denoiser comparison for analogue caps

[Wilbert]

Ivo (i4004) and I, finally finished our denoiser comparison for analogue captures!

The comparison can be found here:
http://www.geocities.com/wilbertdijk...comparison.htm

A summary of the conclusions:

source: 75 frames huffyuv from a music clip (Dido).

denoisers: PixieDust and combo's with the spatial denoisers Mip/Vague and temporal denoisers Vague/TC/TS. Why didn't we use other denoisers? The reason is that we believe that these are the "best" ones. Anyway, read the disclaimer if you think you can do better

summary:
Some conclusions and recommendations about the tested filters:

• PeachSmoother + VagueDenoiser (or MipSmoother) is a nice combo where user will try to achieve best of both worlds; excellent denoising of still scenes of Peach, and smoothing out the ghosting artefacts on hi-motion levels. But it won't make wonders, Pixie will probably work slightly better on motion. Note that Peach's algorithm tries to leave elements that are important for sharpness (edges etc.) intact. You will notice that Peach leaves those vertical lines of vhs pretty noisy and shimmering.
  
• Pixie has best quality on motion. We recommend this where Peach would normally ghost too much (higher motion/noise levels; in music videos etc), and you have a lot of time to do your encodings. The main issue is that Pixie is VERY slow (it's probably doing 2 passes internally), and it looks slightly blurrier than Peach.
  
• Peach has best quality/speed ratio overall. We recommend this filter for long clips (like movies/tv-series), in case the combo's are too slow.
  
• Overlay can be used for short (and difficult to denoise) clips if captures of different broadcastings (of the same clip) are available (like music clips).
  
• Best filter is usually the slowest one (Murphy's Law).

Some conclusions about the encoders:

• Project Mayo/Open Divx derived codecs act unpredictable in the event of noise+motion, artefacts range from hardly noticeable to very annoying (more noise means bigger troubles for XviD/DivX5). DivX3 [Nandub] and FFVFW don't have this issue.
  
• Better denoising means less problems for XviD/DivX5. We doubt you can surpress the issue completely, no matter how well you cleaned the source.

remarks)

1) Images can be downloaded separately (see introduction), if the site loads too slow.

2) If someone knows how to simplify/improve the javascript, please let us know.

[DSP8000]

Very educational & well explained.I do lots of analog captures & DV video.Peach realy does better job than the others but for heavy denoising I like Pixie.TNX. for the comparison.

DSP8000

[Fizick]

Good works!
But I have only slow dial-up modem.
May be, you can present not full images, but fragments (1/4)?

[Piper]

Nice work as always Wilbert!

It's great to see some quality attention being given to analogue encoding. Thanks again.

[Wilbert]

Thanks!

@Fizick,

I stripped out the large bmp pictures (from the raw XviD animation):

http://www.geocities.com/wilbertdijk...log_simple.zip

It's 1.11 MB.

[North2Polaris]

@Wilbert,

How would you modify the combo script if your target is 1/2 DVD and you want to keep the video interlaced?

I know how to do this with PixieDust...

Thanks.

[acrespo]

Can I consider these tests valid on anime analog material too?

[Wilbert]

How would you modify the combo script if your target is 1/2 DVD and you want to keep the video interlaced?

# QUANTIFIED MOTION FILTER v1.4
# EXAMPLE 2 : ADAPTIVE RESIZING FILTER

# LOADING QUANTIFIED MOTION FILTER SCRIPT
Import("D:\Test\Ivo\Wilbert\qmf.avs")

# LOW MOTION FILTER FUNCTION
# -> SHARP RESIZING + TEMPORAL ONLY
function Low_Motion_Filter(clip c)
{
ConvertToYUY2(c)
PeachSmoother(noiselevel=4.286, baseline=3.141, NoiseReduction = 60, Stability = 30, Spatial = 0)
ConvertToYV12()
BicubicResize(480, 288, 0, 0.75)
}

# MEDIUM MOTION FILTER FUNCTION
# -> NEUTRAL BICUBIC RESIZING + TEMPORAL & SPATIAL
function Medium_Motion_Filter(clip c)
{
c.MipSmooth(spatial=9, temporal=0, spatial_chroma=10, method="superstrong", downsizer="bilinear", upsizer="bilinear", scalefactor=0.60, weigh=true)
BicubicResize(480, 288, 0, 0.75)
}

