recommended filters for good/bad quality anime DVDs

[jarthel]

I would be using avs + dvdrb.

thank you for the help.

[Mug Funky]

a good quality anime (digital rather than filmed) would need no filters but IVTC and possibly some de-blocking.

a bad quality one could need any number of treatments, including:

- dedot/tcomb for composite video artefacts (crawling dots)
- possibly a rainbow filter for the same
- a sharpener
- a denoiser

if you're in PAL country you'll probably also need a de-blender to reverse the standards conversion.

if you're really wanting to polish things, you might want to throw in some colour correction/enhancements (coloryuv() or tweak() ) and a line darkening function (fastlinedarken).

the mftoon script can handle a lot of the above in one package, but i can't comment much on it having never used it :)

of course the easy way to encode is to change nothing and use a high bitrate :)

[Dr.Khron]

I like FluxSmooth and LimitedSharpenFaster, but MSharpen is a better sharpener for some anime. Deen is popular too, but I havn't fooled around with it much.

I'm also a big fan of hqdn3d.
High Quality DeNoise 3D - helps remove grain from flat, cel-animated surfaces. This particularly good for older, pure film animation, which tends to pick up a lot of grain.

mftoon is supposed to be awesome, but I can't get the most recent version to work. Its called VMtoon, and its part of the new Masktools package.

Here is a really good page on various filters for Anime work:

Improving Visual Quality and Compressibility (http://www.animemusicvideos.org/guides/avtech/avspostqual.html)

It is slightly outdated, but it has some great examples of how to use the different filters.

[DarkZell666]

fft3dfilter will do a good job of repairing some slightly blocked edges too. I was very surprised to see that effect recently when messing around with AvsP :D

hqdn3d().fft3dfilter() is going to be a must-use for me now ... :)
I'm not too keen on the sharpening though, if some edges are already jagged it's actually going to make them worse (and for some reason I simply hate warpsharpen :devil:)

All depends on what anime you're going to be encoding really, would you mind telling us ? Also, what region are your original DVD's ?

[Harukalover]

Here is a really good page on various filters for Anime work:

Improving Visual Quality and Compressibility (http://www.animemusicvideos.org/guides/avtech/avspostqual.html)

It is slightly outdated, but it has some great examples of how to use the different filters.
You may want to check out the new version in the beta guide here:

http://www.animemusicvideos.org/guides/avtechbeta/avspostqual.html

Still tends to be a complete gospel of Deen in the new version as well though... Also note they still haven't mentioned the min parameter of Deen which is highly useful.

[Dr.Khron]

hey, thanks for the updated link, I love what he has done already! The examples of "over filtering" are awesome.

Plus, I finally got VMtoon to work!
I downloaded the beta AMVapp, and extracted the plugins... I only had to copy over Awarpsharp and Warpsharp to get it to work. I guess the versions I had of those were incompatible with the latest version of MaskTools.

VMToon is awesome, especially on heavy out-line style animation, like the Simpsons or WB cartoons.

[Harukalover]

hey, thanks for the updated link, I love what he has done already! The examples of "over filtering" are awesome.

Plus, I finally got VMtoon to work!
I downloaded the beta AMVapp, and extracted the plugins... I only had to copy over Awarpsharp and Warpsharp to get it to work. I guess the versions I had of those were incompatible with the latest version of MaskTools.

VMToon is awesome, especially on heavy out-line style animation, like the Simpsons or WB cartoons.
You may also want to take their version of Deen. It's the only one I've found that has the w2d, w3d modes, and the min parameter. Where they got that version from I'm not sure...

Anyway onto the topic at hand. Tell us the source (specific anime DVD) or we can't really recommend anything.

[Lux Delux]

Hi there :)

Sorry if this is wrong but seeing this the latest replied thread about anime I thought it would be better posting here instead of creating a new one :o

Anyways this is my first time working on an anime source and so my knowledge is very limited. I was reading the AMV post production page that was linked to (although the newer seems to be 404 now :( ) and tried a few things but I can't seem to find the right settings :o

Arcadia of my Youth is what I have loaded up :)

Here is an image, with only regular telecide and Lanzos resize applied.

http://img516.imageshack.us/img516/7472/arcvf1.png (http://imageshack.us)

then I applied some newbish filtering and got this :o

http://img386.imageshack.us/img386/8639/arc2yt0.png (http://imageshack.us)

fft3dfilter(sigma=2)
vmtoon()
BlindDeHalo3(PPmode=2, rx=1, ry=1, sharpness=1.5, strength=90)

I'm pretty sure this could be far better, especially the colors, so if anyone could have a few hints I'd be extremely grateful! :)

EDIT: frfun7() seems to work great. I also now aplied CP=4 after loading the dvd for some deblocking which I later noticed.

edit2: damn, lot's of combing too :( my first anime encode and I get unlucky :(

[Lux Delux]

Oh and here is a vob sample http://www.sendspace.com/file/dtmoaf :)

[Harukalover]

I was reading the AMV post production page that was linked to (although the newer seems to be 404 now

The reason the earlier link I posted is 404, is because the whole beta guide was removed. According to what it says when trying to get to the beta guide itself, it seems they implemented it into the original guide. Though after looking through the original guide it doesn't seem to have changed much at all, and all they did was just kill off the beta version of it. Sorry. ;/

For Arcadia of my Youth are you looking for perfection with lots of work or just looking for an easy script to get good results?

