In collecting archive TV material there have been certain instances where the quality of the video could be better. Using various programs at my disposal (see the Favourite Video Software page) I thought I would just show what I have achieved.
Not being a professional at video restoration, and that the programs used (or my knowledge of them) are at the bottom end of the scale, I am not going to achieve any master-strokes but I hope to show a few of my projects which may include improved picture, re-editing and general changing-stuff-for-the-better.
Firstly, this piece of restoration will, in many circles, have me shot. What I have done here will not make me popular.
Anyway, my all time favourite Police series is Rockliffe's Babies from 1987-1989. I managed to record every episode off-air, during its original broadcast, and this was one of the first of my off-air tapes that got converted to VideoCD using my old Dazzle Video Creator. As a first attempt, I felt at the time, they weren't half bad:
However, I got varied results from the equipment I had. With better equipment, and still with the original tapes, I set about re-capturing and encoding the entire series again; this time for DVD-R.
Isn't that much better? Unfortunately, I then hit upon a problem: in between the two conversions I had managed to loose the VHS tapes that contained the last three episodes of series two. I only had the poorer VideoCD copies.
Not all was lost. I did manage to find copies of these episodes recorded from the cable/satelite channel UK Drama (now Alibi). These were nice pristine pictures save for one major issue: screen clutter!
It isn't something that I can live with so I wanted to do something about it; but what options were available to me?
The picture quality is (only) just about watchable on these - the smaller the television screen the better - but these also suffer from a slightly tinny soundtrack. This is the result of TMPGenc's VCD encodes at 44,000mhz rather than the DVD standard 48,000mhz. The VideoCDs would have to be my last resort or, in other words, something that's better than nothing (as the frame below shows).
Well, not quite. The very last episode, "The One That Got Away" has a soundtrack that jumps and drops out constantly thoughout the episode. This renders the VideoCD of this episode practically useless.
As described above, these are the last three episodes of series two: "Black Arrow", "Hearts And Flowers" and "The One That Got Away". As far as I can tell the episodes are uncut as they compare to the running time of the VideoCDs (which taken from original BBC1 broadcasts). The UKDrama captures suffer from a lot of screen clutter (as shown above); the 'Win Vouchers' banner appearing during the starting titles, flagging the advert breaks (edited out) and during the end titles.
However, the over-all picture quality is very good and these are the copies I am going to use.
I also obtained the episode "The One That Got Away" as an mpeg4. This is also a capture from UK Drama but it doesn't have the 'Win Vouchers' banner running through it. Like the other UK Drama captures these have a good quality picture but, unlike the others, it isn't full 720x576 resolution (DVD compliant frame resolution) and this is only one episode out of the three. If I had all three episodes in this format then these would have been my first choice.
Using TMPGenc to re-encode, I - brace yourselves - cropped the top of picture to cover the offending area and then the same amount at the bottom as balance, creating a sort of 14:9 version of the episodes. I told you this wasn't good but it was my only option to rid the annoying clutter from the best over-all picture quality.
This isn't something that I want to do that often as it isn't good form; have a look at one of my old blogs from 2008!
Note: Shoestring series one was released in 2011 which renders all my efforts, below, redundant. However, the narrative is still a basis of general repair/restore and it is worth keeping on the page.
I'd rather a proper DVD/Blu-ray release as it will always be far superior to anything I can achieve!
On my TV pages, Why Do I Record All This Telly?, it says that the second VHS tape that I bought was the BBC's 1984 release of Shoestring and that over the years it had been my most watched VHS tape. For many years I believed that these were full episodes. I have since found out, on a TV Archive site, that there is a cut on the first episode, "Private Ear". All this time I thought that it was complete!
However, in 2002 the BBC broadcasted heavily edited daytime repeats of Shoestring and the missing few seconds were included.
The piece in question is at the beginning of the episode where an un-named gentleman rings the doorbell to a massage parlour, a taxi-driver gives him an disapproving look and the man, momentarily embarrassed, enters. In the background the taxi's radio is playing the Blondie track, "Heart Of Glass". This sequence while the song is playing is missing on the VHS release, presumably for copyright reasons (the same thing that, for years, prevented Shoestring from being released on DVD), but was left in for the 2002 showing.
Being someone who will always feel that cuts and edits leave the programme incomplete, this restoration HAS to happen. In addition, as seen on the What Is Best For Storage: VHS or DVD-/+R? page, there are further issues with the copy of the episode that I have: drop-outs and where the tape was caught in the VCR.
