avisynth question

wwf_htm · Post by **wwf_htm** » Fri Oct 03, 2003 7:12 pm

before i spend the whole weekend learning how to use avisynth, i want to make sure that it will actually help me. i'm using premiere and a frame server and piping it into nandub for encoding. basically, it's dvd-quality video going into nandub. i get artifacts here and there and i've been told that i should use msmooth and msharpen to make everything look better. since the footage that nandub is getting is pretty much the best quality possible to begin with, i'd say that it's safe to assume that all of the artifacts are caused within the encoding process. if that is the case, how would smoothing and/or sharpening the video before it gets into nandub actually help me out? Unless there is actually a way to get those 2 filters to work within nandub, i do not see what the point would be... anyone care to clue me in?

thanks

htm

Zarxrax · Post by **Zarxrax** » Fri Oct 03, 2003 8:02 pm

Well, nandub creates a lot of artifacts

I would seriously suggest using a compression method that isnt 3 years old.

wwf_htm · Post by **wwf_htm** » Sat Oct 04, 2003 12:36 am

Zarxrax wrote:Well, nandub creates a lot of artifacts
I would seriously suggest using a compression method that isnt 3 years old.

well, you can replace nandub with virtuadub and divx with xvid. same question applies.

Tab. · Post by **Tab.** » Sat Oct 04, 2003 1:49 am

Raise the bitrate and welcome yourself to the wonderful world of compression

wwf_htm · Post by **wwf_htm** » Sat Oct 04, 2003 9:29 am

Tab. wrote:Raise the bitrate and welcome yourself to the wonderful world of compression

that still doesn't answer my question.

what's the point of using avisynth as a frameserver in order to use those filters if the artifacts are gonna show up anyway? is there any way to use those filters within virtualdub instead?

jonmartensen · Post by **jonmartensen** » Sat Oct 04, 2003 11:18 am

wwf_htm wrote:
Tab. wrote:Raise the bitrate and welcome yourself to the wonderful world of compression
that still doesn't answer my question. what's the point of using avisynth as a frameserver in order to use those filters if the artifacts are gonna show up anyway? is there any way to use those filters within virtualdub instead?

If you increase the bitrate (and are using virtualdub to encode to Xvid/Divx) then you won't get noticable artifacts. If you use temporal and motion smoothing filters on a really low quallity encode, it will still look bad. If you use it on a high quallity encode, you can tweak the filter setting and make the vid look even better. Filters can make the difference between a 9 and a 10 on review.

FurryCurry · Post by **FurryCurry** » Sat Oct 04, 2003 4:50 pm

wwf_htm wrote:
Tab. wrote:Raise the bitrate and welcome yourself to the wonderful world of compression
that still doesn't answer my question. what's the point of using avisynth as a frameserver in order to use those filters if the artifacts are gonna show up anyway? is there any way to use those filters within virtualdub instead?

The short answer is no, you cannot use those filters in vdub, you have to write them into an avisynth script, and feed that to vdub.

If you want to be more certain about what's causing the artifacts, I'd suggest making an intermediate file. Tweak all the filters to your satisfaction, resize, etc, and then save the final output as a huffYUV file.

If no artifacts appear when playing through the huff file in vdub, you can be fairly certain that it's your compression methods or settings that are at fault. If they do appear in a huff encode, the artifacts are almost certainly in your source file or caused by your filter settings.

The bonus is that, at the temporary cost of some disk space, you now have a pre-filtered file that is ready to be encoded by more than one method, without the overhead of filtering during multiple passes for each codec and setting you try.

Run that huff file through nandub, and then vdub with xvid according to the site's guides, and see what works best for you.