[Lux Delux]

The reason the earlier link I posted is 404, is because the whole beta guide was removed. According to what it says when trying to get to the beta guide itself, it seems they implemented it into the original guide. Though after looking through the original guide it doesn't seem to have changed much at all, and all they did was just kill off the beta version of it. Sorry. ;/


No problem, I'm sure you guys have great solutions :)


For Arcadia of my Youth are you looking for perfection with lots of work or just looking for an easy script to get good results?

Perfection off course :D I want it to look best! So yup, I'll work as hard as I can for it and I'm sure it can be bettered with the help of you fellas :)

[Chainmax]

...
Arcadia of my Youth is what I have loaded up :)

Here is an image, with only regular telecide and Lanzos resize applied.

http://img516.imageshack.us/img516/7472/arcvf1.png (http://imageshack.us)

then I applied some newbish filtering and got this :o

http://img386.imageshack.us/img386/8639/arc2yt0.png (http://imageshack.us)

fft3dfilter(sigma=2)
vmtoon()
BlindDeHalo3(PPmode=2, rx=1, ry=1, sharpness=1.5, strength=90)

I'm pretty sure this could be far better, especially the colors, so if anyone could have a few hints I'd be extremely grateful! :)

EDIT: frfun7() seems to work great. I also now aplied CP=4 after loading the dvd for some deblocking which I later noticed.

edit2: damn, lot's of combing too :( my first anime encode and I get unlucky :(

First of all, ditch BlindDeHalo as it kills a lot of small details and smooths the picture way too much. There doesn't seem to be much haloing, if anything at all, so there's no need to run a halo remover anyway. Besides, FFT3DFilter has some slight dehaloing on by default (although I've seen it cause some minor artifacting every now and then). There seems to be faint color splotches, so you should probably add something like TComb(mode=1) right after loading the source and before IVTCing.

Regarding combing, I suggest you to read Decomb's (http://www.neuron2.net/decomb/decombnew.html) readmes and tutorials, the IVTC tutorial (http://www.doom9.org/ivtc-tut.htm) and the capture guide (http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?t=78797). They have loads of very useful information about this subject. Also, TIVTC is recommended rather than DeComb as it's still being developed.

[Lux Delux]

Thanks for the input Chainmax :thanks: *ditches blinddehalo* :p

Already tried a few combinations with tfm() and tdecimate() but whatever I tried to battle combing it didn't work.

But I'm getting the feeling this might not be a regular IVTC case cause of this:

http://img509.imageshack.us/img509/9544/1acy0.png (http://imageshack.us)

frame after that
http://img207.imageshack.us/img207/1988/2atq8.png (http://imageshack.us)

that's with just tfm().tdecimate()

Seems like some case of ghosting? Dunno what's the term for that :o

But will have a further read into those links :)

[DarkT]

Here's my list:

Bifrost
2CNR
ColorMatrix
convolution3d
dctfun4b
deblock
Deen
degrainmedian
descratch
despot
eedi2
fft3dfilter
fluxsmooth
gradfun2db
hqdn3d
removedirt
RemoveGrain
sangnom
ssiq
TBilateral
TComb
TDeint
TIsophote
TIVTC
TTempSmooth
undot
Vaguedenoiser
WarpSharp

As to the FrFun... the ver7 sometimes changes your COLORS, yeah, go figure... The ver2b(I think, or maybe d) sometimes throws errors at me... So I stay away from them... But frfun7, if it weren't throwing the color weirdness at me, would be reallly nice... I used it in like 7 scripts before I actually saw it - since it'd not in every scene that it freaks out...

From the custom scripts I use:

AAA SIMPLIFIED
DEHALO ALPHA
DFM DERAINBOW
FFF
FFB
HQ DERING
LIMITED SHARPEN FASTER
SAA
VMTOON

(Both AAA simplified and SAA are Anti-Aliasing tools which are almost identical - the only difference is in the resize method they use, one uses Lanczos4Resize, which is sharper but has a bit less AntiAliasing effect).

FFF and FFB are super simple functions I made for freeze framing (replace current by previous/next).

DFMDerainbow is for places where BiFrost didn't get it - I try to avoid SSIQ like the plague since it kills colors near the object it filters...

[Lux Delux]

Thanks for the recommendations, there sure will be things to play with :devil:

But I currently am actually fighting with the blending/ghosting. At least I figured it that way, been reading the guides Chainmax provided the links to, and came to no solution at all. Heh at least I think I learned something about field orders :p

Anyways here is a new .vob sample with a scene where lots of these tricky frames are present :(

http://www.sendspace.com/file/5j026v

Please, if anyone is willing to give it a shot. I can't start playing around with the filters without even the motion in place, it distracts me :p :)

Cheers for all the help guys :thanks:

[jarthel]

if I use vmtoon without the sharpening, is it fast? what's the speed difference between with and without sharpening?

thank you.