Do you need video quality help?

YouTube · Post by **Kionon** » Sun Feb 17, 2008 11:12 am

I decided to put this in GAMV, but mods, feel free to move it if you feel it belongs in the help forums. I'm just figuring this is more likely to catch the intended audience here:

Some of you newer folks are doing excellent work, but you don't realize how you can process video until after you come here, announce your completed AMV, and we tell you all the things you could have done to make the visual quality better.

"Great," you think, "this is all something to consider for NEXT TIME, but how do I make what I have already better?" Presuming you've already deleted your project files, you're stuck, seemingly. You *could* do an entire remaster, but it took you so long just to do this, that you'd rather chalk it up to experience and move on...

But wait, what if there was a way to apply post processing? And what if the steps were relatively easy? And what if the software involved added no extra cost to you? Wouldn't you want to present the best quality you could?

Well, there is. I recently have been experimenting with filter groupings in order to post-process some of my favorite videos from newer editors that didn't know how to pre-process, as well as older AMVs from a time before technology was able to produce the kind of quality we expect today. Certainly, I am capable of attacking most of what is announced on the forums today by relative newbies.

I am willing to take the time to correct your initial org offering, as well as go over step by step how I did it, and how I would have dealt with the issue in PRE-processing. This way, when you make your second video, you will already be a cut above everyone else. A cut above where I was at my second video, certainly!

For demonstration purposes, I chose one of the main videos I love, but had serious quality issues with:

Big fan of this video, but I am not a big fan of the video quality. I couldn't fix it completely, and short of remastering it with my own copy of the movie, there was no way to get it perfect. However, I think made excellent progress. Here are two examples, before and after. The first is a high movement shot, the second is a low movement shot. Original file is a 704x396 DX50/PCM AVI. My final file is an 848x480 x264/AAC MP4.

Certainly there are still issues, especially, when it comes to some smaller details (like the tile lines in the heavy movement shot) and I think that the preference of the org at large is that you pre-process or go back to the project files. However, if that is not an option, this is better than the alternative...

So, who needs help?

Knowname · Post by **Knowname** » Sun Feb 17, 2008 2:24 pm

looks like typical mp4 compression too me. only problem is that takes 2x the resources to play.

YouTube · Post by **Kionon** » Sun Feb 17, 2008 7:22 pm

Knowname wrote:looks like typical mp4 compression too me. only problem is that takes 2x the resources to play.

Highly inaccurate.

Knowname · Post by **Knowname** » Mon Feb 18, 2008 5:35 pm

oh?

I am willing to take the time to correct your initial org offering, as well as go over step by step how I did it, and how I would have dealt with the issue in PRE-processing. This way, when you make your second video, you will already be a cut above everyone else. A cut above where I was at my second video, certainly!

well you got your first customer here, how would you have dealt with it?

YouTube · Post by **Kionon** » Mon Feb 18, 2008 10:02 pm

Knowname wrote:oh? [snip]

well you got your first customer here, how would you have dealt with it?

Are you saying that you're not familiar with pre and post-processing? Are you, in fact, claiming to be new?

This was directed at newer folks. This is not a wanton offer to work on correcting veteran videos. If you really don't know how to pre-process after 5 years on the org, and further don't know how to apply post-processing to you earlier works, I will help. However, I do not genuinely believe that to be the case. If you are simply trying to "test" me, that's rather uncouth, especially as this was a genuine offer to help those in need of instruction so that they can produce better results the next time they edit.

If that was a genuine request for help, and I am misunderstanding your intent, I apologize. Please point me to the appropriate video.

Knowname · Post by **Knowname** » Mon Feb 18, 2008 10:31 pm

aah your mean lol, no, ok I'll continue this via pm. I basically just wanted to know (in more than two words, the two words I got) what you did there is all. But maybe you can help me out.

Melichan923 · Post by **Melichan923** » Thu Feb 21, 2008 12:24 am

That's very kind of you to offer this, Kionon! Thanks a lot!

The two after pictures look much better than the originals. Less noticeable lines in the tiles are a small price to pay for that much of a better look!

I'm not really new, I've been signed up for a while, but I'm am pretty new to to scripts. I've seen some over-filtered footage before and I think it kind of scared me off. Not just that, but I'm afraid I will over-filter and not realize it until I need a particular scene in the middle of a project, so I kind of... skip out on that as much as I can.

Of course, I always kick myself and wonder why I didn't do things before-hand since it's easier that way.

I tried cleaning up a video better when it was complete once, and it turned out to be a disaster (and I didn't realize it until it was already uploaded to the Org and had to request re-upload permission). My black fades ended up being smooshed into the video seconds before it even started, splotches of black everywhere: no fun, lol. I believe I only used a light Deen() and a sharpener in that attempt. I ended up leaving it the way it was. For some reason post-processing scripts almost always mess with my effects and/or text... even a simple undot() for compression purposes causes the black parts in fades to have smears or lines... and other problems.

Are there any scripts made to use only before AMV editing that shouldn't be used for post-processing (maybe that's what goes wrong in some cases)?

Thanks again for offering advice about this.

Kariudo · Post by **Kariudo** » Thu Feb 21, 2008 12:32 am

generally speaking, deinterlacing/ivtc-ing should be done before you edit your amv (doing so afterwards can throw your sync way off)

some dot-crawl and rainbow-removal plugins need to have interlaced footage for it to work (so should also be done in pre-processing)

YouTube · Post by **Kionon** » Thu Feb 21, 2008 2:50 am

Kariudo wrote:generally speaking, deinterlacing/ivtc-ing should be done before you edit your amv (doing so afterwards can throw your sync way off)

some dot-crawl and rainbow-removal plugins need to have interlaced footage for it to work (so should also be done in pre-processing)

Generally this is correct. I fully admit that sometimes, I do use the above mentioned filters in post processing, but I always view what comes out at the end before comitting to a fltered copy.

It depends heavily on source, what you may have done in pre-processing, if you did any at all, compression type, and plenty of other factors... That's why I say I have been trying filter groups, plural. There is no one filter group that will work with every source, be it pre- or post-processing. That's why I offered to take a stab at specific videos, and then attempt to explain what filter group I'd have used pre-editing to accomplish the same goals.

Mosc · Post by **Mosc** » Thu Feb 21, 2008 11:20 am

To be honest, I wouldn't call your filtering an improvement over the source. I'll admit you got rid of the blocking fairly well, but at a huge price; the entire frame is filled with hints of stuff that once might have been detail. You mentioned the tiles already, arguably a small detail, but surely you can't call the complete disappearance of the wire running down the table minor? The blocks that appeared on the edge of sharp lines aren't pretty either. Your second screenshot clearly shows the negative effects of your use of (a)WarpSharp: part of the clouds starts to look like water paint and the bat has aliasing issues.

I'd suggest reworking your filter chain to be less destructive, because this is an excellent example of over-filtering. Note that the video in question can indeed be improved by a fair amount without fully destroying details. These 3 filters/scripts already do a decent job without much tweaking.

Code: Select all

AVISource("Toki o kakeru shoujo.avi")
dfttest(tbsize=3) #I normally wouldn't use the default sigma level, but it's a decent value for this source
gradfunkmirror(2.4) #does absolute wonders here because it mainly smooths out areas that are supposed to be flat.
LimitedSharpenFaster(Smode=4) #I felt the video could use some added sharpness after denoising and I prefer LSF over upscaling with a sharp resizer