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Originally Posted by merchantord
I still plan on posting some footage however I think some of my issues were due to forgetting to alter some settings that would improve the quality of the image on playback.
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We haven't seen any video or images, so it's not possible to advise in any detail.
Quote:
Originally Posted by merchantord
I was wondering how I can go about re-centering the image about 7 pixels down to hide the overscan/head switching line without re-encoding. Is that possible?
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Not without re-encoding. I've posted a sample of one way of doing it, below.
Quote:
Originally Posted by merchantord
Quote:
Originally Posted by lordsmurf
Panasonic implementation of LSI was awful. The chip was poorly used.
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So you're saying the ES-20 is garbage then?
You know it's getting kind of frustrating trying to figure out what constitutes quality equipment even when you read postings in this forum. My JVC VCR is one of the bold listings on this site of recommended vcrs but elsewhere I'm informed it's an "okay" vcr! I read that the LSI chip is the one to look for in DVD recorders and Panasonic is listed amongst those having it and now I learn it's rubbish! |
No, not exactly rubbish, and lordsmurf qualified that judgment in later.
One is tempted to think that a VCR's dnr and a denosing chip like LSI will solve all problems. It will help make life easier, but it's no cure-all. Panasonic's LSI implementation was faulted in being somewhat too aggressive at times, especially with really dirty VHS source. At recording speeds longer than SP, Panasonic used that chip at low bitrates for 720x480 frames, but those bitrates are far too low for clean encoding at 720x480. Had Panny reduced the frame to 354x480, as some other recorders do for lower bitrates and longer recordings, a lower bitrate would look cleaner.
A while back I recorded a few retail tapes on my ES20. Mind you, these were fairly clean retail tapes, more pristine than a home-made VHS made on a typical home VCR. They sufficed at the time on my old CRT (which I still miss, darn it!), but LCD's simply don't tolerate noise the way a CRT could. Plasmas are a little better at it. But at big display sizes the usual VHS defects are greatly magnified.
What you've discovered is what pros and hobbyists have known for years, and what this forum has been harping about for just as long: capturing VHS directly to lossy codecs like MPEG, h264, DV, etc., without a pristine input signal illustrates that encoders don't like noise and are not equipped, even with LSI technology, to do the kind of cleanup that lossless capture affords. Fortunately I saved most of the tapes I recorded to the ES20 and reworked several as lossless captures.
However if you want to know what an ES20/LSI capture looks like with retail tape, I've included a brief capture below, as
MiracleOn34th_ES20.mpg. Admittedly it looks better than no LSI chip at all, but it left much to be desired. I haven't recaptured that specific movie: the DVD issue replaced it. For the original capture I used a Panasonic PV-9668 Dynamorphous VCR, a PA-100 proc amp, and my old ES20. I had no Macrovision problem with that tape, and the ES20's so-so built-in line tbc did creditable work. The PV-9668 did have a mild denoiser feature. But I think you can see from the mpg that the LSI chip wouldn't (and couldn't) cover everything. The mpg displays flicker, lots of noise on the walls in the background, some spots, dropouts, halos, and the kind of rather over filtered look that the LSI produced. Also keep in mind that LSi and VCR denoisers are primitive compared to what can be had today in software.
Below is an image from the ES20 recording that shows the kind of VHS problems that no VCR or built-in denoiser can handle. It shows three white veryical "flashes" along the top, one in the upper left, one in the top middle, and one at top right. Also note that the grain and textures in the background wall have a rough, spattered look for that one frame. Also, the frame isn't centered and there's plenty of bottom head-switching noise -- common problems with direct-to-DVD captures, along with blown-out highlights and murky shadow detail.
Below, showing that it's possible to take a so-so DVD capture and clean it up with Avisynth. But there will be some loss of detail due to cleanup of the original DVD compression loss and encoding artifacts that result from VHS noise. You can also see the beginnings of posterization effects from re-encoding the filtered original.
The reworked result is attached as
Miracle_ES20_Reworked.mpg. The original video is telecined. For cleanup, telecine was removed and then replaced during encoding as soft-coded 3:2 pulldown. For re-encoding I used a higher bitrate than the I did with original 4600kbps DVD.
Despite the "convenience" of recording directly to DVD, if you expect to do any VHS cleanup then lossless capture is the prescribedd choice for a multitude of reasons. Lossless isn't noiseless -- it won't be, not with VHS, but a VCR with some denoising ability can help shorten the work. Lossless comes with no compression loss or lossy compression artifacts. It's easier and more effective to clean up lossless captures than it is to repair a DVD capture.
The ES20 mpg might be clean enough to meet your needs. The old DVD looked, well,
OK on our 27" CRT. But that's a long way from what you could get by working with a lossless capture.
