VHS to DVD - how to "clean up"?

[Ervin Farkas]

I have some VHS tapes with valuable stuff on them; I am in the process of transfering this content to DVD. I am using the highest possible quality out from a high-end SVHS player, which is of course SVHS. I use my old Hi8 camcorder for digitizing, capture the AVI to the PC, then encode with CinemaCraft, multiple passes. I am talking about what used to be high quality VHS tapes! The audio is fantastic, way better then I expected (because it's digitally recorded onto the tape), but the video shows the typical VHS flutter at the top, a little grain (depending on the age of the tape), and on some scenes chroma is a bit off, for example the sky goes white where it should be blue.

All this is inherent to VHS tapes, I am well aware of that. Still, I would like to get as much as quality out of these tapes as possible. I know I can take care of the grain, but how about the other problems.

Any help appreciated - I can use the Adobe Suite 2 if that helps.

[Emre Safak]

http://arstechnica.com/guides/tweaks/cleaning.ars