Any way to fix horizontal dropout/tracking jitter?
 

I saw this thread:

http://forum.videohelp.com/threads/2...mple-included)

And while my issues are generally light tracking blur, I wondered if there were better filters out there.

Any thoughts?

I just re-wrote an Avisynth filter for attacking jitter. And I have several script option. I've had very good success, sometimes eliminating ugly jitter 100%. I have two current projects, and have been working on them for a month now.

Post a sample clip.

Attached as mpeg to avoid the lossless file size

There's not any visual jitter in that clip.

There's some technical jitter -- timebase errors -- but there's really nothing that can be done about that in software. This need to be corrected in hardware, meaning a TBC is required. Not an external one, but one in an S-VHS/D-VHS VCR. Certain DVD recorder TBC-like sync filters also work.

The frame roll (1 frame) must be replaced manually with an adjacent frame.

The tracking error cannot be eliminated. It can be reduced to varying degree with filters, but it's also best replaced by nearby frames.

What's mostly left are some dropouts, and those can be removed with a median filter in VirtualDub.

The better option is to try another deck for capture. It's why we have at least a dozen here, and each ones has its strengths and quirks. And several of them track tapes differently. Unless the tape is just entirely misaligned (the fault of the recording deck), we can usually track it eventually.