What are your favorite filters for noise/artifacts reduction?

[bjfacca]

I have a lot of movies (divx, mpeg and some others) that I got from the internet or some friend's hard drive, stuff that I could never find the original source to re-encode it and get a better quality, like really old Saturday Night Live episodes or old TV commercials.
I did some research and I found a lot of noise reduction filters that can help reducing those ugly mpeg artifacts, some blur the image too much, some don't remove many artifacts at all,there are so many out there I have no idea on which one to use.
What are your favorite filters for this and why?

bruno

[diji1]

bjfacca: ... stuff that I could never find the original source to re-encode it and get a better quality, like really old Saturday Night Live episodes or old TV commercials.

i think that u will lose to much quality by reencoding for it to be worthwhile - but you can always try i guess :\

bjfacca: What are your favorite filters for this and why?

i don't reencode with filters, but for non-anime original sources ( if i use them, i think it's a crime to "overfilter" and in some cases it really isn't necessary imo ) :

the one i use the most :
temporal smoother - because it works well without blurring too much at low settings, seems to reduce artifacting/edge enhancement effects well.

others i sometimes use :
- smart smoother hi quality : slow but very, very good; sometimes use it for very noisy sources.
- temporal soften 2 : combined with temporal smoother ( both low, low settings ) i find handy to wipe out really excessive noise and improve compressabilty ... seems to do a good job on skin tones sometimes in adult films.
- dynamic noise reduction : does a better job than others sometimes - depends on film of course.

They are of course only what i commonly use - i have by no means at all tried all the filters out there so don't be afraid to experiment for urself! :)

bjfacca : old TV commercials.

u watch old tv commercials ? :p

[kairen]

Could someone told me, where i can find temporal soften 2 filter

Thank you

[diji1]

hey there, download from here -> http://users.win.be/dividee/TemporalSoften2.zip

related thread -> http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?s=&threadid=22096&highlight=temporal+soften

[bjfacca]

u watch old tv commercials ?

Yes :)
I go to (I have no idea on how you call it there) advertising school. Like medical school or law school, well you get the picture :)

Thanks for your help

Bruno

[bb]

Best temporal denoiser I've ever seen: The DeNoise filter derived from Donald Graft's deflicker.

For spatial denoising I use 2d-cleaner optimized (make sure you use the correct version for your processor). It's fast as lightning, quality's not bad. For best quality you might want to try the High Quality Smoother (don't remember the exact name).

bb

[Dali Lama]

Where do you get that "denoiser" bb?

Thanks,

Dali

[manono]

Hi Dali-

He must be talking about this one (http://www.risingresearch.com/en/denoise/index.shtml#1). What do you think? Maybe we should give it a try, but I've gotten so used to doing everything in AviSynth now that I'd hate to go back to using the VDub filters. And TemporalSoften2 suits my needs for a Temporal cleaner.

[bjfacca]

Thanks for you help everyone, I will try all of these and I'll post the results later.

Bruno

[bb]

@manono:
No, that's a different one. The filter I was talking about is called DeNoise and has version no. 1.00 (as I said it's an offspring of the deflicker filter, got it from the Ultimate Board, which has been locked down in the meantime).

I attached the file, hope it will show up soon.

bb

[Dali Lama]

Thanks for the attachment bb. I tried it manono. But I don't notice any blurring or denoising effect. Only at the highest settings do I see artifacts produced from the filter. Maybe my source is too clean. That's a change :)

I wish I had that bad DV source lying around...(bb your into DV right?).

Bye,

Dali

[bb]

@Dali Lama:
Yes, I'm into DV, analogue capture, DVB capture, DVD ripping, ... (did I forget something?)

