Lossless MPEG rescue, restore?
 

Hello!

Got lots of old DVD-s where there has been captured lots of MPEG lossless interlaced footage. The negative aspect is that the quality is pretty poor.

Are there any possibilities to rescue these captures by restoring using Avisynth? I have attached the example to this post.

More original example video attached.

Not sure I understand - Those files would already be digital so you'd just want to transfer them off of the DVDs on to your computer and go from there. I also don't think "MPEG lossless" is a thing - since MPEG itself has quite a bit of compression to save space, but it's actually pretty good at preserving interlaced content for the file sizes involved if the encoder used did a good job of it.

You can take your MPEG files and still use Avisynth and QTGMC as usual - or at least Hybrid will take MPEG files as a source without doing any sort of conversion first as far as I know. So unless you have the original tapes and want to recapture them with one of the more recommended methods, it's really the same pathway to use after the footage is captured as if you'd captured it from a tape.

Definitely not an expert here, but that's my $0.02. Others probably know better :P

He wants to restore the video. I assume the DVD is the only available source. :wink2:

I see:

- exposure damage, too hot -- can be reduced in Avisynth, but damage done
- timing wiggle, lack of line TBC -- no fix, maybe hide with aggressive temporal NR, but that creates new issues
- chroma flashing -- seems light enough for Avisynth and/or VirtualDub CCD filter
- block noise, mosquito noise -- remove or reduce in Avisynth (example, Deen takes care of minor mosquito, but QTGMC NR can help as well) -- lots of choices here

I can't help more, hurts to type too much. That hopefully gives you hope, overview.

It's a bad DVD, no doubt, but I've seen worse.

That looks like typical Panasonic E series 6-hour SLP junk encodes. Terrible stuff used in the early 00s.

FYI, there is no "lossless MPEG", this is lossy compressed MPEG from DVD-Video here.

That looks like VHS content has been badly captured to MPEG-2 and then got remuxed to .avi
There isn't much you can do with that.
Exposure issues, no details, halos,...
With automated filters you won't get far (see attachment, Vapoursynth script: https://pastebin.com/1n0tG9mp)
With scene-by-scene filtering and spending lots of time, one might be able to improve it somewhat.
=> don't think it's worth the effort. (if the original vhs source still exists, recapturing could help)

Cu Selur