have only a few actually have tru Hi-FI or stereo sound.

Those Blur recording were actually PAL video signals that ABC converted back to NTSC for video playback. The BBC videos of these events are always so much better.

Professional Work? Well to be honest I don't trust many of them or even the local shops that say they do this kind of work. They are just coping a vhs tape to DVD and creating a menu an a crap copy of the video. From your posts you have the detail and desire to actually improve the tapes. That is the difference.

I actually feel that I shouldn't have to upgrade to Premium Membership. The reason simple, I have so many VHS tapes that need to be fixed, the work flow that will be sent to you is enough to cover the $20 fee an than some. I would be more interested in buying a two week membership to your studio to kick out some of these videos.

Why Mpeg? Because that is what is basically on the DVD. Those massive AVI File, I don't know what the heck to do with them. All I want is this stuff on DVD.


Why Avidemux, it has the same filters as VirtualDUB, at least I thought so, it says it does, and it encodes them faster.

Last edited by deter; 01-07-2010 at 03:58 AM.
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  #6  
01-07-2010, 12:46 PM
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Certain models of SuperBeta decks will definitely help in getting the most out of those tapes. Which model are you using?

Did I read that right -- you've going from Beta to VHS an then to digital? Just skip the VHS step if you can, run a detailer between the Beta deck and digital converter/recorder. The Beta's sharpen may, too -- it really depends on how it compares to detailers and the Panasonic sliders.

The AVI files keep quality during all the intermediate steps, do to lack of lossy compression. MPEG is lossy compression. Ideally, you only want to convert to MPEG at the final video work stage, just before authoring/burning the new DVD.

For allowable videos, yes, referred to us for the professional services. (The competitors out there -- many of which you should not trust -- can fend for themselves.) Indeed, a good customer can get a Premium account included with their projects.

PAL<>NTSC conversion does explain blurring, absolutely. It's almost guassian in nature. Not a typical VHS "motion blur" (intra-frame) or smearing from luminance or chrominance damage -- or both.

I would suggest Avidemux doesn't have as good a filter base. It's admittedly been a few years now since I used it any, but in my defensive it looks pretty much the same. I'll install it, just for fun, see what it's current capabilities are. It's free, after all, so why not?!

Replied to your PM, too.

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  #7  
01-07-2010, 12:46 PM
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Certain models of SuperBeta decks will definitely help in getting the most out of those tapes. Which model are you using?

Did I read that right -- you've going from Beta to VHS an then to digital? Just skip the VHS step if you can, run a detailer between the Beta deck and digital converter/recorder. The Beta's sharpen may, too -- it really depends on how it compares to detailers and the Panasonic sliders.

The AVI files keep quality during all the intermediate steps, do to lack of lossy compression. MPEG is lossy compression. Ideally, you only want to convert to MPEG at the final video work stage, just before authoring/burning the new DVD.

For allowable videos, yes, referred to us for the professional services. (The competitors out there -- many of which you should not trust -- can fend for themselves.) Indeed, a good customer can get a Premium account included with their projects.

PAL<>NTSC conversion does explain blurring, absolutely. It's almost guassian in nature. Not a typical VHS "motion blur" (intra-frame) or smearing from luminance or chrominance damage -- or both.

I would suggest Avidemux doesn't have as good a filter base. It's admittedly been a few years now since I used it any, but in my defensive it looks pretty much the same. I'll install it, just for fun, see what it's current capabilities are. It's free, after all, so why not?!

Replied to your PM, too.

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  #8  
01-07-2010, 02:23 PM
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The beta machine that I picked up is an SL-HF860D, from my research it seems to be one of the better machines. They didn't make that many betamax's, after this was released.

So mpeg files are like jpeg files, meaning u clean something up, save it and the colors get merged. It is not 1 to 1 copies.

When I pulled the data from a DVD it is mpeg, so I thought, just keep the file the same, save the projects only a few times, than send it back to DVD.

