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When you have VHS video tapes of things that may never be repeated its a good idea to transfer them to DVD - several DVDs if its something really special - in order to prevent them deteriorating in picture quality. But when the tapes are already more than about 8 years old the picture quality will already show signs of deterioration.

I have heard about time base correctors cleaning up picture quality of degraded tapes, but the good ones tend to be pretty pricey. The cheap ones are crap and make no difference at all. Some of the better DVD recorders have what they call 'up sampling', which makes a slight improvment but cant clean tapes up as well as some devices I've seen. So, I was wondering if any of you computer savvy geezers know of any software based VHS tape 'cleaner-uppers' that do a good job.

I have some old tapes recorded in the early to mid 90's which featured a particular cheerleader team that rang my bell ( Brisbane Bullets Hot-Shots if any Aussies are wondering ). The costume styles and the way they danced was just magic to me - ridiculously tiny skirts split right up to the hips, dancing girl legs ( long and shapely ) and big big hair ( and big tits to match ). To me, these images are pure gold and must be kept forever. Modern cheerleader teams are all hot-pants and acrobatics and just dont appeal the same.

I appreciate any advice on this matter of international importance.

OK thanks. I'll have to try that trick. I'd never considered that by compressing it further, you tend to filter out the noise.

Decent DVD recorders include time base correction on the input.

A few top end SVHS VCRS, which of course play VHS, did have TBC built in and work better than stand-alone boxes as the signal is in component parts where as the standalone units have to split & recombine signal components to inevitably losses.

I have both a Panasonic NVHS950 and a Philips (badged JVC) SVHS with TBC and use which ever gives the best result on a tape. If the original recording was on a top brand tape on a decent VCR the results tend to be better.

On my Pioneer DVD recorder there are picture controls too.

I normally do not put more than 2h 20min on a DVD as at 2h 30m setting the Pioneer swaps to 352x576 resolution instead of 720x576.

Lets hope that in the not too distant future, home video buffs will be able to afford some sort of 'intelligent' video corrector which will recognise what the picture should be and clean it up. Such a process would have your Intel chip boiling away for hours but if you only needed to do it to treasured unreplacable stuff it would be worth it.