In 2005 I began stooting to movies back to back but I shot them on VHS-C. I soon wanted to upgrade to High Definition and at the same time get my first two movies avalible on HD DVD and Blu-Ray disk.

I didn't know how to go about it until I saw these DVD players and recorders that upconvert to 1080i, and that point I thought that would be the most logical choice but then I was amazed that they now had players that would upconvert to 1080p. I got out my tapes, hooked up the camera to the DVD recorder, set it on HQ(1 hour) and started recording. Now my original tapes have been backed up to 3 DVD-Rs but I don't have a capture card that can capture 1080p and I don't have an HDTV set either.

I would like someone if they can to post up some screenshots of VHS footage that has already went throw this process and do a comparison. One screenshot that is SD stretched to 1440x1080 and an HD image from the upconvertion at full 1440x1080 as it would be seen. And use MPEG-2 SD and HD video because that's what I got I just want to see how the image would look for now.

The image will never look any better than it is on the VHS tapes. VHS is 250 line resolution, half that of even a conventional DVD. Once you lose resolution it's gone forever and no format conversion process can ever bring it back. Spending the extra money to record to HD will be wasted.

VHS is 250 lines max, but in reality often lower. To get an idea of what it may look like, take a short clip from the internet or anywhere else that has a resolution of 320 x 240 and enlarge that to 1440 x 1080. This will give you an idea of how it will look. You will see that it is not worth watching, as Steve already mentioned.

I suggest that you digitize and save your old VHS footage. Someday, someone will develop a software program that will improve the quality of the video by creating the extra lines. Enhance video like they can do with photo's. It's just a matter of time. The demand is sure there for it.

How can you enhance something that's not there in the first place?
It's an educated guess at best. Don't tell me a software can create wrinkles, individual tree leaves, etc. that are not seen on the original.
There's 250 lines of original information and it will never be more original lines for that video than those 250 original lines.
At least, imho.

There is no major image loss taking place. When I viewed the DVDs after I was done, it was just like watching the original VHS tapes. Even though their are only 250 horizontal lines on VHS as compaired to 480 horizontal lines on DVD, what you should have in the end is a format that will last longer for years to come but as far as going up to HD is concerned, 99% of HD DVD and Blu-Ray disk titles are widescreen 16:9(1920x1080i/p) but being shot on a fullscreen 4:3 format. The new resulting NEW comercial DVD will be standerd fullscreen while the comercial HD DVD and Blu-Ray will be Pillarboxed(black bars on the left and right sides of the screen)

But hear is another question to go along with what I have already asked.
1. You hook up your VCR to your 1080p HDTV and play the tape.
2. You hook up your top of the line DVD player with 1080p upconvertion technology, watching the same footage backed up on a DVD.

Which one will give you a best image?

I'm just guessing since I don't have an HD DVD or BluRay player or recorder to test it with but I'd wager the two will look close to identical with perhaps a slight edge going to the original tape. (To go from tape to DVD requires an analog transfer and you'll always lose some quality going from one generation to the next, especially if you don't have time-base correction which you don't when going composite or s-video out to video in.) When I play a conventional VHS tape on my HD TV it looks okay, as good as it can get given the source, but it's obviously not HD or even SD/DVD quality and my set has a line doubler that upconverts SD to 960 or 1080i

what you should have in the end is a format that will last longer for years to come

Have you ever considered the fact that the longevity of VHS(-C) tapes is over 20 years if stored properly (dark, vertical, constant temperature and humidity) and is way better than the approximate 5 year lifespan of DVD R?

If you keep the DVD-R in a safe place then how can the disc end its life in 5 years? I have archived a lot materials on DVD-Rs since 2000, I am concerned.

I started video around 1978 and still have all my original tapes. I have not encountered one single problem with playback of any tape, whether it was VHS-C or later Hi-8 or mini-DV, even though some are nearly 30 years old. Even Video 2000 tapes from that long gone era play fine and do not show noticeable color loss or other artefact's. OTOH, I have had several people for whom I made DVD's come back, complaining that they could no longer play their DVD's, which were burned several years back on what at that moment was a reputable disk like the Ritek G04 or even Verbatim. And indeed it showed in all cases the disk did no longer play on several set top boxes and neither did it play in the PC. Sometimes this may have been caused by scratching, but also by disk rot. I have had a terrible time in recreating these discs, even though they were only 3 or 4 years old. Most of the time I had to revert to the original tapes or the master tape on which I store the final version.

I always advise to keep your original tape and store it properly. If disaster strikes, you can at least re-edit the original material. There have been numerous mentions on the longevity of DVD R's on the internet and most of them show that the claimed longevity is never met and is closer to around 5 years. This general tendency is confirmed by my own experiences, but is by no means a rule. Just be careful and keep your original tapes in a safe place.

I have a similar experience. I can playback video tapes from the early 90s, but some cd's from 2000 and 2002 have errors and can not be read, usually in part.
Those were strictly backup cd's and all that time spent in a shelf where sunlight does not reach.

Instand HD by Red Giant is one of the new Softwares being developed to upconvert DV by using scaling (determining the missing lines in video and replacing them). An Independent review of the product can be viewed here: http://www.lafcpug.org/reviews/review_instant_hd.html

I just wish they would make a plugin for Vegas.

It's not possible to take a source and add information that's not there. It's just not possible. Garbage in, garbage out. You can add filters and color correct to improve your results, but that's about all you can do.

I played around a little with the demo version of Genuine Fractals which is supposed to do a good job on enlarging still images. The improvement is mostly things like reducing stair-stepping in diagonal lines and such. And it doesn't seem to make much difference unless you're really doing extreme enlargement. For 200% or 300% blowups Photoshop's bicubic interpolation looked just as good to me.

