Cutting Out the Noise - A Practical Guide to Video and Audio Compression - page 586

Solution?

1. Use a better camera.
2. Hand-retouch every frame in the video you are restoring.
3. Live with it.

36.4.4 Tracking Errors

Tracking errors (Figure 36-5) happen when the heads in your video player don't properly
line up with the recorded tracks of video information on the tape. The fix is to properly
maintain your tape players and ensure that you play back footage that was recorded prop-
erly in the first place. Tracking correction might be applied manually if the tape was
recorded on a VCR whose tracking was maladjusted.

Figure 36-5 Tracking error.

Solution?

1. Don't even bother trying to encode something that has tracking errors; it is going
to look horrible.
2. Apply extreme dropout compensation if you have it.
3. Crop off the offending part of the frame if you can.
4. Live with it and bear the consequences of a compromised compression ratio and
a gross artifact onscreen when the video is played back.

36.4.5 Bad Horizontal Sync

Correcting bad horizontal sync (Figure 36-6) may be possible if it isn't too extreme. Some
special-purpose software may need to be written, so the value of the footage will deter-
mine whether it is worth the effort.