# HIGH MOTION FILTER FUNCTION
# -> SOFT RESIZING + SPATIAL ONLY
function High_Motion_Filter(clip c)
{
c.MipSmooth(spatial=9, temporal=0, spatial_chroma=10, method="superstrong", downsizer="bilinear", upsizer="bilinear", scalefactor=0.60, weigh=true)
BicubicResize(480, 288, 0, 0.75)
}

# OPENING VIDEO SOURCE
Avisource("D:\Test\huffyuv_raw2.avi")+Avisource("D:\Test\huffyuv_raw.avi")
ConvertToYV12(interlaced=true)

# APPLYING ADAPTATIVE RESIZING FILTER (USING QMF)
#QMF(debug=true)
clip = SeparateFields(last)
even = SelectEven(clip)
odd = SelectOdd(clip)
even_filt = QMF(even)
odd_filt = QMF(odd)
Weave(even_filt,odd_filt)
Tweak(0.0, 0.8, 0.0, 1.0)

Something like that ... (PAL). You might need to low the denoiser settings though.

Can I consider these tests valid on anime analog material too?

No ... I don't know anything about anime, but I can imagine that there are more smoothers who do a good job here.

[North2Polaris]

@Wilbert

Many thanks!

Does this need the ConvertToYV12 step or can the video stay in YUY2?

[ADLANCAS]

# APPLYING ADAPTATIVE RESIZING FILTER (USING QMF)
#QMF(debug=true)
clip = SeparateFields(last)
even = SelectEven(clip)
odd = SelectOdd(clip)
even_filt = QMF(even)
odd_filt = QMF(odd)
Weave(even_filt,odd_filt)
Tweak(0.0, 0.8, 0.0, 1.0)

I think that is necessary to change:
Weave(even_filt,odd_filt)

to

Interleave(even_filt,odd_filt)
Weave()

[Wilbert]

You are correct of course. Thanks!

[troy]

I am sure that this is a newbie response but why didnt you try convolution 3d.

[Wilbert]

I am sure that this is a newbie response but why didnt you try convolution 3d.

Actually we tried. But we couldn't get good (as in better than of the tested smoothers) results with it. But of course you can try yourself, since the source clip is available!

[North2Polaris]

@Wilbert,

Fizick's FFT3DFilter (Version 1.3 - July 20, 2005) has reached a point where it may be better at denoising and preserving detail than PixieDust:

http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.ph...122#post689122

Since your comparison results are "based on our visual inspection", would you & Ivo (i4004) be willing to put this filter through your test?

North

[Poutnik]

Once I have played with PeachSmoother (suppose to be useful for any filter with startup delay), I used a trick with extra added first n-frame part of movie.
After processing the movie I have trimmed this extra leading part away.

[mg262]

@North2Polaris
It's been a long time since they did that test...

It may very well be that you can find a set of filters which produce better quality than the filters we used. The source clips can be downloaded (see introduction), so everyone can take a try. If you have found something better, please contact us

(assuming the source clips are still up), did you try it? How are the results (in your eyes) if you did?
_____________________________

Back in December '03 when I was a total newbie playing with videos (and not just a semi-newbie like now!) I sifted these forums for all the denoising advice and scripts I could get, and then spent about a fortnight comparing them against each other split-screen using the CompareVersions script I posted elsewhere... about 20-25 different filters IIRC; I ended up deciding that there were plenty of contenders on still scenes but the Dust filters were the only ones I was happy with on motion scenes. I remember being pretty happy on finding this thread and seeing that people who knew about video had reached the same conclusion.

But about a year or so later it seemed, at least to me, that the ground rules had changed completely... there were sufficiently good motion estimation + compensation tools out there (MVTools) that all the denoising filters would have to be tested against Dust again but this time with a motion compensation forward/back frames interleaved in.

[Wilbert]

@North2Polaris
It's been a long time since they did that test...

Yeah, there are more filters which i would like to see included, like FFT3DFilter, TTempSmooth, RemoveDirt and perhaps a few others. I've yet to see someone using MVTools to outperform some of the filters we tested. Hint

The pb is that i don't have time anymore to do such tests. Of course i will assist you if some of you want to do these tests.

[Didée]

Originally Posted by Wilbert

I've yet to see someone using MVTools to outperform some of the filters we tested. Hint

Starting point:


PixieDust:


LTSMC:

[mg262]

... ... ... ...

Can we have the script?

(Don't worry if is not ready for release.)

[Piper]

Sorry for being redundant but, WOW!!!!