Improvements to family home movie encode?

[vacantrush]

I've done *a lot* of reading on this forum over the years. I finally got together a solid VHS transfer setup this year:
JVC SR-V10U > Datavideo TBC-1000 > Diamond ATI TV Wonder HD 600 USB > VirtualDub (using sanlyn's guide)

I'm fairly pleased with the captures and encodes I'm doing of some family home movies, but I wanted to solicit feedback from the community.

I'm still a novice at this and I am red-green colorblind. I only point out my colorblindness to drive home how useless I am at judging color. I do not intend to perform any color correction on these family home movies for a number of reasons I won't get into.

I've attached four files to this post - the raw capture and the encode for two clips, which go right into the other. They are from a ~1985 VHS tape and I believe the camcorder was a rental. The focus is not the best, as was likely common at the time. The splits were done based on key frame positions from the encodes. The capture clips were generated using VirtualDub and the encode clips using mkvmerge.

To perform the encode, I dropped this .avs file:

AVISource("V:\directory\VHS1.ATI.USB.02.TRIMMED.avi")
AssumeTFF()
ConvertToYV12(interlaced=true)
QTGMC(preset="Faster",TR2=3,EZDenoise=6,denoiser="dfttest",ChromaMotion=true,border=true,ChromaNoise=true,DenoiseMC=true,GrainRestore=0.3,FPSDivisor=2)
Crop(0,0,0,-10).AddBorders(0,4,0,6) # crop(crop_left,crop_top,-crop_right,-crop_bottom)

into this .bat file:

"C:\Program Files (x86)\x264\x264-r3107-a8b68eb.exe" --preset=placebo --profile high --sar=10:11 --crf=14 --output "%~1.mkv"  "%~1"

I've encoded this capture many times, trying a multiple sets of QTGMC options based on other's posts and recommendations. I am using Avisynth 2.6 and the most recent x264 encoder.

There are a ton of Avisynth plugins out there and beyond QTGMC, cropping and bordering(for eventual sharing via YouTube), I'm unsure what this could benefit from. Any thoughts or suggestions?

[Selur]

Some suggestions:
ReduceFlicker: https://github.com/chikuzen/ReduceFlicker (to stabilize the image)
EdgeFixer: https://github.com/sekrit-twc/EdgeFixer
SpotLess: https://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?p=1922004

not sure about the chroma denoising and color adjustments (I would at least lower the saturation)

[timtape]

It's hard to tell what is going on with the color. There's some evidence of mid to high range highlights unnaturally magenta with darker regions greenish. As to what caused it is hard to say. It may have been mixed lighting in the room at time of shooting, perhaps the video camera, perhaps a little of both.

Also, compared to broadcast color of the time, and even broadcast videotape of the time, VHS color is not great, so the amount of color correction possible without magnifying artefacts is very limited.

We can only work with what color we have, which in this particular case seems not much.

[vacantrush]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Selur

Some suggestions:
ReduceFlicker: https://github.com/chikuzen/ReduceFlicker (to stabilize the image)
EdgeFixer: https://github.com/sekrit-twc/EdgeFixer
SpotLess: https://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?p=1922004

not sure about the chroma denoising and color adjustments (I would at least lower the saturation)

I tried multiple attempts of ReduceFlicker, using different combinations of settings, but in the end, was unable to see any improvements in the encode. Oh well. It was a good exercise!

EdgeFixer: I'm going to remember this one when I'm encoding DVD/BluRays. Normally, I'd just crop!

SpotLess: I was unable to get this plugin to work, even after tracking down the right prerequisite plugins. It's probably bc of the version of Avisynth I'm using. Oh well. I might give this one another shot when I have time to set up a more updated encoding environment. The before and after screenshots using this plugin were certainly impressive.