Clean up old VHS tape

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Permalink Reply by B. K. Hart on June 29, 2012 at 9:45pm

In my opinion, the best way to get VHS converted is to record direct-to-disk, either by way of a DVD recorder or video capture card onto a hard drive. Depending on whether you use PC or Mac, just about any good quality editing software will make it possible to improve the clarity of your video. Because VHS is analog, unfortunately whatever is there is about as good as you're going to get. Since I am a PC type, my editors of choice are Adobe Premiere and Vegas, although I will use a Ulead product once in a while for those quick projects. They have built-in filters that will enable you to enhance your work. In my experience, the multi-image process can be frustrating because only one track will be visible in the timeline. Play around with some of your color correction and sharpening controls. Good luck!

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Permalink Reply by Alec James on June 30, 2012 at 6:37am

Thanks for the comments.

I must admit that I'm more curious about the algorithm and whether that kind of processing / filtering of multiple copies to take the best frame (thinking about it more - parts of frames to create 1 output frame) already existed and I just didn't know about it.

I have just copied a tape onto DVD.  The original tape is poor quality and I only have 1 copy so there's not much I can do except eliminate noise caused by the conversion process which I doubt if I would notice anyway.

One suggestion from that original thread that I did try was to add a thin black border.  This hides the noise around the image edges and really does make a difference.

 

I'll try your suggestion of copying from video straight to a DVD recorder.  (I used my Canon Camcorder AVin to DV out conversion mode to capture DV in Pinnacle Studio, added the border and author to DVD.)

Thanks again

A

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