Ridding myself of VCR ghosts?
 

Hi, I'm launching into the world of VHS conversion. No Avisynth at this stage, just VD. I'm working on a video that has a ghost and would be grateful if I could be pointed in the right direction to reduce/remove it. I don't like being scared when I watch videos! :)

Also, that line on the left side... Do I detect an AVISynth attack coming...?

Some more info: the capture was a single-shot Lagarith capture of a 3 hour VHS tape. This particular material is a second-generation dub, and the line occurs on this clip and the next but not on others before or after, so it was either on the original tape or was created when I did the re-recording of the clip and it's mate, not when I did the capture.

Let me guess this is an EP or SLP low speed recording? The problem with those speeds is that the helical tracks are packed together with no guard band between them and when read with low end VCR's some of the tracks frequencies bleed to the adjacent tracks, and since tracks are at an angle there is a slight delay or advance between these tracks (fields) that translates into ghosting effect. A good S-VHS VCR with 19 micron heads and DNR will give you better results using S-Video output. Unless it's recorded that way from a first generation tape or TV feed.

What VCR brand/model is being used?

It could have been, Latreche. I can't be sure.

Ouch! I was hoping you wouldn't ask that, LS! It's a Sharp DV-NC85 combo VHS/DVD recorder. It's the best one I have out of a bunch of also-rans. It's hard for me to tell whether it's doing a good job playing tapes, as I have nothing to compare it with, apart from the others, although any half-decent video is captured pretty well, for my standards, anyway.

I do have an ES-15 coming in a few days.

I forgot to mention I'm using a no-name "Phillips SAA713X Hybrid capture device" PCI card.

What you're seeing is expected -- lousy. :2cents:

The ES10/15 units cannot fix this exact error. A better VCR is likely needed.

Quality VHS conversion has a recipe: recommended VCR > recommended TBC > recommended capture card
When you stray from the recipe, bad things almost always happen.
This recipe hasn't changed in 10+ years now. And it won't anytime soon, if ever.

Understood, LS. I'm obviously not expecting perfection; I've done a lot of reading of your site and am realistic about the prospects with this, especially given the gear I'm using. I'm just curious about whether things can be improved (even a bit), with a "reasonable" amount of effort, or not.

Usually the either in the front display or the on-screen display can tell what speed a tape is playing at. That won't tell what the original recording it was dubbed from was though.

Ghosting CAN also be have been caused by issues with antenna cabling when the tape was recorded. It wasn't an uncommon thing. If that's the case a different VCR won't fix it. There are some avisynth filters that can help a bit, but it's quite tricky.

OK, thanks Hodgey, I'll leave it alone and move on. We'll just have to put up with it. It is "35 years old", after all. I'll blame it's old age!

I didn't understand what you meant here. Do you mean the Virtual Dub display?

No, on either the display on the front of the VCR (if it has one), or the VCR's on-screen display. Ofteh there's a "Display" or "OSD" or similar button on the remote that when you press it, makes some info like time code, audio mode and play speed pop up on the screen. For capturing you want this off to not disturb, but you if you want to know the tape speed you can turn it on to check. E.g see this manual page for the sharp model.

Arr yes, of course. And I did fall for that; I'm used to looking at OSDs through my camera (and every other gadget these days) and recorded 3 hours of tape with the OSD on. 96gb wasted...

BTW, it's been playing SP, which is the correct speed for the recording.

T-180 tape, treat it with care - it is thin.

FWIW bumping down the contrast and saturation on the short made the ghosting less as apparent.

Ghosts were not uncommon in off-the-air (antenna) system recordings often caused by multi-path and poorly matched connections to the antenna.