Did you participate in my poll on the capture forum?

bb

[bjfacca]

I did some experimenting with the following filers:

Temporal noise reduciton:
I found these to be way better for noise in TV captures because it eliminates the noise without blurring the picture, setting a too high strenght will produce ghosting, they are no good for mpeg compression artifacts.
- Dynamic Noise Reduction 2.1 by Steven Don and Avery Lee
- Denoise 1.0 by The Fish
- Temporal Noise Reduction (Virtual Dub 1.4.10 internal filter)
I found no sugnificant differences between those 3, but hey, thats only my opinion, seems like internal temporal noise reduction does a little better than the other 2.

Spatial noise Reduction:
These are good for reducing mpeg compression artifacts but have to be used with caution because high settings will blur the image too much, they can help with noise in TV capturing too but in my experience is better always to try a temporal noise reducer first and use the spatial ones only if the first didn't help in that case.
- Smart Smoother 1.1 by Donald Graft
- Smart Smoother HiQuality 2.11 by Klaus Post based on Donald Graft's smart smoother
- Spatial Smoother by Dividee
Big differences here. Smart Smoother HiQuality 2.11 has a better GUI than Smart Smoother 1.1 by Donald Graft, more options, a preview funcion and if used wisely can blur out the artifacts retaining a very good amount of detail. Spatial Smoother is similar to Smart Smoother HQ 2.11 but it has less options.

Let me know what you think.

Bruno Facca

[kilg0r3]

hi, you should at least try TemporalSoften2. it gave a huge increase in speed compared to Tsoften1 and Tsmooother.
[Ah sorry, just realized that this is not the avisynth but the virtualdub forum. came her via the search button.]

[bjfacca]

Originally posted by kilg0r3
hi, you should at least try TemporalSoften2. it gave a huge increase in speed compared to Tsoften1 and Tsmooother.
[Ah sorry, just realized that this is not the avisynth but the virtualdub forum. came her via the search button.]

No problem, the more alternatives the better. I will be testing avisynth filters in a couple of days too. I'll post the results.

[sh0dan]

@bjfacca: Just a small note (since I'm the author of SSHiQ) - If you want the same behaviour as Donalds Smart Smoother, select 'Average mode' and disable 'Weigh with Difference' - this makes it behave like Donald's smoother smoother (unless I made a mistake somewhere ;)

[bjfacca]

Originally posted by sh0dan
@bjfacca: Just a small note (since I'm the author of SSHiQ) - If you want the same behaviour as Donalds Smart Smoother, select 'Average mode' and disable 'Weigh with Difference' - this makes it behave like Donald's smoother smoother (unless I made a mistake somewhere ;)

I didn't know that, thanks.
Nice filter, I use it every day to clean up the mpeg artifacts in the videos I download.

Bruno

[kairen]

@shodan

Does exists a way, to reduce the amount of blurring the filter introduce in average mode, expecially when used in anime?

i use average mode, because in my opinion , it produce better results in anime cleaning.

i also use it every day to clean up my videos it's a great filter

Kairen

[sh0dan]

Implementing amount in Avergage mode cannot be done without changing the algorithm. A 'current pixel multiplier' could be implemented, but it will only be useful when Weighed with difference is active in Average mode (otherwise there is not enough precision).
I'll try to investigate when I get the time (still working on an MMX-optimized Avisynth version).
I also still have a bug in the Virtual Dub v2.11 version to figure out, where it produces less blurring with diameter=3 than v1.1 and plain mode.

[bjfacca]

@shOdan

Some suggestions for the next version of Smart Smoother HQ (vdub):

I personally prefer having a blurry video that a blocky one so when I get a video that is really blocky I crank up all settings to maximum (using weighted average & weighted with difference) and sometimes, when the original really looks like crap, it's not enough (then I add it to the filter chain twice), so if you could add another 20% or 30% in the end of the threshold slider would be great!

Also when I use very high settings I get to speeds like 1 fps in my athlon XP 1700 256DDR, so any more optimizations would be nice, I don't know if this is possible because it's already a fast filer, anyway, it's just a suggestion :)

Again, this is a GREAT filter!

Bruno Facca