"PAL NTSC conversion does explain blurring, absolutely. It's almost guassian in nature."

The BBC went on strike that week also. I just tested this out. It was back in 1989, the 1st two days of coverage I have on VHS, the picture has lot more noise in it so u can't see the blur, however it is the same. The 3rd and 4th days are on betamax and have a lot more blur that is cause the picture is clearer.

Again I haven't watched these tapes in years. I thought maybe aging of the tape had a factor in the quality.

Because these tapes are so old, I started rewinding and fast forwarding them before the playback, does that help?

In 2004, I got a Sony VAIO Desktop with XP it came with this program called gigi pockets. So I tested it out and recorded a few things to it. However when I burned them to DVD I saw the picture quality to look almost computerized.

This is weird but I played them back on a DVD player and recorded it back to a DVD recorder. The picture got better, it didn't look as computerized.

I have a few programs on my PC that can burn DVD's. However sometimes they still look computerized.


DVD Architect is one of the programs I have. Cyberlink I tried once and it was the worst thing I ever saw.

The goal is simple, clean the picture, clean the sound, and send it back to DVD, and not have the screen look computerized with the digital screen blocks. (This is the main reason why I avoided using the PC for any type of video work) Everything prior to 2 months ago was done with no computers just hardware.

I went out and got a hauppauge PCI card, I don't know which one, the highest price one at the store, it had 2 cards. Anyway recorded a video than went to DVD with it and it looked computerized so I took the card back to the store.

20 feet away u can't see the issues, however, from 2 feet u can, and those computerized blocks (different than the analog blocks, drive me nuts) What do you do to get DVD quality on these DVD's?

Last edited by deter; 01-07-2010 at 02:27 PM.
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  #9  
01-08-2010, 04:08 AM
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Here are some more pictures of issues with videos.

Is is possible to send you videos (large files) than have you do the post production edits, explain what you did and than step by step process of how to do the same edits to the entire file?

Can I send you the clips / entire file, (via the internet) we are looking at about 4.5 gigs for an mpeg2 ripped dvd.

I'll pay for this service/training


This is not a project that I am working on, I just pulled this video for an example: The video itself was recorded from a VHS tape in the 80ties than copied to Betamax

Picture 1A ---- As u can see the picture has some noise in it. It is not terrible but if it was fixed the picture would look a lot better

Picture 2A ---- Image blur around an object in the video, this happens a ton with VHS and Beta videos.

Picture 3A ---- An error in the video, it may be 1 to 10 frames. I tried this on another video were I pulled the frames out of the video, did my edits to the picture in coral paint shop and replaced them and it looked ok. (Is that how u do this) I can restore pictures with the best of them. This can take forever to do, so sometimes I just cut that part out of the video.

Picture 4A ---- Digital Noise or Digital Smir in the image, once this goes to DVD, you can pick this up from close viewing range. All the images tend to smir and have lots of movement in the video. Nothing is moving to a set pattern, it is just all over the place and the blocks in the video do not match.

You can't always see this in a video, but when u get certain backdrops or background colors it can be picked up pretty easy.

Picture 5A ---- Digital Smir or Blocks, I pulled out the Smir that is visible in the picture and made it bigger. Once this goes to DVD you can really see it and it looks terrible, the PC for some reason kind of hides this.


Attached Images
File Type: jpg 1a.jpg (11.0 KB, 11 downloads)
File Type: jpg 2a.jpg (28.5 KB, 6 downloads)
File Type: jpg 3a.jpg (27.3 KB, 4 downloads)
File Type: jpg 4a.jpg (22.3 KB, 3 downloads)
File Type: jpg 5a.jpg (19.4 KB, 5 downloads)
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  #10  
01-15-2010, 04:30 PM
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I'll get back to you on this soon. Will write back (and PM) when ready.

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  #11  
02-17-2010, 11:29 AM
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Not answered this long one, in the interest of answering all your short ones in the past month. Is this still something you're needing/wanting answered?

Maybe long-term question, after other issues are resolved?

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