Remove wavy lines going down video?
 

I'm getting these wavy lines from this camcorder tape. Is there any way to remove it with a filter on VirtualDub? I tried multiple different scenarios and no after production was working. Is this footage even fixable? It seems that the way lines only stay for video shot in this location, the rest of the tape seems to be fine. It's just the first minute or so.

Attached uncompressed AVI video.

Below is my setup...
Sony DCR-TRV840 NTSC Camcorder -> DataVideo TBC-1000 -> ATI TV Wonder 600 USB -> VirtualDub with HuffYUV.

Either the tape was mistracking during the original recording, or the tape has since been damaged. There's not much you can do about it. Try a different camera and see what happens. Or try fast winding the tape all the way to the end (without playing!), then fast rewind back to start to even out any tape bends or ripples in the windings. If the tape was recorded that way, not much can fix it.

-- merged --

After a couple of hours of experiment, I managed a partial fix. Defintely partial! Well, at least you can see what's happening. Maybe something like motion tracking in AfterEffects could yield better results, who knows?

I used two steps. The Step1 .avs script tweaks levels and runs a stabilizer function. The results were saved as a lossless intermediate avi. The Step2 .avs runs a slew of functions from one of lordsmurf's scripts augmented with several functions and interpolation routines, most of it from doom9 threads. Script 2 requires a ton of plugins. I think the scripts tell you what a daunting task this is. Results are in the attached mp4.

I hit my forehead when I I saw your post! (With the short time I have) ...There may have been Strong EMP or RFI electrical interference at, or near the location of the original video taping location, could have been high power electric transmission lines close to ground, or even an idling vehicle, or original camera power plugged into car charger while recording? ..Just a thought from a user who has been plagued with radio frequency interference for a long time!

Nah, it wasn't EMP or RFI. That just bad tracking and/or bad quality tape.

It looks like sanlyn used my NR/dropout script (edit: yep, re-read his post), as that's what I also get almost frame by frame. What he's done is probably as good as it will ever get. Maybe add some stabmod() to remove any image bouncing (edit: which he did, but I didn't on my quickie test).