Best Avisynth filters for gaming footage

[Anicsi]

Hello guyssss, yet again... I've come with a question.

I literally spent the past three hours browsing the net to find a solution for sharpening and anti-aliasing game footage.

Example:



Unfortunately i haven't gotten very far. Whenever I try to load the maa2 filter, AVSpmod dies. With AntiAliasing filter I get an error. I couldn't get santiag to work (I copy/pasted the script on the source page into a text file and saved it as avsi file and put it in the plugin folder). DAA doesn't show any effect on the footage.

I am clueless what to do next. In the end I stumbled across another script line, which does seem to get rid of the aliasing, but only because it resized the size from 720p to... really small. I'm trying to fix the footage for my friend who wants to do a Final Fantasy mix, and since most of the games have been released remastered, she'd like to keep it in HD.

Anyway, here is the script i've come up with (hopefully not completely nonsense) The last four lines are what I found in another forum to get rid of the aliasing and it results in downscaling:

Code: Select all

AVISource("Z:\Users\annawuki\Documents\Avisynth\encode\final fantasy 1 intro.avi")
Deblock(quant=25, aOffset=0, bOffset=0, mmx=true, isse=true)
FFT3DFilter(sigma=3.0, plane=4)
Deen(mode="a2d", rad=2, thrY=5, thrUV=7, min=0.3)
flash3kyuu_deband()
vmToon(strength=70, luma_cap=150, threshold=2, thinning=24, sharpen=true, mask=true, show=false, showclip="lines", ssw=4, ssh=4, xstren=255, xthresh=255)
Xsharpen(strength=150, threshold=3)
TTempSmooth(maxr=3, lthresh=4, cthresh=5, lmdiff=2, cmdiff=3, strength=2, scthresh=12.0, fp=true, vis_blur=0, debug=false, interlaced=false)
PointResize(Width/2,Height/2)
TurnLeft()
Merge(SangNom(1,30),SangNom(0,30),0.5)
TurnRight()

Before:


After:


I'm hoping you could help me with a better sharpening filter for game/live action footage, as well as a solution for the aliasing problem. It's gone now, but the image has been shrunk to half (?) its size. So either a way to keep the original size and a different filter, or a way to upscale without reintroducing the aliasing.

Thank you!

[l33tmeatwad]

The problem isn't blocking it's aliasing. You'll want to use something like MAA on it to reduce this type of noise. You may have to load it several times to eliminate that much. I'd take out the rest of the filters and try just using MAA() to see if you avoid losing detail.

[Anicsi]

Thanks a lot for the reply. I really appreciate your help, but did you actually read what I wrote besides the code? I know it's aliasing, I used the Deblock because in most other parts of the video, which are full of action, there are massive blocks all over the place. Some smoothing was necessary because of the mosquito noise and sharpening for the unsharp edges.

My biggest problem is, indeed, the aliasing, but I explained in my post before that maa2 or maa don't work for me, because it crashes the app for some reason. I'll happily try reducing the filters though, but first I must find a solution of anti-aliasing that works for me. (All the options I've already tried, I laid out in my previous post)

[Qyot27]

Code: Select all

AVISource("Z:\Users\annawuki\Documents\Avisynth\encode\final fantasy 1 intro.avi")
Deblock(quant=25, aOffset=0, bOffset=0, mmx=true, isse=true)
FFT3DFilter(sigma=3.0, plane=4)
Deen(mode="a2d", rad=2, thrY=5, thrUV=7, min=0.3)
flash3kyuu_deband()
vmToon(strength=70, luma_cap=150, threshold=2, thinning=24, sharpen=true, mask=true, show=false, showclip="lines", ssw=4, ssh=4, xstren=255, xthresh=255)
Xsharpen(strength=150, threshold=3)
TTempSmooth(maxr=3, lthresh=4, cthresh=5, lmdiff=2, cmdiff=3, strength=2, scthresh=12.0, fp=true, vis_blur=0, debug=false, interlaced=false)
PointResize(Width/2,Height/2)
TurnLeft()
Merge(SangNom(1,30),SangNom(0,30),0.5)
TurnRight()

That's a lot of smoothers and sharpeners stacking on one another; that can almost certainly be simplified down to just a couple filters instead of six. flash3kyuu_deband needs to be the last filter used to have any noticeable effect. Otherwise, you're destroying the debanding work by just hitting it with smoothers and sharpeners again.

Full-CG video game based* sources like that are very commonly supersampled to fix/lessen their issues before usage. Basically, you'd insert a high-quality resizer right after the AVISource call, blowing it up to like 1080p or 4K, do the filtering on the blown-up copy, and then resize it back down at the end (and again, f3kdb at the very end of the script, after the downscaling to the proper resolution).

*specifically the video game based ones because the ripping capabilities vary by system and depending on the exact case, don't rip the content as-is, but run it through converters or other filtering in the process...to the point that playing in an emulator and using a capture card could be preferable (or not; those come with perils of their own too)

[Anicsi]

Ah yes, the image looks quite nice in this frame, but there are frames with terrible blocking and pixeling. I agree there are too many filters, though, I'll experiment further with it once I have more time (in a year or so lol) Noted about the banding filter, good to know ^^ Thanks again for the help!