VHS Capture Filters

[BillB]

Capturing VHS tapes: I gave up trying to capture VHS tapes to my HD and editing, refining them to look good. I bought a Sony RDR-VX530 Video / DVD Recorder and only have to stick in a blank DVD, a VHS tape and push the bloody arrow key to copy to DVD. Then I stick that DVD into my computer, use DVD Shrink to edit unwanted leads and endings, and sometimes edit out full sections (it's a pain this way). I also use WMM if dinner is ready! My question is, are there any filters to Clean Up frames, the sounds, the quality overall? I use Paint Shop Pro 7.04 for stills and have hundreds of tools, but video is something else. Recommendations PLEASE!

[Dermir]

I don't want to sound offensive - but please use the search function.

But let me first tell you 2 things:

1) Taking the VHS - DVD - filter at PC - DVD approach you will lose A LOT of quality. (Depends of course on your personal perception and your TV)

2) Check out the Capture/ DVD to format-x guides none the less since once you got the Data on your computer and have an AviSynth script going it's basically the same for filters (besides different resolution and colour spaces to start off with (YV12 instead of RGB or YUY2) if i am not completely mistaken.

Good luck and read the FAQ ;).

[BillB]

Hi;
Yes, I did go through a search for filters and read all the FAQs. There is lots of heavy duty items, but I was hoping for a KISS Principle set up to easily run the HD copy through. I'm thinking at a still image processing level, like to take one frame at a time and mod it to get the best image. I know there must be thousands of frames to deal with, and I probably need a Pentagon Main Frame to do this, but dealing with the present software is a bit difficult for me. I guess there's nothing out there to automate the refining process, right?

Bill

[Dermir]

KISS = keep it short and simple i suppose?

Unfortunately there are no 1-click filter solutions out there (at least none that I know of so far and I have been off the hook for quite a while ;).
But of course you might try some of the 1-click-encode/transcode tools and use the resulting AVS-Script to start your filtering.

Use all filters to your hearts content if you have progressive material (what i guess you have not, and don't want to have, since you need to transfer the material back to DVD)

Temporal (not temporal-spatial) filters can be used directly on interlaced material.
Spatial and temporal-spatial filters you can use after applying unfoldfieldsvertical() before filtering and foldfieldsvertical() after filtering. Check for the script that you have to: import("c:\whereveryouwant\jdl-interlace.avsi") here: http://www.avisynth.org/stickboy/

For a pretty good filter (but slow!) use dustv5.dll Avisynth 2.0 Filter - either only temporal with faerydust() with strength 1-5, default 2, or temporal and spatial with pixiedust() default 5 (max 8?)
For usage: first you need to load loadpluginex.dll, then dust. The only important thing is to NOT autoload those filters, else Avisynth will crash.

loadplugin("C:\whereveryouwant\loadpluginex.dll")
loadplugin("C:\whereveryouwant\dustv5.dll")

Hope i put you on your way to success - good luck again - need to ocupy myself with crappy NTSC-to-PAL conversions (sigh).