How to get rid of "ghost images" when capturing?
 

Hi all! I'm a bit of a "n00b" when it comes to video capturing, so figured I'd post my question here.

I'm having problems with "ghost images", which I believe is either called frame interpolation or blended deinterlace. It's as if an extra frame is created that's inbetween two frames, and you can see the ghostly outline of the frame that just was or is about to come up. Very noticeable if there's a lot of movement.

I capture VHS tapes using the Elgato Video Capture and the software that came with it. My VCR is a LG RC388 (PAL).

See the attachments for a sample screenshot and a sample recording.

Any help would be greatly appreciated! But, am also hoping I won't have to go too far down the rabbit hole to solve this problem; my technical skills are limited, and I don't think I can afford to do any substantial hardware upgrades.

Yeah, it looks like the video has been deinterlaced. The cartoon is originally from a progressive scan source, so you would ideally use something like avisynth to undo that in post.

I would suggest trying to capture using virtualdub instead of the included software. From the images of the included software I saw it didn't seem that it had any options for deinterlacing, but I could be wrong.

I know some of these VHS/DVD recorder combos can output progressive scan, so you may want to check the menus there as well, but I think this normally only works on the component outputs and isn't enabled by default, so I would suspect the capture card or software.

Hi EvilEivind,

To expand on hodgey's response:

After capturing your video with VirtualDub, you should edit your footage with a software called AviSynth. AviSynth is a powerful video editing software that can be used for editing and restoring analog video. However, it has somewhat of a steep learning curve due to the fact that the program runs lines of code. Code for AviSynth is written in a simple text editor, such as NotePad. After you have installed AviSynth, you can save the code you have written as a ".avs" file type. ".avs" files can be opened using VirtualDub.

VirtualDub has built in deinterlacing filters, but because your source is a cartoon, you would be better served to use an inverse tele-cine (IVTC) script. This requires that you download a Plugin for AviSynth such as TIVTC and that you write a .avs script that tells AviSynth to use the IVTC on your source .avi footage.