Gradiants to banding

AerithReborn · Post by **AerithReborn** » Mon Feb 06, 2006 1:49 am

(before I say anything else, I've been following Read <a href=http://www.a-m-v.org/guides/avtech31/>ErMaC & AbsoluteDestiny's Friendly AMV Guides</a> to the letter)

I'm using clips from Jubei-chan (first season) and they use insane amounts of gradiants and halos and glowy stuff. I've gotten my first render finished and now I'm doing the AMVApp editing to get rid of the grainy stuff. When I blend, though, I get nothing but banding.

This is the coding:

DirectShowSource("Uninvited1.avi")
Telecide(order=1,post=2,blend=false,vthresh=30,back=1)
Decimate(cycle=5,mode=3,quality=3)
ConvertToYV12()
temporalcleaner()
mfrainbow()
FastLineDarken()

I had been using deen and I tried all of the choices mentioned in the guide, but all of them produced varying amounts of banding. Is there anything that's good for video like this? I'm pretty sure that both Trigun and Gungrave would have similar problems, though I haven't checked. Has anyone else had this problem and how did you fix it?

Corran · Post by **Corran** » Mon Feb 06, 2006 2:21 am

Can you post some lossless images of the issue before your filtering?

Also, double check that your monitor settings are using the highest quality settings for color depth. I made the mistake of having it at 16K colors earlier today and felt stupid once I noticed my error. -_-;

Kariudo · Post by **Kariudo** » Mon Feb 06, 2006 1:13 pm

just a guess, but I'll throw it out there.
I think you should use aviSource isntead of directshowsource (pretty sure I read that in Read <a href=http://www.a-m-v.org/guides/avtech31/>ErMaC & AbsoluteDestiny's Friendly AMV Guides</a>...)

and for the banding...well images would help, but you might want to see if setting belnd=true helps that at all

in Decimate() setting cycle=5 soesn't really do anything (since 5 is the default value) but mode might work better if you set it to mode=2 (it has been awhile since I read the info on those functions though...)

***if you have lots of action going on in your clips you should use a spacial smoother (instead of a temporal smoother)

Qyot27 · Post by **Qyot27** » Mon Feb 06, 2006 7:16 pm

I'd suggest trying TIVTC instead of Telecide, and possibly ChangeFPS instead of Decimate (although that's kind of inconsequential; I just find it a bit faster). DFMDeRainbow or LUTDeRainbow would probably be better choices than mfrainbow.

Zarxrax · Post by **Zarxrax** » Mon Feb 06, 2006 7:28 pm

Qyot27 wrote:(I'd suggest trying) ChangeFPS instead of Decimate (although that's kind of inconsequential; I just find it a bit faster).

No, No, No. ChangeFPS is NOT a suitable replacement for decimate. They do totally different things. Decimate removes 1 out of ever N frames, to properly restore the framerate after field matching has occured. ChangeFPS changes the fps of the stream by blending frames together. Using ChangeFPS in place of decimate will only serve to really screw up your video.

Qyot27 · Post by **Qyot27** » Mon Feb 06, 2006 7:36 pm

Zarxrax wrote:
Qyot27 wrote:(I'd suggest trying) ChangeFPS instead of Decimate (although that's kind of inconsequential; I just find it a bit faster).
No, No, No. ChangeFPS is NOT a suitable replacement for decimate. They do totally different things. Decimate removes 1 out of ever N frames, to properly restore the framerate after field matching has occured. ChangeFPS changes the fps of the stream by blending frames together. Using ChangeFPS in place of decimate will only serve to really screw up your video.

http://www.avisynth.org/FPS wrote:ChangeFPS changes the frame rate by deleting or duplicating frames.

Scintilla · Post by **Scintilla** » Mon Feb 06, 2006 7:42 pm

Even so, can ChangeFPS take hints from Telecide like Decimate can?

Zarxrax · Post by **Zarxrax** » Mon Feb 06, 2006 7:54 pm

Qyot27 wrote:
http://www.avisynth.org/FPS wrote:ChangeFPS changes the frame rate by deleting or duplicating frames.

Ok, I stand corrected, I was thinking of the ConvertFPS function.
But still, as Scintilla pointed out, ChangeFPS cannot take hints from Telecide, and so it does not know what frames to drop.

For still shots or action scenes there might not appear to be much difference. But just look at any pan or zoom (anime is chock full of them) and it will be choppy as all get out because the wrong frames are removed.

AerithReborn · Post by **AerithReborn** » Tue Feb 07, 2006 1:46 am

Alright, I tried a lot of what you guys were talking about, but nothing really worked.

My monitor is set to 32 bit, so that's not a problem.

http://img209.imageshack.us/img209/1117 ... iny4hz.jpg That's the grainy one, before I used deen.

http://img65.imageshack.us/img65/5420/u ... ing4yi.jpg That's the one that I used deen("w3d",4).

I turned around and followed Kariudo's suggestions about changing the settings to "true" and "2", but it didn't help much if any. And if I use the AVISource, it can't read my video. Don't know why, but it's always been like that.

Qyot, I don't understand what you mean. Do I download those or do they come with the program? If I dload it, could you send me a direct link or point me in the right direction. If you can't tell already, I'm a total n00b. Be gentle.

Corran · Post by **Corran** » Tue Feb 07, 2006 2:20 am

One other thing to do with color depth, since you took a screencap of virtualdub itself instelf of exporting a frame could you try the following:

Use "Shift + 1" to take a png screencap

and check the following:

-- Options -> Preferences
-- Make sure under Quick preview defaults that Output color depth it is set to 24-bit

I believe the default for quick preview color depth is 16-bit to help speed up processing while scanning through a file.