Color Problem with Anime!!!!

[Snakeisthestuff]

Hi iam ripping the anime Armitage 3 and i have a problem with the color in some rare scenes, it looks like the color depth is too low. I dont know how i can fix this, could someone help me please? i tried some filters like 2dcleaner, cnr2 but they dont help much.
here my Avisynth-Script:

LoadPlugin("D:\avisynth\mpeg2dec.dll")
LoadPlugin("D:\avisynth\decomb.dll")

mpeg2source("D:\dvd-ripped\Armitage 3\armitage-ep1.d2v")
FieldDeinterlace()
crop(11,5,693,571)
BicubicResize(688,512,0,0.8)

and here my Nandub settings:

VirtualDub.audio.SetSource(0);
VirtualDub.audio.SetMode(0);
VirtualDub.audio.SetInterleave(1,500,1,0,0);
VirtualDub.audio.SetClipMode(1,1);
VirtualDub.audio.SetConversion(0,0,0,0,0);
VirtualDub.audio.SetVolume();
VirtualDub.audio.SetCompression(85,48000,2,0,16000,1,12,"AQACAAAAgAEBAHEF");
VirtualDub.audio2.SetSource(0);
VirtualDub.video.SetDepth(24,24);
VirtualDub.video.SetMode(3);
VirtualDub.video.SetFrameRate(0,1);
VirtualDub.video.SetIVTC(0,0,-1,0);
VirtualDub.video.SetRange(0,0);
VirtualDub.video.SetDivX(1471,10);
VirtualDub.video.SetQualityControl(2,16,1,0);
VirtualDub.video.SetMotionDetection(10,10,300,300);
VirtualDub.video.SetCrispness(10,0);
VirtualDub.video.SpaceKF(25);
VirtualDub.video.InternalSCD(100);
VirtualDub.video.SetMinKBPS(700);
VirtualDub.video.SetCurveFile("D:\\dvd-ripped\\Armitage 3\\armitage-ep1-gknot.stats");
VirtualDub.video.SetCurveMcFactor(0);
VirtualDub.video.SetCurveCompression(3,3);
VirtualDub.video.SetCurveFilter(800,5000);
VirtualDub.video.SetCurveCredits(0,350);
VirtualDub.video.SetLumaCorrectionAmp(1,10,30);
VirtualDub.video.SetCurveRedist(0);
// VirtualDub.video.CalcCurveCompression();
VirtualDub.video.SetCompLevelsMain(2,4);
VirtualDub.video.SetCompLevelsA(300,2,3);
VirtualDub.video.SetCompLevelsB(300,2,4);
VirtualDub.video.SetCompLevelsC(300,2,5);
VirtualDub.video.SetCompLevelsD(300,6,16);
VirtualDub.video.SetCompLevelsE(300,7,16);
VirtualDub.video.SetCompLevelK(2,4);
VirtualDub.video.SetBitsReservoir(0,30,30,100,45,0);
VirtualDub.video.SetLowBrCorrection(0,0);
VirtualDub.video.NoAVIOutput(0);
VirtualDub.video.GenStats("",1);
VirtualDub.video.SetEncodingControl("");
VirtualDub.video.filters.Clear();
VirtualDub.video.filters.Add("logo (1.3 beta 4)");
VirtualDub.video.filters.instance[0].Config(800, 0, 128, 1, 0, 0, 0, 0, "D:\\Escaflowne-test\\rippedby.bmp", 0, 3600, 0, 0, 60, 3900, 60);
VirtualDub.video.filters.Add("subtitler");
VirtualDub.video.filters.instance[1].Config(1, "D:/Escaflowne-test/not-for-sale.ssa", 0, 1);
VirtualDub.subset.Delete();
VirtualDub.brc.Set( 0, 200 );
VirtualDub.brc.Set( 1, 1 );
VirtualDub.brc.Set( 2, 128 );
VirtualDub.brc.Set( 3, 0 );
VirtualDub.brc.Set( 4, 1 );

And i attached a screenshot of an typical scene of this color prob in the face of the guy.



