Improving Image Quality With Scripts (Example Pics Included)

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Kero777
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Improving Image Quality With Scripts (Example Pics Included)

Post by Kero777 » Mon Aug 13, 2007 2:58 pm

Hey all! I'm new to Avisynth and I've never actually used a script to try to better my video quality before. I do not want to just throw in something if I'm not exactly sure what it is, but my footage is in desperate need of improvement. :shock: Could anyone please take a look at these photos and maybe give me some ideas on what types of filters I can use?

The pictures of each snapshot are identical, but the ones on the top or to the left are the ones where I am pointing out the flaws. The bottom part or right part is so you can take a look at the problem areas above without being distracted by my circles.

Example 1:

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As you can see it's full of problems! 1) First off, look at Hideki's hair. Towards the top you can see a bunch of red outlines in his hair, which is supposed to be fully black. The bottom part also has some mixed green. 2) I'm just now noticing that the problem with the hair appears around his neck as well. 3) His lips, also have a bunch of multi-colored dots around them, which appear to be rainbowing to me, but I am not completely sure.

Example 2:

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1) If you take a look at the wall on the right, there are a bunch of... *thinks of how to describe it* "ripples," sort of. 2) The door and door handle have the same problem as Hideki's hair above 3)as well as this horrid motion blur. As a matter of fact, it's not really a motion blur: if you look at the four little windows on the door, the lowest left one has begun this odd movement and it increases as the door opens wider. 4)Around Hibiya's mouth, there is a circle of a different color, like she has an even skin tone, or like I tried to edit her mouth closed by importing a picture over it. The picture above may not be the best example of this discolor (it gets much worse), but you can see it some.

Example 3:

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At first glance I thought this snapshot didn't look so bad, 1) but examining their shirts I realized that there is ugly discolor. 2)The background turns into a huge problem and I don't know if it's just because it's bright. It seems to spread all these different colors horizontally. 3) During a transition, (switching from one face to the other) and especially during bright scenes the next scene seems to circle in or "ripple" in. It's so strange looking. :?

The pictures above are blown up so you can see the problems better, but a lot of people tend to view videos in fullscreen mode, and I'd love for these problems to be less visible.

Could anyone please give me any suggestions to the problems above and to any others I'm not noticing? I really need it! :P Maybe Virtual Dub could help me out as well, but I'm not sure.

I appreciate that you took the time to read all that and I'm sorry if my descriptions of the motion parts aren't too good. (It's hard to point out what happens during motion when you only have a picture to show) :)
Thanks to: Qyot27, Jaddziadax, BasharOfTheAges, Scintilla, Post-It, Anubisx00, Kariudo and everyone else for helping this Newby out! :P

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bobstur
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Post by bobstur » Mon Aug 13, 2007 3:04 pm

thats awesome. i have to try it xD

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Post by The Origonal Head Hunter » Mon Aug 13, 2007 3:14 pm

DeRainbow() perhaps?
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Post by bobstur » Mon Aug 13, 2007 3:21 pm

im cleaning these with smart smooth. with vir dub.

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Kero777
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Post by Kero777 » Mon Aug 13, 2007 4:20 pm

I tried out the DeRainbow() script and it doesn't seem to do much. I do not understand about using ConvertToYV12() to get the filters to work: My footage is YUY2 and using ConverttoYV12() to use the filters makes my footage look extremely faded and terrible. Does it do that to all colorspace formats? How do I get it back to the way it looked like after I use DeRainbow(), but without the extreme fade? Converting back to YUY2 after YV12 makes it look even worse. :( (I also fiddled around with the blurring in V-Dub and it seemed to make the problems worse as well.)
Thanks to: Qyot27, Jaddziadax, BasharOfTheAges, Scintilla, Post-It, Anubisx00, Kariudo and everyone else for helping this Newby out! :P

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Post by NeoQuixotic » Mon Aug 13, 2007 5:06 pm

I used to go crazy with all the crap I see in footage. But then I realized perfection isn't possible being we're working with already so-so MPEG-2 lossy compression. I've generally been more than happy with Deen's smoothing. Just tweak settings and see how it turns out. Also watch a quick render of it. I've discovered that something may look bad in a single frame, but once smoothed out a bit and watched full motion, it isn't as bad as it seems. Also, with Mpeg2source, the CPU parameter controls how much smoothing is done also. I usually set CPU=4, but for series with less fine detail I'll simply use 6 (the max).

Also make sure that Vdub/Mod's display settings are set to "Use output setting".
Options>Preferences>Main>Output Color Depth

VirtualDub defaults to only 16-bit color, so you may see gradients that don't truly exist in the footage.
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Post by Qyot27 » Tue Aug 14, 2007 12:58 am

How was the footage treated prior to the screenshots being taken? Often, blurriness and other artifacting can result from things like a bad inverse telecine or deinterlacing operation.

For the gradiation that does still appear (to my eyes it didn't seem all that bad, and I've worked with Chobits before - however, the screenshots look a lot worse than what I remember), you might try the gradfun2db plugin.

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Post by Kariudo » Tue Aug 14, 2007 1:01 am

a lot of the problem areas you circled seem to be a combination of vdub's 16-bit output and compression artifacts.

I don't really see any rainbowing, the rest should be easily handled by deen
I'd suggest some line darkening/sharpening (but that may just be my preference)

try using deen first, if you're not happy... try using fluxsmooth after deen
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Post by Kero777 » Wed Aug 15, 2007 4:04 pm

I'm so sorry for taking so long to reply!

I played around with the settings for five hours today... (Phew! :P) I came to the conclusion that in this case less is probably more. I'm only using Deen("w3d",3,3,5) and gradfun2db() for now. I think my best choice would be to decided what other filters I use after I finish my AMV because there is no reversing it if it's done too much. I noticed a lot of filters can cause a different problem!

Here is the big difference it made with just those two simple filters (You can notice a lot of discolor/blockage on the one before):

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I am still having a lot of trouble with "dot crawl" around the edges of the characters and sometimes objects in the room. Even when there is no movement you can still see them moving sometimes. I tried a few scripts and nothing really seems to help that problem. I could just be too picky though.

Question: I've had V-Dub's setting set to 16-bit footage since I downloaded it. Does that only have an effect in the preview or the export as well? If the exports aren't the same as the original, I should convert all my lagarith footage over again. Just curious because I never noticed a difference.
Thanks to: Qyot27, Jaddziadax, BasharOfTheAges, Scintilla, Post-It, Anubisx00, Kariudo and everyone else for helping this Newby out! :P

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Post by Scintilla » Wed Aug 15, 2007 5:14 pm

Kero777 wrote:Question: I've had V-Dub's setting set to 16-bit footage since I downloaded it. Does that only have an effect in the preview or the export as well?
It should only have an effect on the preview, but that could be why things look horrible after converting to YV12 (the difference should not be that noticeable under normal circumstances). Why not set it to match the output depth?
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