'noise' bars on low level video

[Mithras]

Dear Anyone,

I am doing a lot of transfers from VHS to DV via an ADVC300 and the output is generally very good but I have noticed with low level video signals quite distinct horizontal lines of 'noise' are apparant across the whole picture when viewed, after encoding to DVD on a TV.

Do you think my settings are wrong or a fault somewhere?

Spec: Panasonic VHS, ADVC300 (latest firmware), Edius 4.6

[kbosward]

Can you show us a screen capture so we can see exactly what it is?

Ken.

[antonsvideo]

Dear Anyone,

I am doing a lot of transfers from VHS to DV via an ADVC300 and the output is generally very good but I have noticed with low level video signals quite distinct horizontal lines of 'noise' are apparant across the whole picture when viewed, after encoding to DVD on a TV.

Do you think my settings are wrong or a fault somewhere?

Spec: Panasonic VHS, ADVC300 (latest firmware), Edius 4.6

the noise bars you see are normal and are part of every VHS, these are the head switching point lines and are usually hidden by the overscan of the TV but will be seen in PC monitor for sure or LCD or Plasma TV if overscan is not set large enough

to avoid that, you can crop these lines in your mpeg encoding software

[Mithras]

Can you show us a screen capture so we can see exactly what it is?

Ken.

How can I do this? Do you know of a free site I can upload an image too?

[Mithras]

the noise bars you see are normal and are part of every VHS, these are the head switching point lines and are usually hidden by the overscan of the TV but will be seen in PC monitor for sure or LCD or Plasma TV if overscan is not set large enough

to avoid that, you can crop these lines in your mpeg encoding software

Sorry I have been a bit vague. the noise bars are over the whole picture. Quite subtle at normal viewing distances but once you notice them you start seeing them all the time. I will try to give you an example once I work out how to ftp a frame grab from the timeline.

[GrassValley_KH]

How can I do this? Do you know of a free site I can upload an image too?

When replying, click the "Go Advanced" button, and then add an attachment with the "Manage Attachments" button.

There is no resolution restriction on most image file types, so just keep it under half a megabyte and it will be fine. I recommend PNG as the choice of image format for screenshots.

[Mithras]

Here is the image - I hope!

It looks very subtle on the still but on the moving image the banding is very noticable. The Puma's back shows it off the best I think. Looks a bit more magenta than the rest of the picture.
Any ideas?

[GrassValley_KH]

Yowsa!

You're using good quality, shielded analogue cables?

[antonsvideo]

do other VHS tapes capture ok with your setup?

[Mithras]

Yowsa!

You're using good quality, shielded analogue cables?

I know this is a very poor quality bit of video. Try to look past the noise of the picture .... that is my point. The noise I would have expected to be even across the frame but it seems to have a distinct bar effect.

[Mithras]

do other VHS tapes capture ok with your setup?

If the video level is high, the bar effect isn't visible at all. It's just in low level areas that the noise bars appear.

[antonsvideo]

a TBC with NR would fix this

also, if you find an S-VHS player with S-Video out, you will also get far less noise

[Mithras]

a TBC with NR would fix this

also, if you find an S-VHS player with S-Video out, you will also get far less noise

I thought the ADVC 300 had a built in TBC?

[GrassValley_KH]

There are two types of correction - ADVC300 only supports line (field) TBC.

A full frame TBC may be what is required here.

[kbosward]

In my opinion I don't think a separate TBC is going to improve the noise you are seeing. A full-frame TBC is great at fixing jittery video, but that doesn't seem to be the case in your example image. (Unless you get what Anton is thinking about which is an expensive S-VHS player that has built-in TBC and noise reduction.)

But have you tried adjusting the settings on your ADVC300? They are there, so use them! Try fiddling with the settings under the Filter tab.

Ken.