But I have to agree with you; there's no way to get around the basic principle of "garbage in, garbage out"...

"garbage in, garbage out"...

That is true today. But, software will continue to evolve at a rapid rate.
As I stated above, "someday" in the not too distant future, there will be software that will be able to create the missing lines, and upconvert any video to HDV.
So hang onto that old video. Ye of little faith....

To add my two cents...

It shouldn't hurt to transfer the VHS tapes onto another medium (e.g. DV, DVD), and hang onto both. You should periodically check that your media is in good condition. And then in 10 years, you should probably migrate your DVD material... for example, just copy it again. Because DVDs aren't going to last that long.

That is true today. But, software will continue to evolve at a rapid rate.
As I stated above, "someday" in the not too distant future, there will be software that will be able to create the missing lines, and upconvert any video to HDV.
So hang onto that old video. Ye of little faith....
I can't agree. I am new to filmmaking, but not computer software.
There are no missing lines. What is original, stays original - the amount of data gathered at a particular time and place.
A computer algorithm can smoothen corners, enhance faded colours, add additional lines to fill blank spaces between A and D, but it can not go back in spacetime and witness that moment when the original data was "written down",
it can't see the tree as it was in May 2001 during a family birthday video,
therefore it can't create the leaves of that tree as it was in May 2001.

Maybe it can create a new tree in the outline of the existing one, but then it will be computer graphics - a new creation, a guess of what was there, not an actual depiction of what was seen by the camera in May 2001.

"garbage in, garbage out"...

That is true today. But, software will continue to evolve at a rapid rate.
As I stated above, "someday" in the not too distant future, there will be software that will be able to create the missing lines, and upconvert any video to HDV.
So hang onto that old video. Ye of little faith....


Creating the missing lines is the easy part, line doublers exist today. But creating the information that should have been in the line instead of just copying or averaging the lines on either side of the new lines are another matter entirely. With 250 lines on a VHS frame and 1080 lines on an HD frame, you have only 1/4 of the information required to really fill in the missing lines with real data.

It might be possible to present the information in the signal in a more useful manner / "extract" "more" quality out of the image. Since video records images over time, you can do things like temporal de-noising. I also believe you can do motion estimation on the footage to extract higher resolution... though I haven't seen any demos online.

Basically you are presenting the existing information in a more useful way.

2- On a semi-related note, there's some cool things you can do by using information from other frames.
http://www.motiondsp.com/
Image processing to get rid of compression artifacts.

If you want to do those tricks however, it is best that you copy the original as cleanly as possible, WITHOUT upconversion. Image processing like that introduces spurious information (which is not helpful) and can throw away useful information.

Time-base correction can be helpful if your tapes have that problem.

3- There are also tricks to make images look better... not all upconversion techniques are created equally.

"garbage in, garbage out"...

That is true today. But, software will continue to evolve at a rapid rate.
As I stated above, "someday" in the not too distant future, there will be software that will be able to create the missing lines, and upconvert any video to HDV.
So hang onto that old video. Ye of little faith....

I think the point you're missing is the difference between "image enhancement" and "resolution".

Resolution cannot be accurately changed after the moment of capture. ANY change in resolution results in the computer being asked to guess.

As marvelous as computers are (and I know, I spend virtually all of every working day in Photoshop) they cannot make decisions, let alone artistic ones. When I retouch an image I have to choose which areas to resample, at what opacity, orientation, etc., etc., etc..

Unfortunately many people who watch CSI where they zoom in on a single frame of "surveillance video" and push their magic "enhance" button" believe that such technology actually exists in this form. They never pause to consider that the "original" frame is actually a down-sampled version of the "enhanced, finished" frame. Whiz-bang technology for entertainment, but it simply is not real. (Consider that if it was, a lot of crimes would be much more easily solved.)

The computer simply does not know how to paint the missing parts of the picture beyond the algorithms it uses to guess at image enhancement.

between simple backup of your tape and video restauration there is a large gap.
While you can easily backup to a better media (like DV tape or DVD), applying simple luma/color correction, image restauration require studying the damage (noise, drop, ghosting, colour shift etc..) and applying filters.
the problem is these filters usually can multiply the conversion time to a huge factor (like 100 for 1).
you would easily do that for a 20 sec clip but managing it for hours of video seems a bit too big.
Usually when i need to uprez, i try to copy the original to the best format (uncompressed video), then deinterlace (if needed), then uprez to a at least 1.7 or 2.3 the final size (fixed multiple are useless because, then downsizing would just skip pixels), apply filters, then downsizing to the final size.
virtualub is a great free utility to do that, with lots of filters.
neatvideo allows great noise removal and uprez is nicely done by "video enhancer" http://www.thedeemon.com/VideoEnhancer/
from the economic point of view it is cheap, but the time consumed is terrific.

As long as you keep the original source materal in good condition, your going to have it for future technology to enhance it in anyway possible. You also have to think about this. Several television shows where shot on several video tape formats, in order to avoid the coast of having to have what was then expensive film to video transfers so they could be broadcasted on TV. Many new processes came along that made it easier and less coastly. If you shoot something for big screen you use 35mm film or HD Tape, same is true for television.

When digitizing an anolog source like VHS it's not always about what level of image resolution or sound quality but what video codec are you using, the playback device, and your computer's software and hardware. So you have several choices, whether you want the results to mimic the original or look better then the original. You not always going to get what your after but in the end or going to have something to compare it to.