When I try to digitise tapes using my S-VHS VCR, there is this sort of noise that appears no matter the tape. It makes it difficult to have quality digitisations and I'd like to have a suggestion to remove this, as it's starting to annoy me a little...
With cartoon VHS tapes it's easy to get rid of it because of how cartoons are made, but once it's not a cartoon anymore it gets really noticeable
I did try to play the tape in another VHS VCR and this sort of noise doesn't appear!
Is there any effective VirtualDub filters for this at all? What even is this noise called?
Any help's appreciated
"When nothing is playing" could mean a lot of things:
When the VCR is on "Stop" - Blue screen
When the tape switches from footage to another (re-recorded footage over another) - White noise
When the tape is blank - Blue screen with eventual white noise
If you try and capture say the blue screen you get when the machine idles, do you get the same amount of noise - what I'm angling for here is to see if it's noise coming from the player (heads, amplifier etc) or further up the chain.
If the noise is greatly reduced on the 'blue screen' when capturing, it would point to an issue with playback, otherwise, it's noise induced somewhere else!
Nope, I don't get such noise when capturing the blue screen from the VCR.
Ah, so we're probably looking at something being induced by the player mechanism, or something in the signal chain between the output of the machine at the loading slot.
This is where things can get tricky, you might have to wait for somebody with more experience of your particular video machine to come along and advise further. Perhaps let us know the model?
It's not a typical "dirty head" noise, but you might trying cleaning the video heads (I won't offer a technique as that can lead to plenty of flame wars) but at least it's something to try.
Panasonic NV-HS950, Hi-Fi Stereo SAT-CONTROL
This is the model of my VCR
Can I use cleaning cassettes to clean the head or should I do this using Q-tips, or anything similar?
Not Q-Tips, definitely not those. The gap in a video head is about the most precise thing anybody will ever own in a domestic setting, fibres get stuck in them and can either tear the head (honestly, it's a micron thin gap) or get fibres well jammed in there.
So not those, trouble is you see a few interweb celebs (I'm looking at you Techmoan) do this and it's catastrophic for videoheads, it's [not] just forum lore - it's a thing which more of than not will bugger them. They're fine for the mechanism, audio/control head though. You can find a Techmoan video of him damaging a set of impossible to find heads on an astonishingly rare machine, you can see the 'knacked heads in the captures he took!
I'd wait for somebody with experience of your model!
Last edited by RobustReviews; 08-18-2021 at 11:29 AM.
Reason: Added a very important "not"
I have attempted cleaning cassettes and they do help a little, but they do not change the noise a single bit.
Well it does look more like electrical noise, there are whole libraries full of books on electrical noise and more to be written, it's not my area of expertise but let's say it's a jumbo-sized issue in the world of electronics.
So let's recap:
The model of the video machine is a Panasonic NV-HS950.
You've taken the player circuitry out of the equation, and noise diminishes greatly,
Other machines don't produce as much noise,
We don't think it's a head issue, and we've tried that with no real improvement.
Is your edit button switched to "off"? If the edit mode is on it'll bypass the internal clean-up circuitry (for a myriad of reasons), which should definitely be "off" for capture unless you're getting other less acceptable issues.
We can say (unless we've got a really bizarre and complex fault) that it's not leads or similar at the moment as we can show the issue goes away with either no video playing, or it's not doing it with another machine.
Might explain a lot - edit mode needs to be "off" somewhat counterintuitively unless you understand what it's doing.
I don't know for your machine, but often it'll bypass all the stuff you're currently looking for, but report back and we can see what happens and diagnose from there.
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SampleText800 (08-18-2021)
I seriously could never guess it was as easy as that!!
Well some noise like that is still noticable, but it's easily removable using the Dynamic Noise Remover Filter on VirtualDub, so to me it is a mission accomplished!
I've added an attachment so you can see how well it looks when it's removed
(rate how good it looks? Would be good to have feedback on that)
Although it's fixed for this time, I'd like to know what to do if it ends up not working in the long run. Let's assume it didn't work, what would you recommend? I'm asking so I don't have to re-make a thread for the same topic again, hah
I love it when it's a cheap fix, and yeah, it's a bit counter-intuitive to have a button marked "Edit" when you think this might improve the quality, but it pretty much runs everything 'raw'. You can see how much junk there is on a tape when you switch the DNR off!
There will almost always be a bit of noise, it's a cruel fact of the universe, coupled with capture methods etc.
Next (and I'm no expert) would have probably been deep electronics, so best that this works!
Glad to be of service.
RR
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SampleText800 (08-18-2021)
EDIT was a feature to avoid successive sharpening and processing when dubbing tapes from one vcr to another, it as noted turns off most of the noise reduction and "detail enhancement" stuff. Hence it was often found on higher end decks with other editing features (though some cheaper models had it too). Whether to use it or not when digitizing depends on tape, vcr and personal preferrence
Yeah bad/aging capacitors are a common issue on older equipment and can cause video disturbance and other issues. I think this model in particular has some boards full of SMD electrolytic capacitors, and for various reasons SMD electrolytics from the 90s had a tendency to age prematurely often with disastrous results.
Are you saying the equipment I have will end up aging horribly in the long run?
This got me worried for a little, would like not to have to spend too much in new VCRs again too much! ^^;
That noise is recorded on tape, the easiest way to find out is to pause the playback, if the noise freezes then there you have it, If you are getting a blue screen from the capture card when you pause then you need to hookup to a TV or get a frame TBC.
Despite the noise reduction, there is still some noticeable noise and it causes details to look very off.
I'm only wondering if there's a way to make these look better, as I'd like my captures to be as high quality as possible.
