[HELP] NTSC 29.97 converted to PAL VHS 25fps - back to 2398?

[Miranda]

Back in the 1990s a number of US mail-order companies offered PAL copies of their VHS tapes, which would have been converted from S-VHS NTSC to PAL VHS via a Panasonic AV-W1. I've got a number of these tapes which are compilations of 35mm film trailers. I've captured them to ProRes and I'd like to restore them back to their original 23.976 progressive framerate.

As you can see from the attached sample, the poor standards conversion from NTSC to PAL has created a bit of a mess. What would be the best way of fixing these? I tried sRestore and saw a lot of dupe frames, and even some frames seemingly split into two via a jagged line.

sample clip

[Selur]

Problem is that your source isn't clear.
Looking at the fields of your source, both fields have screen tearing sometimes at the beginning.

QTGMC + sRestore is the usual approach on a clear source.
Since blending isn't an issue you could also use:

clip = core.tivtc.TFM(clip)
clip = core.tivtc.TDecimate(clip, cycle=24) # new fps: 23.9583

or:

clip = core.tivtc.TFM(clip)
clip = core.tivtc.TDecimate(clip, mode=7, dupThresh=0.04, vidThresh=3.50, sceneThresh=15.00) # new fps: 23.976

or something like that.

About the teared up frames, you could use 'ReplaceSingle' enter the frame numbers, to replace them with interpolations (i.e.: 58, 63, 128, 133, 292, 297, 456, 461)

Looking at the bobbed output, there are too many duplicated frames, so maybe bobbing and manually looking for a fixed pattern might work too.


But the main issue with this source are the blown out whites, form which you will not be able to really recover. Only hope I see there is recapturing.

Cu Selur

Ps.: iirc. there is a Blu-ray release of 'Circle of Iron', so instead of working with some mangles VHS source, maybe use the Blu-ray

[Miranda]

I used the default sRestore setting - might I have been better using custom settings to remove the dupe frames?

Th eoriginal tape has blows out whites, not so worried about this as many of those tapes are rather poor quality. I just need these videos for reference purposes.

[Selur]

Problem is, looking at the amount of duplicates that video seems more like ~20fps than 23.976fps.
Manually selecting only makes sense if there is a pattern that doesn't change.

Cu Selur