Thankfully, I have this episode in several different states: the BBC 1984 release, the WH Smith re-packaged VHS 1991 release, the 2002 BBC daytime repeats and a satellite TV station capture. However, they all have their different issues:
This is the commercial version with the scene missing. This tape doesn't have a Hi-Fi recorded sound-track and the tape has been caught in the VCR's mechanism which has caused severe drop-outs during the end credits (again, see What Is Best For Storage: VHS or DVD-/+R?). This incident occured in the early 90s and the tape has been wound around the creases since then and I don't know if this has caused any further creasing of the tape around it. I would love to use this tape as the main source because of its sentimental value but, because of the problems, it will have to be discarded for this project.
As with the previous release this has the scene missing but the soundtrack is recorded in Hi-Fi and without any major damage to the tape. This is the source of the main part of the episode but this tape has not been played for over fifteen years and will have to be experimented with before the proper capture can occur.
This is the source for the extra scene but can not be used for the rest of the episode as the day-time repeats were cut to ribbons for the day-time showings.
A nice clean source but for two issues; the broadcast this was captured from had extensive trimming for commerical breaks/timing and at the encode stage a filter was applied to remove the station DOG (Digital Originated Graphic, also known as the channel logo). For some of the time it can't be seen but other times there is a clear rectangle over the offending part of the screen. Because of this I can only turn to this source as a last resort. Having said that, I have all of the Shoestring episodes in this manner and some of the trimmed scenes are in the BBC 2002 daytime repeats. Further episodes can be restored, but that is for another day...
So, the process itself is quite straight forward: record the entire episode to the PC (via my ADVC-50, see Video Hardware Set-Up), from the best VHS source available, which in this case is the WH Smith version, and then record the extra scene from the day-time repeat in the same manner (of course there is nothing to stop me using a DVD Recorder instead). Encode these both at the same bit rate to MPEG, using TMPGEnc Plus, and edit the parts together using an MPEG editor, which in my case is VideoReDo, edit the scene (I would insert scene change to scene change but taking care that the soundtrack is correctly present) into the video. Job done!
Now, many would read this and say, "is that it?" Well yes; and that's the point. Sometimes a restoration can be really be that easy.
Now, there is the further issue that the starting titles on the second episode, on the VHS release, are curtailed...
Note: Doomwatch Winter Angel has been released on DVD which renders all my efforts, below, redundant. However, the narrative is still a basis of general repair/restore and it is worth keeping it on the page.
Obtaining a DVD-R of Channel 5's 1999 revival of Doomwatch gave me the idea for the Restoration page. It was really to show a before and after version of what I have managed to do. Thus, using the following programs: Virtualdub, TMPGEnc and my very first attempt using a video tool called Avisynth, I present the over-view of my first serious experiment at video restoration.
So, with another appearance by Trevor Eve, the before and after:
View the full size version here
My starting point (above) appears to be a second or third generation VHS copy (notice the video noise lines on the right) which has then been converted to DVD-R. The DVD conversion had not been set at a high enough bit-rate and therefore some blockyness was present. If you look closely (at the full size version) the blocks also appear with lines running across them.
View the full size version here
Avisynth to crop the picture and centralise the picture; VirtualDub to de-interlace (get rid of the horizontal lines), soften (to get rid of some of the blockyness) and then sharpen the picture back up; then TMPGEnc Plus to put the picture in full screen and re-encode.
The sharpness of the video is not as much as I would like it to be but any further would put the video in danger of looking plastic. However, getting rid of the stripes and blocks seems to be very successful.
On a traditional television broadcast each frame of a video picture is broadcast twice; all of the odd lines and then the even lines (known as fields); in effect half of the screen is broadcast then the next but all too fast for the naked eye to see. This is called Interlaced.
On this particular video I opted to De-Interlace the picture which made both fields join together to create one single field. This is what, I beleive, got rid of the visible lines. The frames were re-interlaced in the encoding process as the video should be but without the visible lines.
Below are two screen captures of the first piece of manipulative restoration that I ever carried out. This was at a time before I had as much knowledge than I do now and neither did I have the range of hardware/software that I have now.
A tape of early 90s UK Gold recordings fell into my hands and they appeared to be nth generation copies (no way of telling just how many generations). The sound and picture were appalling and I did as best that I could to present a watchable version.
However, I made the mistake of cropping the picture without resizing back to full screen. These were also converted to xVCD quality as they were all destined to a single DVD-R (ten episodes). Sadly, I don't have the original tapes to compare the before and after, but Judge for yourself.