danobie

Can color be restored to a VHS tape? If so how?

Hamltnblue Loc: Springfield PA

If you are talking about video on a VHS movie tape it never faded in the first place.
You could try having the movie digitized and process the movie in a program such as premier.

jeep_daddy Loc: Prescott AZ

rook2c4 Loc: Philadelphia, PA USA

I agree... although Premier is a bit overkill for simply color correction tasks. There are much cheaper (and even free) programs that are not only perfectly adequate for color correction, but are easier to learn. It would be like purchasing a huge trailer truck for nothing more than weekly trips to the grocery store.

rgrenaderphoto Loc: Hollywood, CA

ACDSee Video Studio

Blair Shaw Jr Loc: Dunnellon,Florida

If the tapes are aging , I would certainly have them digitized before the degrade any further. I cannot recommend which software you would need to re-edit the videos after that. I still use my VHS camera now & then and recently replaced the batteries and bought new tapes while I can still find them on line. I enjoy the old school stuff in spite of my newer DSLR units that also record videos. Good Luck

sodapop Loc: Bel Air, MD

Photoshop does a decent job with video.

nadelewitz Loc: Ithaca NY

The image or color on a Video tape can't "fade". It's an electronic medium.
A tape CAN deteriorate physically, which affects playability, clarity of picture, etc.

burkphoto Loc: High Point, NC

Hopefully, they are recorded in SP (2 hour mode), and not SLP (6 hour mode).

You need an analog video to digital video converter with the right connections to your computer, and software that is capable of ingesting it. Apple iMovie (Mac) or Adobe Premiere Elements on Windows or Mac would probably work.

https://www.elgato.com/en/video-capture

Opsafari Loc: Roodepoort South Africa

Restoring VHS, as mentioned by others the video colour does not degrade over time however it can be influenced by magnetic fields which for most armatures is rare. You can enhance the colour of the video but you need to be very careful not to over kill it. The more correct term is to colour correct or colour grading.

The following info from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VHS: “NTSC VHS is roughly equivalent to 333×480 pixels luma and 40×480 chroma resolutions (333×480 pixels=159,840 pixels or 0.16MP (1/6 of a MegaPixel)). Compare to today’s digital video cameras it is very low and noisy! However a lot of video material especially home recordings are important for many to share with the family and needed to be digitized.

I’m currently trying to get my setup to work at home to digitize Betacam Sp, VHS and DV tapes for a friend of mine. The Betacam has Component and Composite output and to find a device to convert the signal to digital between the Betacam / VHS machines and my PC is very difficult. There are a few video cards available with either one of the mentioned outputs but some very expensive (currency wise as I live in South Africa) and the small USB devices are really rubbish to use! Needless to say, it’s a nightmare.

A few years ago it was so easy, equipment was available in many shops but with the rapid development of technology they disappeared like mist in the sun. There are some dim light in the tunnel where a friend of a friend of a friend still has a Moja box that was used for the Pinnacle video editing system that can do the job. Just to need time to pay the guy a visit and hopefully its in a working condition!

If you still have a VHS machine with all the cables and a device - analog to digital converter- that can change the signal to electronic fields in order to record on to your PC do it quickly! Thereafter there are various video editing software available to edit and to enhance the colour, some easy and free to use and some more difficult but more professional at a cost.

burkphoto Loc: High Point, NC

Those with digital tape camcorders that have a FireWire (IEEE 1394) output can connect them with the right cable to a FireWire or 1394 port on a Mac or PC, or to an adapter that converts FireWire to USB-3 or USB-C.

Most cameras with FireWire ports use a 4-pin FireWire 400 connection, and require a cable compatible with FireWire 400 ports, or the same cable with an adapter for FireWire 800, or a cable that connects 4-pin devices directly to FireWire 800. Newer computers will require a FireWire 800 to USB-3 or USB-C or Thunderbolt converter of some sort.

All Macs come with iMovie software, which is compatible with lots of digital camcorders. You can spool the digital tape right onto the Mac, and iMovie will create a new clip for each start-stop break on the tape. That makes editing extremely easy.