I can supply a short avi clip if needed, too.

so please help me!

[neuron2]

You haven't clearly told us what the problem is. I don't see anything wrong with the face and "it looks like the color depth is too low" is extremely vague. What exactly are you pointing out to us?

[Snakeisthestuff]

ok my english is not very good but i`ll try to explain it better.
there is in the left part of the face a color change - i have attached a zoomed view of the part i mean, and pointed it with color 1 and color 2. where color 2 is the main color of the face thats a little bit darker then the color 1. and there is some kind of blocky transition between the two colors... the area named with color 1 is some kind of modulating in the face its getting bigger ,smaller, it move from the right to the left ..... and so on...
i hope you understand what iam trying to discribe.
if you have an email adress i can mail you a short movie clip of this scene, if you want.

[Acaila]

Nothing wrong with that. It's a phenomenon called image compression. Unless you're encoding at the highest quality possible stuff like this will always happen.

Ways to get rid of it:
- Encode with higher quality (bigger filesize/higher bitrate)
- Use filters to smooth the video

[Snakeisthestuff]

1. i have try'ed a min quant. of 2 and a max quant. 2 its the highest qual. setting i think... and min bitrate of 1000 but it doesn't help.
i think its an divx311 related problem. i have done this scene with xvid and divx5 and doesnt get this color prob in dark areas its very strange.

2. i have try'ed some filter like smart smoother hiq or 2dcleaner and they doesnt help much only at extrem high settings and then the whole movie looks washed and that isn that what i want.

could you give me some very high settings of divx311 plz. then i try if it helps.

if anyone else expecting the same problem, plz help!
i dont know how to fix this!!!

[neuron2]

If DivX 5 works why do you need to use DivX 3?

[Snakeisthestuff]

if i mux divx5 and ogg vorbis with oggmux the video stream gets corrupted on some parts... i dont know why... i have try'ed it several times and the ogm has this little errors at the same situation every time, it looks like a keyframe is set wrong or something like this...

[Acaila]

What you are describing now is a known problem resulting from DivX5 (I believe the B-frame code in particular) in combination with the ogg format. However it's only a decoder problem which can be easily fixed by using the ffdshow decoder instead of the DivX5 decoder. In any case your video is perfectly safe, it's just playback that's corrupted.

[Snakeisthestuff]

oh, thx ill try this tonight! i think theres no hope for my divx 311 prob or am i wrong? so i have to use divx 5....ooohhhhh nnnnnooooo :p

i would use xvid but i cant get good results with it
( i get a better encode on an 23 min clip, with divx 5 on 230 mb filesize then with xvid on 260 mb filesize :confused: )

[Teegedeck]

Hmmm, I've done few experiments with XviD on Anime, but the results looked very nice to me. H.263-quantizer, linear scaling (curve-compression '0' on high and low), I-frame boost 100% (to reach I-frame quantizers of around quant=2), below I-frame-distance something like '25' and I-frame bitrate-reduction 50% (that way consecutive I-frames don't get a boost in bitrate - and they are still smaller than P-frames could be). Wasn't much of a problem, you might give it a try. And good luck with your encoding anyway!

[Snakeisthestuff]

I have try'ed the ffdshow decoder and he works fine with muxed divx 5 and ogg, thanks Acaila.

Thanks for the xvid settings Teegedeck, i'll try it tonight, and hope to get better results, so i can use xvid instead of divx 5 ;)

Thanks to all of you for your great help!

[Teegedeck]

I hope you'll get a nice result. And don't use lumi-masking on Anime.

[Snakeisthestuff]

iam tested your settings and they helped me very much! now my xvid encode looks as good as my divx5 encode with same size. i think use xvid now, because divx 5 does some color modulating on color transitions that i dont really like, it makes the color transition less blocky than in xvid but also looks some kind of washed.
so thanks again, now i can continue my anime encodings :)