Tips for encoding video with inherently bad picture

[TonyJibrone]

I often encode old 20+ year-old VHS tapes and ultra low budget films, as I am a collector of Bad Cinema. So even with all the wealth of knowledge here, I'm still kind of at a loss. There's no point in maintaining visual integrity when your source looks like

http://img146.imageshack.us/img146/5782/snapshot20060718002006bmpwt9.th.jpg (http://img146.imageshack.us/my.php?image=snapshot20060718002006bmpwt9.jpg)

for example.

So I was wondering what things I could try to clean up these videos, keeping in mind that my technical knowledge is fledgeling.

Basically the only things I've messed with are
YlevelsS
Tweak
Hybridfupp (I just used preset="hybridq" for the first time)

and I generally tend to use a low-bitrate quant. matrix. But I'm sure there's a lot out there I could be doing. I appreciate any and all help!

[Teegedeck]

Using a low-bitrate matrix is a good idea. Apart from that, questions about filtering have a better place in the AviSynth Usage subforum --> moved.

[Boulder]

There have been several threads about treating low-quality material recently, browsing through the posts here should help if the search engine doesn't find any good threads.

I wouldn't say the screenshot looks that bad - it's just blurry to my eyes. I've seen far worse cases here ;)

[Chainmax]

I would suggest some very strong LimitedSharpenFaster settings with SMode=4 followed by AddGrain(5,0,0).

[Heini011]

Warning:

i got errorsafe malware popup while looking at the image link.

[Mug Funky]

probably just crop off the crap at the bottom and encode as-is.

low-bitrate matrix in this case wont have much of an effect - there are no high frequencies for it to hit harder. but it wont hurt either...

i assume it's been TBC'd already, as the picture edges are straight and not wibbly. beyond that there's not much you can do except fake detail. seesaw combined with frfun i've found to be nice looking for over-blurry stuff.

[TonyJibrone]

Here's after adding egde sharpening via hybridfupp

http://img148.imageshack.us/img148/1492/snapshot20060719004216od4.jpg

But I will definitely try those other methods in the future. (Sorry about the imageshack popups, it seems to only happen in IE)

[LocalH]

I don't see that video as being that bad, really. Scanline timing seems tight. I can't tell if there is any vertical judder since there is just the one still. The only real problem I see with that video is a lack of detail, which is common with even the best VHS recordings. Now, if you want to see some really bad video, look at these screenshots:

Horizontal jitter all over the place, partially correctable (http://img91.imageshack.us/my.php?image=proc58no.jpg)
This particular video must be at least 20th-generation (http://img144.imageshack.us/my.php?image=proc87mi.jpg).