How to clean up noise from old vhs??

[Hoox]

I got these really old VHS tapes to convert to DVD.
They have alot of blue noise in dark places.
I have uploadet a picture and a small dv clip for you to see here. (http://www.hoox.dk/noise)

How do I get rid of noise like that :confused:

I have tryed filters like Convolution3D, GoldDust, Peachsmoother, AntiBlink, GuavaComb and VagueDenoiser.
None of them were able to remove that blue noise or I just didnt tweak them correctly. :(
Any ideas?

[sh0dan]

First of all: This is an extremely bad source - don't expect much good to come from this. If you look at your chroma channels (utoy() and vtoy()) you'll notice that it is almost completely garbage.

My suggestion (very blurred)

AVISource("D:\video\avisynth_tests\noise.avi")
converttoyv12(interlaced=true)
kerneldeint(0)
undot()
VagueDenoiser(threshold=10.8,method=1,nsteps=6,chroma= true)
MipSmooth(downsizer="bilinear",upsizer="bilinear",temporal_chroma=255,spatial=0,temporal=0,spatial_chroma=250,scenechange=5)
temporalsoften(3,10,25,7,2)
reduceby2()
coloryuv(off_y=-30, gain_y=60, opt="coring")

[scharfis_brain]

I think, you should check you cable connection and/or capture settings and redo the capture, because of the fine grid that is overlaying the video.

[Hoox]

Thanks for your reply, Sh0dan.
I'll try out your suggestion asap :)

I think, you should check you cable connection and/or capture settings and redo the capture, because of the fine grid that is overlaying the video.

The video is captured with a ADVC-100 from my vcr. The bad quality comes from the tape being over 10 years old and the bad quality camera it is recorded with. :(

[scharfis_brain]

but I really doubt, that this fine grid is existant on the tape, because VHS cannot hold such a high frequency range...

is this fine grid visible on the TV?
is a antenna connencted to the VCR? If yes, remove the antenna-cable...

[Mug Funky]

the colour crosstalk comes from bad separation of the chroma channels... are you using an S-VHS cable here?

VHS is so blurry, that it won't really give you any better detail than a regular AV cable, and will give you INSANE crosstalk (like the kind that Guavacomb can't touch).

if you can't be bothered capturing again, you could always hit it with
generalconvolution(0,"0 0 0 1 2 1 0 0 0").generalconvolution(0,"0 0 0 -2 7 -2 0 0 0"). this will blur sideways, then sharpen. you wont lose much actual detail, but the crosstalk should be buried. (i haven't tried this... i use it to remove remnant combing from deinterlaced frames, only the matrix is rotated)

you could do like some people do here... capture the footage several times, then average them together. this is slow as f*** and takes up several times the disk space, but it's worth it if you really love that tape. (it will also cancel a lot of horizontal line crawl)

[PaulKroll]

There's an extensive thread about mutli-pass capture and merge, here: Averaging two analog captures for noise reduction (http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?threadid=28438)

I've used this a lot with old tapes, and visually, the effect ranges from subtle to pretty impressive. Compression-wise, it always seems to have a strong positive effect.

It is, as has been pointed out, just a tad time consuming, and requires a little bit of space if you're using huffyuv/anything lossless for the captures.

[Hoox]

Sh0dan, I tryed your filter combination. It removes the noise but unfortunately also leaves the image very washed out like :(

scharfis_brain, Im capturing the video from a scart converter in the vcr to the s-vhs port in the ADVC-100 device and from there through firewire to the pc. No antenna is connected to the vcr. I have captured other tapes that haven't got this kind of noise so it must be the tape.

Mug Funky and PaulKroll, I think it will be too much work and space to capture the video several times. Its a 3 hour tape in dv format. Itøs also not possible because I edit the video (cutting and inserting transitions) before filtering with avisynth.

Im open for more suggestions if there is any other posibilities

[scharfis_brain]

try to use a composite (yellow chinch) instead of the s-video - connection

btw.:
S-VHS: recoring Standard for Video on Tape
S-Video: Connection Type for Video Signals (separate Luma and Chroma)

[Hoox]

Oh, thanx for clearing that up :)
Will try with a composite cabel instead.