Cleaning Up Video - Any Ideas?

[Jason Dunn]

I've captured some video off of a VHS tape (Cyrano de Bergerac performed by the Royal Shakespeare Company starring Derek Jacobi), and the source material was dubbed from a second-generation VHS tape, so the signal is somewhat weak. The video lacks contrast and has some minor distortions. Right now I've got a gigantic 50 GB video file that's in need of some massaging. Any suggestions? I've tried several Google searches, looking for filters or clean-up tools (perhaps something with auto-leveling?) but I've completely struck out. I'm used to capturing video from a high-quality DV cam, so this isn't something I've tackled before. Any recommendations for tools?

[Gary Sheynkman]

50gb...does that fit on your new Shuttle's HD? :lol:

[Jason Dunn]

50gb...does that fit on your new Shuttle's HD? :lol:

No, it's on an external hard drive.

[shek]

Hi Jason -

I'm not sure where you wanted to have the final version end up,
but if all you want to do is clean up the video, the answer might be closer than you think.

The latest version of Windows Movie Maker (2.0) has a few built-in filters that may just do the trick for the post-processing you seek. It will even let you transcode the video for transfer.

As I'm sure you know, there are a ton of consumer level packages that do this kind of thing, but maybe Movie Maker will work for you.

Please keep us posted.

shek

[Crocuta]

Or you can send it over to Philip and let him do it as part of his review of Premiere Pro. It has filters for that sort of thing. :)

[ShinKen]

Any suggestions? I've tried several Google searches, looking for filters or clean-up tools (perhaps something with auto-leveling?) but I've completely struck out. I'm used to capturing video from a high-quality DV cam, so this isn't something I've tackled before. Any recommendations for tools?

Jason have you tried VirtualDub and the chroma Filters? I used it to once to cleanup some video that I was transferring from vhs to dvd.

I will have to look to find some links on the filters that I used.

Here I found it

Video DeNoise Filter for VirtualDub (http://www.risingresearch.com/en/denoise/index.shtml)

Have fun

[oopl]

This post will be a good reference to go to later on when I do some VHS conversion projects.