The newer LIVE Powerdirector include all New Blue products, some of which may help, and Boris, which also has some restoration ability, but...
...VirtualDub is your best bet. I, same as you, are completely offput by the Avisynth part of VirtualDub, and I never even tried to use it.
A better VCR might help, but Vdub, it's plugins, and Avisynth are your only real options.
Have you joined the DFAQ forum? They are the experts on VHS. HP Envy Phoenix/4thGen i7-4770(4@3.4GHz~turbo>3.9)
Nvidia GTX 960(4GB)/16GB DDR3/
Canon Vixia HV30/HF-M40/HF-M41/HF-G20/Olympus E-PL5.
Tape capture using 6 VCR, TBC-1000, Elite BVP4+, Sony D8 camcorder with TBC.
https://www.facebook.com/BarryAFTT

Quote The newer LIVE Powerdirector include all New Blue products, some of which may help, and Boris, which also has some restoration ability, but...
...VirtualDub is your best bet. I, same as you, are completely offput by the Avisynth part of VirtualDub, and I never even tried to use it.
A better VCR might help, but Vdub, it's plugins, and Avisynth are your only real options.
Have you joined the DFAQ forum? They are the experts on VHS.

Thanks Barry, I'll have a look at the DFAQ forum. I was afraid that you would say that I need to use AviSynth. It looks powerful but even though I do some small programs using PIC chips and I am an electronics guy, that stuff does not look easy to implement. Anyway, I'll plug on. If I do figure it out, I'll post something back here. Keith R

A truly elegant solution would be VirtualDub ported to Powerdirector. It can be done, but only in 32bit-PD.
For now I capture lossless AVI in VirtualDub, (either HuffYUV, MagicYUV, or UTvideo codecs), de-interlace in Hybrid using QTGMC, go back to VirtualDub to remove camcorder noise, and THEN I finish up in PD. HP Envy Phoenix/4thGen i7-4770(4@3.4GHz~turbo>3.9)
Nvidia GTX 960(4GB)/16GB DDR3/
Canon Vixia HV30/HF-M40/HF-M41/HF-G20/Olympus E-PL5.
Tape capture using 6 VCR, TBC-1000, Elite BVP4+, Sony D8 camcorder with TBC.
https://www.facebook.com/BarryAFTT

Thanks again Barry, your advice was invaluable! After a lot more trial and error, and loads of frustration (gave up a few times!) I came across RgTools in the AviSynth Wiki. I eventually used a simple script with a few lines to enable the RgTools filter and I fixed my bad video enough to make it more than watchable. I've attached a before and after pic to see. I can tell you that this video was really full of streaks all over and this fix worked. I captured the original footage as an Mpeg 2 file and to use the script in VideoDub 2, I converted the footage to an AVI file. I still need to re-edit the entire clip which I prefer to do in Power Director, but after many weeks of trying to undertand the AviSynth involved scripts and protocols, this works so well for me, and I did not have to get involved with that very steep learning curve.

Here is my .avs script:

LoadPlugin("RgTools.dll")
DirectShowSource("Location and name of your video to fix.avi")
ConvertToYV12()
input=last
AssumeTFF()
RemoveGrain
Clense

I put the RgTools.dll file in the same folder that I saved the above script in. If anyone needs to know the whole setup, then I can post it here. Basically you need to install AviSynth, and this filter, plus VirtualDub 2 and get used to that. I also ran the deinterlace filter in VirtualDub at the same time and now I will just edit the whole clip properly and stick it on a DVD for my friends. This is so great and will fix most of my bad footage.

Keith R Keith R

If you used script, you are already past me!
Your example looks amazing. If you captured in lossless using VirtualDub you could have skipped an entire generation of lossy compression. That being said it's still fantastic.
This is why Cyberlink should really port Hybrid or VirtualDub so we can use hundreds of free quality filters written by video experts over decades. It would open up a whole new customer base. Avisynth and Vaporsynth please??? HP Envy Phoenix/4thGen i7-4770(4@3.4GHz~turbo>3.9)
Nvidia GTX 960(4GB)/16GB DDR3/
Canon Vixia HV30/HF-M40/HF-M41/HF-G20/Olympus E-PL5.
Tape capture using 6 VCR, TBC-1000, Elite BVP4+, Sony D8 camcorder with TBC.
https://www.facebook.com/BarryAFTT

Hi Barry, I actually just did the "cut & paste" thing with my script! I also found a few other interesting things today. The produced video was mostly free of the dropout streaks but the motion of anything moving was dithering. Not sure if that's the right word! So I tried everything again with the other tools in RgTools, but it's basically the "Clense" function that does the trick.

I then found that if I deinterlace the video first, then it comes out much better. I guess that I could have included that in the script, but I resorted to the deinterlace function in VirtualDub. When you select the interlace fliter then another window pops up and you have a load of choices, all of which I don't fully understand, but when I used the "interpolate using Yadif algorithm" under the Deinterlacing mode, and then "Double frame rate, topfield first" under the Field order, then the results were magical. My video is now more than acceptable. I guess that I could do this all in one go if I understood the AviSynth scripts better. I am however rather chuffed with the results. I ended up sticking the fixed footage back into Power Director and doing the final edit.

I made a short clip of the intro section to show the difference. If I want to post a video clip here, do I upload it to YouTube, Vimeo etc. and then post the link here?

Keith R Keith R

Quote I made a short clip of the intro section to show the difference. If I want to post a video clip here, do I upload it to YouTube, Vimeo etc. and then post the link here?

You can certainly do that, either by directly pasting the link in your reply or by clicking on the Insert/edit video button at the top of the forum text box:



Thanks for sharing your workflow here. The results look very impressive!

YouTube/optodata

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O.K. I'll try that and see if it works....... Keith R

Great....it works! You'll se a few minor streaks that are not too bothersome, and to me that is a great improvement. I will also try to capture the footage again in a lossless format on VideoDub. At least I do have a method now that works without too much hassle and I can fix the old video footage for my friends and family.

Keith R Keith R