Need help denoising/sharpening laserdisc capture.

[arnie.d]

Hi,

I wonder if someone can help me. I want to transfer my PAL DV star wars capture to DVD. But I would like to denoise and sharpen it first. I've tried lots of different filters using virtualdub but so far the results are not very good. Now, I read everywhere avisynth is the best thing to denoise but I'm not very good with avisynth. I can make a very basic script but that's it. I know I could read into avisynth and do a lot of testing and it's not that I don't want to but I think the results will be much better if I get help from someone who nows what he's doing.

You can download a testclip of the capture here (it's about 50 mb):
http://www.megaupload.com/?d=IOOHD1AC

I want to make an anamorphic widescreen transfer (that I can do in virtualdub but maybe it's better to resize using avisynth also???)
I would really appreciate it if someone could help me to get the most out of my capture. Many thanks in advance!!!

[hartford]

This avisynth script is just a suggestion that you can try. Review the discussion threads for more info.

Loadplugin("d:\plugins\FFT3DFilter.dll")

Loadplugin("d:\plugins\MaskTools.dll")
Loadplugin("d:\plugins\old\warpsharp.dll")
import("d:\plugins\import\limitedsharpen.avsi")

video=Avisource("c:\x.avi").ConvertToYV12()


FFT3DFilter(video,sigma=3)

limitedsharpen()


In frames 71 and 257 there are artifacts that would probably require you to manually repair with a program such as Gimp or Photoshop. See herehttp://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?s=&postid=356628#post356628 and herehttp://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?t=80859&highlight=manual+repair

Here are the plugins needed for LimitedSharpen:

Warpsharphttp://www.avisynth.org/warpenterprises/files/warpsharppackage_25_dll_20031103.zip

Masktools http://manao4.free.fr/MaskTools-v1.5.8.zip

You might need some dll files such as msvcr71.dll for the plugins to work. Get them here http:\\www.dll-files.com

Here is the LimitedSharpen discussion http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?t=84196&highlight=limitedsharpen

Get the FFT3DFilter.dll here http://bag.hotmail.ru/

FFT3DFilter tread http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?t=85790&highlight=FFT3DFilter

You'll also need the FFTW library from the link on the same page.

That's as much help as I can provide. The rest is up to you. You must do many tests to determine what looks best to you.


[gesh, that's messy]

[foxyshadis]

(This is off topic, but if you want to make it look a little nicer, you can use [ url=http://manao4.free.fr/MaskTools-v1.5.8.zip]Masktools[/url] (minues the first space) instead of the [html] tag.)

[arnie.d]

Thank you very much for your reply hartford. This is something I can work with :)
Can I email you if I have specific questions? (my email is arnie.d@tiscali.nl)

[hartford]

@foxyshadis

(This is off topic, but if you want to make it look a little nicer, you can use [ url=http://manao4.free.fr/MaskTools-v1.5.8.zip]Masktools[/url] (minues the first space) instead of the [html] tag.)


Thanks, this new BBS "workings" craps compared to last. Previous was very easy to work. Thanks for the tips.

[hartford]

Thank you very much for your reply hartford. This is something I can work with :)
Can I email you if I have specific questions? (my email is arnie.d@tiscali.nl)

I've sent you email. I don't know that I can help you, but I will try.

[FlimsyFeet]

I had a look at your clip, my first thought was that the white point is way too low. You should really increase the contrast.

Second I noticed the DV blocks on the red laserbolts, but I suppose there isn't anything you can do about that.

The trouble with denoising filters in avisynth is, that there are too many to chose from. Different people have different opinions on which is best for them but to update the scientific comparison with the filters available now would be a major undertaking. I find Pixiedust gives good results but has its flaws.

[arnie.d]

I'm going the up the contrast. I also want to use a virtualdub's chromasmoother (4:1:0) to fix the lasers. I tried a few denoisers now including pixiedust. At first I thought it was great but later I saw in fast moving scenes it creates really big square blocks. It also makes the sky look weird, I don't know how you call it but the sky becomes layered (you see a line between two slightly different colors).

[foxyshadis]

I'm going the up the contrast. I also want to use a virtualdub's chromasmoother (4:1:0) to fix the lasers. I tried a few denoisers now including pixiedust. At first I thought it was great but later I saw in fast moving scenes it creates really big square blocks. It also makes the sky look weird, I don't know how you call it but the sky becomes layered (you see a line between two slightly different colors).
Banding. That means the settings are too high; you can experiment, or just try something else. (I use removetemporalgrain myself so I'm not too up to speed on pixie.)

[mg262]

If you have the patience to halve the speed of PixieDust, you can deal with the blocks. The idea is to run it twice, once normally and once offset by (2, 2) (using crop), and then average the two copies -- because the blocks don't line up, they "cancel each other out". The implementation of that idea is much more fiddly than it sounds -- search for QuadDust or TwiceDust.

I haven't yet tried it myself (no suitable source material) but people seem to rate FFT3D much on a par with Dust -- so I would persevere with it.

The trouble with denoising filters in avisynth is, that there are too many to chose from. Different people have different opinions on which is best for them but to update the scientific comparison with the filters available now would be a major undertaking. I find Pixiedust gives good results but has its flaws.Which comparison do you mean? The one by Wilbert and i4004?

I have thought that a good way of doing this without requiring too much work from any one person would be to run a "blind" comparison -- i.e. to post a source video, have everyone filter it however they liked and send back the scripts, then to post all the versions labelled A, B, C, etc. then have people make comments. But, in practice, I think very few people would send back scripts!

[arnie.d]

Banding. That means the settings are too high; you can experiment, or just try something else. (I use removetemporalgrain myself so I'm not too up to speed on pixie.)
It doesn't matter if I set pixiedust to 2 or 7 there's always banding. When I convert to rgb the banding is much less.

[hartford]

As I said before, what works for you depends on many factors.

You may need to filter different segments with different filters.

Sorry, that's just how it is.

I've filtered some DVD's with 3 different filters. It took me more than 8 hours to determine the filtering for these segments.

Don't think that you'll find the "perfect" filter chain here. You'll need to do your own testing.

That said, there is a forum that is dedicated to "restoring" these early films; I can't remember the address, sorry. I did a simple search. There was on this forum some talk about it.

[Fizick]

forum that is dedicated to "restoring" these early films
where ?

[Pookie]

Was it this thread ?

http://www.videohelp.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=102812&start=0&postdays=0&postorder=asc&highlight=laserdiscs%20star%20wars

[FlimsyFeet]

Which comparison do you mean? The one by Wilbert and i4004?

I have thought that a good way of doing this without requiring too much work from any one person would be to run a "blind" comparison -- i.e. to post a source video, have everyone filter it however they liked and send back the scripts, then to post all the versions labelled A, B, C, etc. then have people make comments. But, in practice, I think very few people would send back scripts!Yes it was, this one: http://www.geocities.com/wilbertdijkhof/analog_comp/comparison.htm

Your blind comparison sounds like a great idea.

[dokworm]

forum that is dedicated to "restoring" these early films
where ?

There is these guys
www.x0project.com

Looks like the most amazing restoration project for Star Wars ever...