Improving Analog TV Quality

The picture quality on analog TV is not always good but you can modify parameters in CINELERRA-GG to make it look more like it did in the studio.

First, when capturing the video, capture it in the highest resolution possible. For Europeans this would be 720×576 and for North Americans, 720×480. Do not adjust the brightness or contrast in the recording monitor, but you might want to max out the color. Capture the video using MJPEG or uncompressed Component Video if possible; if not possible, then capture it using JPEG preferably or RGB if that is all that will work. Now on the timeline use Settings → Format to set a YUV colorspace, drop a Downsample effect on the footage and set it as follows:

Horizontal:					2
Horizontal offset: 	0
Vertical:						2
Vertical offset: 		0
	 red
x  green
x  blue
	 alpha

Use the Camera in the compositor to shift the picture up or down a line to remove the most color interference from the image. If you have vertical blanking information or crawls which constantly change in each frame, block them out by using a Mask. This improves compression ratios. More invasive quality improvement techniques involve removing the interlace via deinterlacing.