Sonic 2 JP VHS revisited

(original topic here)

I'm pretty sure all we have of this video is a lo-res, 30fps butchery. This tape really needs archival-quality preservation, something along the lines of interlaced 7-8Mbps MPEG-2 (the codec doesn't matter so much as leaving it interlaced does).

Deinterlacing is a blight on internet releases of most SD video, and this is no exception. Does anyone actually own this tape, or would this one need to be purchased to re-digitize it?

 

Whatever you do, PLEASE capture at 720x480 resolution (or 640x480 if you have to) with NO deinterlacing or resizing, otherwise there's no real point in capturing it as we already have an old-Youtube-quality copy. We don't necessarily need the raw DV files (since you mentioned Firewire), we only need a high bitrate MPEG-2 (with that we should get more than enough quality from 6-8Mbps instead of 25Mbps for DV). I'd also recommend either high-bitrate MP2 (224kbps or higher) or medium-bitrate AC3 (somewhere between 192 and 320kbps).

Something else that can be done for those who don't have a way to do realtime deinterlacing on playback - convert the file into raw fields (480i to 240p) and then resize it to match SIF video (352x240). The video can be processed to clean it up a bit before this is done to create a fairly high quality 60fps video from a (relatively) low quality VHS source.

I can't guarantee how long it would take, but I would be willing to assist in the processing and conversion of either the original DV capture or the D1-res MPEG-2. Might even go as far as to use motion compensation to make a smooth PAL conversion of the original (although I don't know as that might introduce undesirable artifacts, I'd have to do a dry run on a small clip first).