Dirty source

[zeronegative]

Perhaps people can help me out with this one. I use the Hauppauge WinTV PVR to capture Simpsons episodes from BBC each day (capture to SVCD) and then transcode the files to DivX using Vidomi (easy set-up). However, I am a bit dissatisfied with the quality and would like to use GKnot/Nandub in the future.

To achieve maximum quality, there are two problems I would like to see solved, perhaps someone can help me with this:

1) Every even frame is a "blend" from the odd frames before and after. To show you a good example, check out these three frames: www.zeronegative.net/simpsons_frame_1.jpg www.zeronegative.net/simpsons_frame_2.jpg www.zeronegative.net/simpsons_frame_3.jpg
Is there a way to elimate or minimize this effect?

2) As you can see from the above three frames, but even better from www.zeronegative.net/simpsons_frame_4.jpg you can see that the source is pretty "dirty" (smeared colours, interference lines). What is the best way to straighten this out and get a better quality? Do I use a temporal smoother, or a regular smoother?

Thanks!

[hakko504]

First, Are the pictures from the source capture or from the final DivX? Assuming they are screenshots of the SVCD original:

1) If you are absolutely sure that the blended frames are even numbered and that it doesn't change during the capture then I'd recommend adding SelectEven (or maybe SelectOdd) to your .avs script. No need to encode frames that are copies of the previous ones. This means that you remove all blended frames and can not be used inside GKnot directly. Follow my instructions for AVI encoding in GKnot (http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?s=&threadid=26648) but enter the original framenumber and framerate when calculating bitrate. You can also try Decomb and decimate(cycle=2).

2) Temporalsmoother has proven to work very well on cartoons/anime. Not too strong though or you will get some blending back again :devil:

[zeronegative]

First off - yeah, the shots were made with the original MPG in TMPGEnc.

Second - I just found out that it's not constantly every even or odd frame that's blended. It varies. Does that mean it's impossible to get rid of the blended frames? Or is there an other way to deal with this...

[hakko504]

It does sound like you have a source that has been recorded at 24fps, telecined to 30fps (NTSC) and then reduced to 25fps (PAL). This is a quite common case and has proven very hard to do anything about. :( On a few occasions when I have dealt with this kind of source I have had some success with using Decomb's telecide(blend=false) in AVIsynth. It will remove the worst artifacts, and in combination with temporalsmoother(3) it should look quite OK.

[zeronegative]

That would make sense:

The Simpsons are originally 'recorded' (created?) at 24fps. The frame rate for NTSC TVs is 30fps, and these tapes are probably sent to England where they are converted to 25fps for PAL.

Bleh.

I demand one standard! :)

[hakko504]

Originally posted by zeronegative
I demand one standard! :)
I agree. How nice it would be if all TV/DVD used 2048x1152x60p :D :D :D