How To Capture, Denoise, and Restore VHS Tapes

hello this is the ben crazy and as you've noticed over the last couple months i have been recording restoring and uploading old nascar vhs tapes that i've collected over the years and in this video i'm going to walk you through each step of my process so if you have old family videos that you want to digitize and restore or if you want to do what i did and record old tapes that you can't get on dvd or anywhere else or if you're just interested in what my process is this video will explain it all the first step of the process is finding a good vcr player i recommend finding a vcr for the mid to late 90s as they were well built in the peak of vhs if you can find one the jvc hr-s-8000u is highly recommended as it is direct derived workhorse which means no rubber belts that would need to be replaced panasonic also made great vcrs around this time but for me i found a good deal on a sony slv-700hf it's a four-head player from the early 90s that needed new belts and a little tlc but it works great one thing i do not recommend doing is getting a newer vcr player from or after 2000s or a vcr dvd combo as they are typically made of plastic and cheap parts that can cause the tape to look noisy warped or can actually damage the tape after you find a good vcr player the next step is getting an av to hdmi upscaler these can be found easily on amazon and all the different brands that you can find pretty much do the same job visually in upscaling the picture the particular one that i have is an enco enk ath 2020 the next step is finding a good capture card i recommend getting one that can record at 1080p 60 frames per second my choice was the elgato hd 60s plus but there are cheaper options out there an additional add-on i recommend getting is a 3.5 millimeter male to a two times rca female cable i had major issues trying to get sound from the hdmi output of the upscaler so i instead used this cable to bypass it and connect the vcr directly to the capture card so before we get to the computer setup the correct way of connecting everything starting with the vcr is the av video cable to the upscaler then hdmi to the capture card along with an av audio to the capture card then lastly the capture card via usb to the computer with this capture card we can record in two different ways from the elgato capture utility or from obs so i will show you the settings to use for both first let's start with a capture utility open up the software and click on the gear on the top right click on the device tab and change the audio input to analog audio as we are using the av to 3.5 millimeter cable instead of the hdmi audio next click on the recording tab and change the format to 1080p 60 as says the max resolution we can get out of the upscaler change the bitrate to the max which is 60 and click ok if you click on the record button it will start recording and clicking on the same button will stop the recording now i will show you the settings for obs which is what i use to capture the recordings open obs and click on the settings on the bottom right click on the video tab and change the base and output resolution to 1920x1080 for the downscale filter select lancos 6d for the fps and click on apply next click on the output tab change the output mode to advanced and click on the recording tab use the standard type select your recording path use mp4 for the recording format check 1 2 and 3 for the audio track which i will explain soon encoder use nvinc if you have an nvidia graphics card otherwise use x264 which will use your cpu the rate control should be set to cqp as it dynamically adjusts the bit rate to achieve constant quality in your recording a lower cq level means higher quality and a higher number means lower quality but a smaller file anywhere between 15 and 20 is usable but for me i use 15. the keyframe audio should be set to two preset is max quality profile high check look ahead in cycle visual tuning and lastly set gpu to 0 and max b frames to 2. click apply and click on the audio tab here change the audio bitrate of the first three tracks to 320. click apply and ok next click on the plus sign on the bottom left to create a new scene name it vhs and click on ok click on the vhs making sure it is highlighted and then click the plus sign in the source column click on the video capture device name it and click on ok a new window will pop up for the device change it to the capture card and leave everything else to default click on ok lastly click on edit on the top right and then advanced audio properties remember how we set up obs to record three different audio tracks this is how we can assign the audio tracks to different sources for me i have track 1 clicked to the desktop track 2 for the mic and track 3 for the capture card also if you want to listen back to the vcr while it's playing change the audio monitoring to monitor and output click on close and you are all set to go to record the tape now that we have the tape recorded we have to do a couple of steps before we have a finished video playing the raw video we need to edit the beginning and the end to when the video starts playing then we have to fix the aspect ratio from the stretch to 16 by nine to the correct four by three lastly we need to denoise and restore the grainy image to do these steps we need a video editing software that supports the plugin i use to denoise and restore we will also need that said plugin which is called neat video the neat video plugin supports all of these different video editors shown but i personally use sony vegas pro so i will be walking you through the rest of the process using that editor open your video editor of choice and import the recording because audio track 1 and 2 are not used they can be deleted trim the beginning and the end next we need to find a part of the recording that is bright or it has the most color so we can calibrate the neat video plugin correctly like a piece of sky or a solid color once we find it in vegas to add the plugin click on the fx button on the video and double click the reduce noise v5 plugin and click on ok click on prepare noise file and a new window will open up if you drag and drop with the mouse it will make a square and it will show how much noise the plugin detects once we have a solid color in the square that is bright click on the build profile button on the top left next click on adjust and preview this shows you what the final product will look like along with comparing and contrasting with the preview button on the right you can change the filter settings and the quality mode to improve the image more this takes some time to get used to and each video will need different tweaks in the description below i linked a tutorial showing you how to do all of this if you are interested once you have everything set up click apply now something to note is this plugin is supposed to be used for one scene as opposed to an entire video so i recommend scrubbing through and making sure that the noise and grain is removed from the whole video otherwise you'll have to try again with a different scene lastly go to the beginning of the video click on the three lines and click on track motion i made a preset and you can copy the settings but this will change the video aspect ratio from 16 by nine to four by three render the video and you are all set to go so i hope you enjoyed the video in the description i will have added links to further help in setting things up as well as inspiration i use for my current setup don't forget to like and subscribe if you have any questions don't be afraid to comment down below and once again i am the ben crazy and i will see you later you

Channel: TheBenCrazy

Views: 68,516

Keywords: vhs capture, analog video capture, converting home movies, digital convert, camcorder convert, home movie digital, digitizing, video capture, archiving, denoise, restore, vhs tapes, tutorial, how to, process, neat video noise reduction, OBS, sony vegas, VCR, upscaling

Id: Y7PoNzrECG4

Length: 10min 8sec (608 seconds)

Published: Sat Mar 13 2021