Selur's Little Message Board

First, I want to thank Selur for Hybrid and for helping the community of users.


Second, I want to help anyone out there who struggles, as I do, with feeling good about their VHS capture results when there are so many variables and options. I have made some progress and hope it can help others get started.


I transferred many of my VHS tapes in 2018 but decided to give it another shot recently because I found some newer hardware. My tapes are from the early 1990s.


I'm capturing 720x480 S-VIDEO from a JVC player passing through a Panasonic DMR-ES15 for TBC into a US$50 Hauppage USB2-Live device. I was unable to get VirtualDub to work due to audio sync issues, so I ended up capturing via AmarecTV to AVI via the Lagarith codec.


Here are the present settings I use in Hybrid. (I had to use AVISYNTH because Vapoursynth crashed on me consistently.)


Note I am not an expert so most of what I do is based on Googling and personal impressions. I am not concerned at this stage with file size or processing speed.

• x264 = constant rate factor (1-pass), quantization factor 18, AVC = High / 3.1
  

• (De-)Interlace/Telecine = Very Slow, Bob, Top Field First
  

Avisynth > Other > CCD threshold 30. This filter has the most dramatic effect on my source material removing the chroma noise.




Note the original is always on the left, and these images are lossy but HQ JPG. Subsequent images are cumulative including the prior filters.



[attachment=1847]


Avisynth > Color > Misc > HDR AGC (defaults). I likr the way this filter enhances detail in the shadows.


[attachment=1844]


Avisynth > Color > Basic > ColorYUV defaults + AutoWhite. This seems to balance the color and removes the blue cast on my source tape.


[attachment=1845]


Avisynth > Sharpen > LimitedSharpen (defaults). With so many options, I just chose one that seemed to sharpen reasonably without overdoing things.


[attachment=1846]



That's all for now. I feel the tape is still a bit noisy/grainy and I suspect the USB2-Live capture device is noisier than my old PCIe capture card, but that card couldn't capture AVI.



I'm curious to hear other suggestions or ideas.



Thanks!

Quote:(I had to use AVISYNTH because Vapoursynth crashed on me consistently.)

Any you are not sharing any debug output,... :/

Quote: I feel the tape is still a bit noisy/grainy and I suspect the USB2-Live capture device is noisier than my old PCIe capture card, but that card couldn't capture AVI.

I'm curious to hear other suggestions or ideas.

Noise most often has a temporal component, so suggesting anything from still images is kind of a fools errant.
That said, I would suggest trying the filters in the DeGrain section.

Cu Selur

(18.09.2022, 05:42)shabadoo Wrote: [ -> ](I had to use AVISYNTH because Vapoursynth crashed on me consistently.)

I have the same problem here, where can I change from Vapoursynth to Avisynth?

Clark

Another one who has problems, but doesn't want to share details to the problem could be fixed.
Avisynth/Vapousynth can be switched under Filtering->Support

(27.09.2022, 18:09)Selur Wrote: [ -> ]Another one who has problems, but doesn't want to share details to the problem could be fixed.

Hi,

I didn't want to cause more trouble than neccessary.

(27.09.2022, 18:09)Selur Wrote: [ -> ]Avisynth/Vapousynth can be switched under Filtering->Support

That was all I needed, it works perfectly well now.
I remember that I had this problem a while ago also, but couldn't remember, where to switch.

So thank you very much 

Clark