VHS to DVD conversion problem/filters?
 

Hi,

I am having a problem with VHS to DVD conversion that I am hoping someone might be able to offer suggestions for.

Currently, I capture via a Sony camcorder/IEEE 1394 using Scenalyzer Live and I encode via an Avisynth script opened directly in TMPGenc. Here is a sample script:

clip1 = AVISource("d:\video\capture\clip1.avi")
clip2 = AVISource("d:\video\capture\clip2.avi")
clip3 = AVISource("d:\video\capture\clip3.avi")
clip4 = AVISource("d:\video\capture\clip4.avi")

trim1 = clip1.Trim(137,5193).FadeIn2(30).FadeOut(30)
trim2 = clip2.Trim(136,18902).FadeIn(30).FadeOut(30)
trim3 = clip3.Trim(88,14503).FadeIn(30).FadeOut(30)
trim4 = clip4.Trim(144,1089).FadeIn(30).FadeOut2(30)

complete_video = trim1 ++ trim2 ++ trim3 ++ trim4

process_video = complete_video.FieldDeinterlace().Crop(24,2,-10,-4).AddBorders(0,3,0,3). BilinearResize(352,480).Levels(8,.97,251,0,252).Te mporalSoften(1,12,12).SpatialSoften(1,7,7)

return process_video

Basically, I am very satisfied with the overall quality of the finished product. It is an older VHS source, so I am not expecting miracles, but the one problem I am noticing is that in scenes where there is low motion and bright light in the background, the image appears to "flicker" or seem to shake or move in slow motion for the lack of a better description. Another way to describe it would be to imagine a person moving in the foreground and there is a window with curtains in the background and when the person moves, the curtains also appear to move or shake, giving the illusion of flickering. It is definitely not a field order problem. I am wondering if it is a problem with the temporal/spatial soften filters. It's a very frustrating problem, because aside from it the image is very clean. I suppose I could also be hoping for too much from my VHS conversions.

Any suggestions?

Thanks!

You might want to try CNR2, it's a good and fast chroma denoiser, meant specifically for analog TV and VHS captures.

I don't remember the URL right now but you should find it by searching the doom9 forum for it. The plugin for Avisynth 2.5 is v2.41, fixed by Donald Graft and for Avisynth 2.0x it's v2.2 IIRC.

Thanks for the tip! I just downloaded the file. Do you think that this should be used in place of one of the other filters, or in addition to them?

I don't think there's any need to replace any of the filters as CNR2 only affects chroma. It's very effective against rainbow artifacts and dot crawl too.

I have been doing more testing and analyzing the results and I think a more appropriate description of the problem would be that during scenes where there is motion, the motion almost appears to be moving in "slow motion" or flickering, it may be a problem with light, but it is hard to tell. Could it possibly be an issue with the DV codec? Could saving the captured .avi (DV) to a new .avi using Huffyuv before encoding provide a better source with which to encode to mpeg?