VHS Video assistance

[thebizguy]

I have captured this VHS via Pinnacle DVC100 in 720x480. I would like some assistance in enhancing the video for transfer to dvd.

I obviously need to get rid of the noise areas on the left,right and bottom. My thoughts were to just trim or crop and then add black bars/border.

Are there any other suggestions you guys might have for making this video look better?

Not only do I require some opinions, I would greatly ask for assistance in building an avisynth script to produce/correct these problems.

I have posted still a few still pictures here:
http://s950.photobucket.com/albums/ad345/thebizguy/

Thank you in advance for your assistance.

[thewebchat]

Aside from the poor resolution and interlacing, I see:

1) Chroma bleed/shift. I think you can use the ChromaShift plugin for this. If that doesn't work, try MergeChroma(WarpSharp)

2) Dot crawl. Stop using composite cables for capture.

[thebizguy]

Are there any other pointers you can provide? I am not really familiar with Avisynth or its filters.

any help would be appreciated. Specifically some details on settings etc.

[thewebchat]

Look at http://www.doom9.org/index.html?/capture/chroma_artefacts.html

It's old, but it was written specifically for bad VHS tapes. The idea of the ChromaShift plugin is to move all the chrominance (color) planes in a certain direction so that the colors all go back where they should. Using it boils down to figuring out how much the color has shifted and then moving it the opposite direction. The page doesn't talk about MergeChroma(aWarpSharp), but you can use that if the color still doesn't quite fit. It uses warpsharpening (edge thinning) which will kind of "squeeze" the color back into the edges.

As for the second remark, that doesn't really have anything to do with AviSynth. Just stop using composite cables.

[foxyshadis]

VCRs that output to S-video (as opposed to DVD/VCR combos were only the DVD outputs to S-video) are surprisingly hard to find. I have one I bought off ebay last year sitting in my garage. There's a huge difference, though you'll just end up finding that half of the VHS tapes have dot crawl burned into them from the original transfer.

[Guest]

The so-called S-VHS machines typically have S-video.

[Lynx Pardinus]

2) Dot crawl. Stop using composite cables for capture.

The problem is that there are still lots of devices whose only output is composite. My cable STB is one of them.

The best filter I have seen for removing PAL dot crawl is FQuiver. You have to use it before any processing:

F1Quiver(last, "gn", 336, 10, test=false)

This applies a gaussian notch filter centered at 4,29 MHz (as close as possible to the chroma carrier)