How to restore VHS and DVD video on a Mac

Digitised VHS tapes and DVD rips look soft, striped and noisy on modern screens. Deinterlace, denoise and AI-upscale them on your Mac.

Updated 2026-10-08 · Code Boop

Home videos and TV recordings from the VHS and DVD era were made for small tube TVs. On a modern screen they show comb-like stripes on movement, colour noise and very little detail. The good news: each of these problems has a fix.

The three steps

  1. Deinterlace. Analogue video stores two half-pictures per frame; on a computer they show as stripes. Deinterlacing merges them into clean full frames.
  2. Denoise. Tape noise and DVD compression blocks are smoothed away before upscaling, so the AI doesn't sharpen them.
  3. Upscale. Real-ESRGAN rebuilds detail at 1080p, 1440p or 4K.

Tips

  • Digitise at the highest quality your capture device allows; you can't restore what was never captured.
  • Use the split-screen preview to avoid over-sharpening faces.
  • Fix the levels: VHS often looks washed out — raise contrast slightly and check skin tones.

All of this is in AI Movie Restore Pro, processed locally on your Mac.

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