Good resize/filters/etc for anime?

[Espio]

I tried a few encodes on my own and they didn't turn out so well. What I'm trying to encode is a standard half-hour episode with dual audio (Nero AAC) and English subtitles. The audio was fine when it was done, it's just that I put auto resize on and it came out pretty small and didn't look very good. I'm using AutoMKV, by the way, and I know about the Anime-MaxQuality profile, just wondering if there were any other settings to enhance the quality.

[Raere]

The thing that'll increase the quality the most is the bitrate. You can do some small things to increase quality with the given bitrate though. For resizing, make sure you use at least Lanczos4 or Spline36. Don't use any custom matrix, as all of the ones I've seen are geared towards live action stuff. I don't know much about good filters to use, but I've used Unfilter (http://www3.impacthosting.com/trbarry/) for DVD rips with sharp edges (BASToF Syndrome comes to mind).

[foxyshadis]

In that case, you're asking for avisynth help, not AVC encoding help. Moved to avisynth forum.

One of the big questions is how much time you personally want to spend adjusting, and how long you're willing to wait for it to render. MVDegrain is a very powerful denoiser, but takes forever. FrFun7 (some prefer Frfun3d) is also effective, but sometimes a bit more destructive. I also use fft3dfilter & minblur, and have great respect for fluxsmooth and vaguedenoiser, among others. There are too many good filters to ever get really familiar with though.

Be sure you IVTC instead of deinterlacing! Lots of bitrate can be wasted that way. Depending on the show, you might have to learn about hybrid deinterlacing. If it's PAL it might be field-blended; look up Mrestore and restore24 for that.

If you want to boost compressibility, don't ever sharpen. This is somewhat at odds with getting the best visual result though.

Sometimes the m4g smooth matrix gives a better result, but by a very marginal amount and sometimes it hurts; probably not worth bothering with unless you plan to spend a lot of time on it.

If nothing else works, lower your audio bitrate (aac and vorbis give you a lot more flexibility here than mp3) or raise your final size.

[Raere]

I thought you only used IVTC for film sources. Are you saying that if a source is interlaced, we should use, for example TIVTC instead of say, TomsMoComp (my faves)?

[cacepi]

I thought you only used IVTC for film sources.
Up until a few years ago - around 2000 or so - anime was a film source. Most TV shows were filmed on 16mm stock, with 35mm for OVA and films.

But yeah, if anime is interlaced it's most likely from a telecine process of some sort, so IVTC is indicated.

It all depends on what DGIndex reports, basically.

[Adub]

@Raere
You should only be using TomsMoComp on interlaced content, not telecined content.

Telecined content is what TIVTC is for. For more information on the differences between interlaced and telecined, run a search.


@Espio
If you are going to any resizing, the least you should use is Lanczos4 or Spline36. If you want to get really crazy, check out MultiSWAR or EEDI2.

[foxyshadis]

True interlaced anime doesn't really exist, it'd be way too expensive - although some is heavily hybrid, especially anything made around the digital transition years in 99-02. Panning scenes mostly, or editing credits/fades on top of a telecine. Then you have issues, and since forcing it either way makes it jerky, you get into VFR and edi+mo-comp deinterlacing; when it's just the credits, well, who cares.

Straight deinterlacing with toms or smoothdeinterlacer is a great quick & dirty fix for field-blended anime though, if you have room to spare and don't want to bother unblending.