How to improve the quality of old VHS tapes

[Drachsi]

I have some VHS tapes from the 80-90's of my Mum. I have imported these onto my PC. I would like to improve the quality when viewed on a modern TV. Can I do this in VSX5 or is there another way?
Thanks in advance
Drachsi

[BrianCee]

VideoStudio has several filters which you will find in the 'FX' library which you can drag down onto the video in the timeline and customise to enhance the video.

but be aware that you cannot add what was never there - there is only so much information in a VHS picture and you cannot expect to make blu-ray quality DVDs - but you should be able to at least preserve the VHS quality and maybe improve on some of the exposure or colour balance issues some VHS tapes show

[Drachsi]

Thanks, just what I needed to know. Appreciate your support.
Drachsi

[VinnyC]

Just to add from my experience things like bitrate, etc. can improve the look of the finished dvd. On some VS versions in the capture mode you could adjust certain apects like saturation, etc. Hope this helps.

[Ken Berry]

Going on from what VinnyC has said, many people say that with VHS-sourced (or any analogue-sourced) material, there is not much point using a bitrate over 4000 or 4500 kbps. Personally, I capture my analogue video via passthrough using Firewire, which allows me to capture in DV/AVI format. That in turn gives me as good a quality as I am ever likely to get from analogue material. When I convert it to DVD, I never use a bitrate lower than 6000 kbps, or if the material is less than an hour, even as high as 8000. While this might indeed be too high, at least I have the comfort of knowing that the bitrate is not going to degrade the quality any further.

[VinnyC]

Ken, do you constant or variable bitrate? Would a two pass give better results also? I use constant at the highest bitrate allowed for my projects. Thanks?

[Ken Berry]

I too usually use constant -- though notional two pass variable could give some marginally better quality, though I suspect you might not notice it, given the original material.