AVISynth Smoothing and Sharpening?

[h00z]

I was just doing some reading, and I had a few questions I wanted to run by you guys. Are you using any smoothing/sharpening filters in AVISynth, or do you still use the VirtualDub filters? The reason I ask is because I'd like to move as much as I can into my .avs file to speed up my encoding a bit. I know I can import the VD filters into AVISynth, but then I have to do the whole YUY2/RGB/YUY2 conversion thing, which slows me right back down.

I guess what I'm really asking is if there are YUY2 (AVISynth) equivalents to the SmartSmoother/Warpsharp filters. I've read the AVISynth docs, and searched through the forums here (over and over again) and I have seen a ton of options... I am just wondering what you are using and what you think of it.

If it helps any, I almost exclusively encode anime, and I currently use SmartSmoother(3,20) and WarpSharp(30) as a general starting point in VirtualDub.

BTW - Decomb.dll is working great for me! Here is a sample script that shows how I'm using it now:

___________________________________________________________________

# Load Plugins
LoadPlugin("C:\Program Files\DivX Apps\Avisynth\mpeg2dec.dll")
LoadPlugin("C:\Program Files\DivX Apps\Avisynth\decomb.dll")
LoadPlugin("C:\WINDOWS\System32\vobsub.dll")
# Load Video Clip
mpeg2source("D:\cb2\cb2.d2v")
# Decomb.dll Settings
Telecide(chroma=true,gthresh=50,guide=1)
Decimate(cycle=5)
# Crop
Crop(7,0,708,480)
# Smoother
# Need something here to smooth before resize
# Resize
BicubicResize(512,384,0,0.5)
# Sharpener
# Need something here to replace Warpsharp
# Subtitles
VobSub("D:\cb2\vts_04_0")
___________________________________________________________________

Now all I need is a good smoothing filter, and a nice sharpening filter and I'm set :)

[Wilbert]

There is a sharpen filter in AviSynth. Make sure you use one of the verions v1.0b7a/v1.0b7d. Also read the thread
http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?s=&threadid=22696
The filter doesn't seem to work well with v1.0b5 (and I don't know about v1.0b6).

There are no equivalents of SmartSmoother/Warpsharp filters yet.

[Acaila]

Well, TemporalSmoother and SpatialSoftenMMX work nicely in YUY2. But I personally prefer SmartSmoother for Anime (like you, but the High Quality version, you can find it in the VDub section) even though it means I need to convert colorspaces and lose my speed. Some things are just worth it no matter how slow they are :).

The creator of the SmartSmootherHiQ filter is working on porting it to Avisynth though, or so I heard...

[scav]

h00z,

Just out of curiosity, why do you do your smoothing before you resize? Wouldn't it take less time if you did it afterward? Is there a quality benefit to doing it beforehand?

[h00z]

Yes, it is faster to smooth after the resize (fewer pixels to compare), but I have found that smoothing before the resize provides a higher quality output when it's all said and done (and I have tried it so many different ways I don't even want to think about it). I think a larger area (for comparing pixels) lends itself to a more detailed finished product.

I'm waiting on the SSHiQ for AVISynth... I think, with my newest AVISynth scripts, that I can get around having to use any sharpening at all, so the speed I lose to the SSHiQ filter can be regained by not applying a sharpening filter. But I won't know for sure until I have the SSHiQ to play with.

Anyone have an idea of when it'll be ready?