best set of filters for Simpsons -Treehouse of Terror PAL

[VS]

i'm just trying to encode the mentioned film from DVD.
first i used some VDub some filters like:
smart smoother (interlaced source)diameter 5 or 7 str 25 - blur - resize 382*288 and no deinterlacing because of dividing height by 2

this made the preview in VDub looking very good.. problem: encoding
speed is something like 2-3 frames on my athlon 1200.

therefor i used only divx-bulit in preprocessing and resizing which resulted in bad quality. most movies at much higher resolution and even lower bitrate look much better.

are there any filters that will make the result look better and won't need 20 hours to necode the whole thing (80 min)?

BTW... it looks like cartoon NTSC->PAL conversations really suck for
some reason. i bougth futurama season 1 and 2 and they all don't run smooth like movies do. i'd wish to get ahold of a NTSC futuram DVD to compare to the PAL versions.

VS

[snooty]

Several things. First of all, smoothing: I'd not bother myself (DVD sourced animation material is usually pretty snazzy anyway), but if you really want to, then I'd recommend 2D Cleaner Optimized (http://shelob.mordor.net/dgraft/2dcleanopt09.zip). This is much quicker than any other smoothing method I've ever used. It does the job very well.

Secondly, Futurama. In order to compress these properly, and make them run smoothly, you need to use decomb. To encode Futurama season 2, I used Gordian Knot, and then edited the resultant .avs files in a text editor. All you need to do is delete the '#' before these two lines:

LoadPlugin("c:\blahblahblah\decomb.dll")
and, later in the script:
Telecide()

And that's it. This should remove the problems otherwise present during encoding. If that's not what you meant, then I've just wasted five minutes of my time writing all that down, but never mind.

Hope it helps to some extent.

Paul

[VS]

Originally posted by snooty

Secondly, Futurama. In order to compress these properly, and make them run smoothly, you need to use decomb. To encode Futurama season 2, I

Paul

isn't decombing same as deinterlacing. i compared deinterlaced with non-deinterlaced avis. they look just the same if u divide heigth pixels exactly by 2 when resizing.
what i meant is, that even if in deinterlaced PAL-frames u can see 2 drawn pictures of the original cartoon blended together. it's hard to describe in english.. but i think that the reason for this that the changes beetween drawn pictures and the changes of frames don't match.

about the material being snazzy... allthough it's from DVD it looks like a TV capture.. lots of noise. futurama is much better though.

2dcleaner optimized works fine :) looks like it does the same as smartsmoother. and it's much faster (5-6 instead of 2-3 fps). thanks.
VS

[snooty]

Originally posted by VS
what i meant is, that even if in deinterlaced PAL-frames u can see 2 drawn pictures of the original cartoon blended together.


That's EXACTLY the problem that decomb solves. I know what you mean, I had exactly the same issues and wondered what the hell was wrong with it. It's something to do with being sped up for PAL. You've got to use decomb AND deinterlace together, and the animation then comes out perfectly. Try it :)

Paul

[VS]

i still have "2 pictures in 1". after using avisynths decomb it looks like just i have used deinterlacing in VDub. adding additional deinterlacing doesn't help.

do i have to use both deinterlace and decomb in avisynth or can i also use deinterlace in VDuB.

[snooty]

Originally posted by VS
i still have "2 pictures in 1". after using avisynths decomb it looks like just i have used deinterlacing in VDub. adding additional deinterlacing doesn't help.

do i have to use both deinterlace and decomb in avisynth or can i also use deinterlace in VDuB.

I used decomb (make sure you've got telecide on!) and deinterlace, both in avisynth. It worked perfectly. If I just used deinterlace, it still had the 'two pictures in one' problem.

Paul

[VS]

ok... i also tried the decomb on my futurama DVDs and it works very well for it. it removes almost all combing and and puts the pictures together as they have been before telecining :)

i think the simpsons-DVD is just a too bad source for decombing to work perfectly.:(

i also tried the DUP filter for avisynth which removes identical frames (there are a lot in cartoons) and copies the frame before instead.

encoding a small portion of a futurama episode saved around 10% disk space in 1-pass const, quality mode: it came out with 1540 kB instead of 1740 kB.

VS

[theReal]

A setting for decomb that works perfectly for the Futurama PAL DVDs is:

telecide(firstlast=true,post=false)
(don't ask me what firstlast=true does, I only used this setting because Donald Graft said it was perfect for those DVDs - and I thought he should know :D )

Don't add a deinterlacer, you don't need it anymore (and btw. when you're using telecide without "post=false" then it uses Fielddeinterlace for postprocessing automatically).
Be sure to use the newest version of Decomb, though.

I don't think you need a smoothing filter for Simpsons (or Futurama) from DVD source. I'm using temporalsmoother(4,1).spatialsoften(2,5,7).temporalsmoother(4) for Simpsons tv captures (in avisynth 2.06), but these are quite noisy with my cable tv.

btw. I just finished encoding the Futurama season 1 DVD set to 640x480 Realvideo 9. I used the above telecide settings, and no other filters except bicubicresize(640,480,0,0.5). Using a bitrate of 907kbit including 132kbit audio (Atrac) it is as near to DVD quality as it can get. Try this with Divx...

[VS]

> telecide(firstlast=true,post=false)
sounds good. without fielddeinterlace it's probably faster, too.

>I don't think you need a smoothing
>filter for Simpsons (or Futurama) from DVD source.

true for futurama.. not true for simpsons. the source really looks more like a TV capture than DVD source. the credits had no sharp edges at all.. blur made it much better. and 2d cleane probably does a much better job than temporal smoother on the big unicolor areas.

VS