Video Restoration...

[Robert Barnett]

Does any one know of a program, plug-in (for PE, Premiere Pro) that can take lower quality video and clean it up and generally make it looks better? I have some TV shows that I recorded to VHS years ago and the quality isn't all that good, I want to transfer them, clean them up and improve them as much as I can (given their quality) and do it in an automated way. Some of the problems is color shifts (yellowing), highlight blow out, grain and other video issues.

Suggestions please?

Robert

[Wheat King]

There's thsi plug in for noise reduction... might help. Have seen it suggested before but haven't used it myself.

http://www.neatvideo.com/

[Robert Barnett]

I was looking at that. It looks like it might make a good start.

Robert

[John 'twosheds' McDonald]

I have the neat video plug in for reducing noise in video.

My camera is not the best low light performer but the neat plug in means that I really don't have to worry too much about it as I know that I can always 'tidy up' any especially noisy clips during editing. All in all a good tool to have in the video editing tool box.

[Robert Barnett]

I am just surprised that there isn't a plug-in or something that is capable of looking at the video and then correcting (to the best of its ability and to the best of the source material) problems like dirt, dust, hair, yellowing, color, contrast, noise, high light blow out, improving clarity and sharpness, upping the resolution (I know you can't do it for real but some of the plug-ins for SD to HD do a pretty darn good job) and the like. You would think with dSLR's coming out with video, camcorders getting more powerful and cheaper, consumer priced video editing getting better and better all of the time, DVD burns, Blu-Ray burners, etc. that there would be software like this by now.

Robert

[Chuck Engels]

AviSynth and Virtualdub have filters that will clean up video, they are both free and are definitely worth a try.
You can find out a lot about how to use them online too