Repairing old videos

[Greenman]

I have a 30 year old VHS video of my wedding that's in pretty bad shape. It should have been burned to dvd years ago, but somehow we never got around to doing that. So now I have it on a DVD, and my question is, how do I make it look better? Should I take it to a service of some sort, or is there software that will allow me to make corrections? The video has some banding, some noise, and in some places it's much darker than it used to be.

This vid has a lot of sentimental value, I'm still married to the cute girl on the tape, and it's the only footage of my deceased father.

Thanks in advance for any help.

 

[SonicIce]

I don't know too much about software solutions for enhancing DVD's but it would involve ripping the DVD, filtering and enhancing the files, then re-burning to DVD. I think the most important thing would probably be to capture the original VHS tape with the cleanest VCR you can. Then do the editing and filtering on the raw video files before burning to DVD.

 

[AnitaPeterson]

I don't know too much about software solutions for enhancing DVD's but it would involve ripping the DVD, filtering and enhancing the files, then re-burning to DVD. I think the most important thing would probably be to capture the original VHS tape with the cleanest VCR you can. Then do the editing and filtering on the raw video files before burning to DVD.

Agreed. There are many user-friendly consumer-level video editing suites that might help. It also depends on what capture hardware and software solution you're using. For the dark scenes, you can tweak the gamma a bit, but you have to make sure you know what you're doing.

 

[Ken g6]

First, take SonicIce's advice.

I'm not familiar with the commercial products, but there are AviSynth filters that can do some of what you want. The good news is they're free. The bad news is they're a little hard to use! Sounds like you could use:

http://avisynth.org.ru/descratch/descratch.html
http://avisynth.org.ru/despot/despot.html Edit: or http://avisynth.org.ru/degrain/degrainmedian.html Edit: or http://avisynth.org/vcmohan/DeNoise/DeNoise.html or http://avisynth.org/warpenterprises/files/peachsmoother_25_dll_20030801.zip - I remember using that last one on a videotape video once.
And maybe
http://avisynth.org.ru/colorkeyframe/colorkeyframe.html
or something like that.

 

[Greenman]

Thanks for the help.
I burned a dvd direct from the vhs tape on a player that dubs. The dvd is every bit as good as the original. I try the links above and see what I can do.

Thanks again.