Any hope for VHS tape recorded with bad signal?

[tomrog]

I recorded this decades ago off the PBS station on our cable system. For some reason, the signal was terrible, though I don't know where along the line it got messed up. At any rate, you can see the end result. It has clear moments, but it continually gets bad, then better, then bad again.

I don't have high hopes of any magical cure-all, especially since the signal kept changing throughout the program at the time, and the patterns of the noisy video with it. But, I thought I'd ask! I'm not even sure what to call the specific mess we're dealing with to search for answers.

[lordsmurf]

It's about 50/50 SNR, so not much is possible here. That's PBS in the 90s for you. PBS, community, school, etc, all got pushed off to the noisy channels on the cable system.

The "solution" (the "fix") for something like this is to locate a better recording.

[BmacSWA]

Tomrog I've had the same question for some of my video too. I think LS had a simplistic, yet accurate answer. But as we know, some video was original. I'll keep looking too, wish I could help but I'm just taking every precaution to preserve the original tape until one software becomes available. Sort of a cryogenic freeze of the body until they find a cure for cancer.

[lordsmurf]

Just to add, most people have something ugly like this. I do, too. I replaced a lot of it, but not all. The sample here is far worse than some of mine, and none of it can be corrected much.

It's more likely that we'll get an AI that can recreate the video, rather than a filter to remove the noise. But that's still far off.

[themaster1]

There is a filter called Defreq (avisynth) that was developped for this kind of interferences, but that's a tough one for sure