n00b question

[schmosef]

I've got some old tv shows that were recorded on vhs and since been dumped to PC.

The picture on some of them is very poor. The focus is hazy and the color is too saturated.

I want to burn them only DVD but first I'd like to clean up the picture quality if possible.

Any suggestions?

[Dr Mordrid]

Not much you can do about the focus. Applying a Sharpness filter is likely to also make it look grainy, but you could give it a go and see.

The color saturation could be reduced using a Hue & Saturation filter. Just apply it to the footage and cut the saturation level to something that's more appropriate.

VirtualDUB (no type1 DV or MPEG!) or most competant editors (Premiere or MSPro) should be up to the task.

What format/codec are they saved in?

Dr. Mordrid

[schmosef]

They're DivX.

The ones that look bad have a resolution of 352x480.

I don't have much hope that they'll be watchable on my big screen TV.

I'll try the filters you suggested.

[Dr Mordrid]

Just consider converting them to a less lossy format (same frame size!) before doing any processing on them. I'd recommend either PICVideo or Morgan MJPeg at moderately high settings. Both have long free trials.

Once the processing is done you can convert them to 352x480 MPEG-2 with 48khz audio and still be DVD legal. The DVD standard includes this frame size as "halfD1". This way you won't lose vertical resolution.

Dr. Mordrid

[schmosef]

Thanks for the tip.

I'll look into PICVideo and Morgan MJPeg later tonight.

[Brian Ellis]

Will cost you big bucks, but the Canopus ADVC-300 does, so I'm told, wonders at converting poor quality VHS tapes into a reasonable quality DV stream. I'd like one myself, but I'm stuck with the ADVC-100, which is very good but does not have the TBC and noise reduction features. Problem is that the distaff side has stopped my spending money

[Dr Mordrid]

If you're going for stream processing do it with a dedicated device. I use the Elite Video BVP-4+ video processor. That thing's amazing, but at $700 USD is should be.

Dr. Mordrid