Recommendations for VHS filtering?
 

I am transferring a collection of VHS tapes to my computer (the end target is some sort of video files to be viewed on the computer). I am using a good sony vcr and a hauppauge 150 capture card. I am capturing the videos in MPEG2 12.0MBit/sec (CBR) using a software that comes with the hauppauge cards called WinTV.

I used Mpg2Cut2 to cut out an 11 second clip (and I am under the understanding that this clip is not re-encoded but is the exact same quality, exact same copy of the video as the original mpeg yeah?)

So I was wondering if you guys could watch this clip, and then tell me how to filter or restore the video? (Presumably with virtual dub??) I don't need to fix it up to be super amazing, but if there's a couple simple things to make it better (such as the interlacing/de-interlacing stuff that I don't understand) then that would be cool.

Here is the clip: http://teamterrorwtf.com/bludshot/shortclip.mpg It is a band recording a song in a studio.

I believe that the whole video looks about the same as this clip (in terms of quality, artifacts, etc).


Thanks!

Quality always starts at the VCR, continues with any hardware between the VCR and the capture card/device, is affected by the capturing card/device (and capturing software), and then it can be further tweaked by software methods. You always want to start your work in the hardware domain, and use software for tweaking. If you rely on software only, there's a good chance many errors cannot be corrected.

The cheap consumer VCR probably added some of that grain, because lots of 90s/2000s VHS had stupid "detail enhancement" that was considered a feature. All it did was boost noise values.

The WinTV PVR-150 card has known issues with luminance, so some of the dark muddy quality could be attributed to that. Plus it's an MPEG hardware encoder, which further reduces quality because MPEG is ghastly at dealing with noisy analog input. 12Mbps mitigated some of that, compared to DVD-Video values (max ~10Mbps), but it's still going to be obvious unless you're capturing at 25-50Mbps, which I don't believe that card can do.

I can take a look at it this weekend, run it through an open workstation when paid projects are done.