2d cleaner before or after temporal smoother?

[ThePanda]

Hi, I used to use temporal smoother (3), then smart smoother, then resize for my anime rips. now i am using this 2d cleaner optimized since it's supposed to be faster (using settings of threshold 10 area 3x3, which I think are about right since the show sharp edges mode looks like it blends about everything except the black lines, but I'm not really sure). But my question is, is it better to use the 2d cleaner before the temporal smoother or after? Please respond if you have any ideas..

[Milkman Dan]

I dunno. I was wondering this myself earlier today. I concluded that I didn't know enough about how temporalsmoother interacts with other filters to be able to tell. Going on a hunch, I put TS first so that when it calls buffered frames, they aren't accidentally run through the 2d cleaner again.

What anime are you ripping that really needs the 2dcleaner? Every anime I've ever done cleaned up nicely just with TempSmoother. And anime in general doesn't have alot of noise.
Just wondering.

[ThePanda]

all sorts of anime off dvds. I think you may be right about TS being enough; I don't want to blur it too much. I was always using smart smoother in combination with it because someone said a few months ago on the forum that's the only way you will get any benefit in the compression ratio.

by the way, do you know why there's often huge black flashes on the top or bottom of the screen for anime at the scene changes; is that where the slides are taped together or something? I don't notice them when I watch them on the tv through the dvd player. Is there info on the dvd somewhere that tells how far the top and bottom should be clipped? It's a bit of a hassle to scroll through to see how far up or down the flashes extend. I guess I'm a bit picky but I can't help but notice them so I have to clip them out :D

Thanks

[Acaila]

Using SmartSmoother in combination with TemporalSmoother results in no extra compression over TemporalSmoother alone (don't know for certain about 2DCleaner). Anyway, even on anime the SmartSmoother and 2DCleaner blur far too much for my taste, better to just stick with TempSmooth alone.

If you insist on using them both in conjunction then I'd suggest using SmartSmoother/2DCleaner before TempSmooth. This will first change the frames to their final form and then perform smoothing between those frames. If you do it the other way around, (smoothing between frames, and then change each frame) you'll be losing effectiveness. And since TempSmooth is the better compressor here, it should be last in row.
At least, that would be my personal choice.

[ChristianHJW]

... listen to Acaila guys, never use a filter working in the frame itself ( like smartsmoother or 2D cleaner ) unless you have a real noisy source, like from VHS.

TempSmoother before resizing is the way to go if the source is high quality ( like DVD ) IMHO ....

[sh0dan]

You could try out a filter I've been developing in the last month. It is a completely rewritten version of Donals Grafts Smart Smoother. Hopefully it will be published at Donald's site very soon along with the source.

It contains the following improvements:

* Weighed average. Produces better transitions between smoothing areas.
* Weight with difference: Preserves structure better with higher thresholds.
* Variable amount: Makes it possible to vary how much influence the blur should have.

<edit>I attached v1.1 Release to this post - it only needs to be activated </edit>


Download: Smart Smoother HiQ 1.1 (http://rilanparty.com/vbb/attachment.php?s=&attachmentid=273)

(This is actually getting more and more off-topic - sorry ;)

Regards Klaus Post // sh0dan ^ VoxPod

[ThePanda]

Thanks for the info. How did you figure out that it doesn't result in any better compression though? Doesn't it always dedicate whatever number of bits you set as the bitrate?

[Acaila]

Thanks for the info. How did you figure out that it doesn't result in any better compression though?

Plain and simple. I encoded movie clips with TempSmooth alone, TempSmooth + SmartSmooth, SmartSmooth alone. The results were very clear. Never did it with 2DCleaner, but I suspect it acts much like SmartSmooth in terms of compression.

Doesn't it always dedicate whatever number of bits you set as the bitrate?

The number of bits a frame needs to be encoded with to achieve a minimum of quality loss are based on how much it can be compressed, how much motion is in it, if there are many sharp lines, and things like that. DivX4 2-pass encoding runs a calculation on these things (determining complexity of each frame), so that it can give each frame enough bits to get relatively high quality depending on the average bits you had set. Reducing bits for easy frames, so it can increase for difficult frames.
If you reduce the complexity you'll reduce the minimum number of bits a frame needs to be high quality, and your movie's average quality will increase. This is what most filters try to achieve.

[SleepEXE]

sh0dan, please try the suggestion from the thread http://rilanparty.com/vbb/showthread.php?s=&threadid=13097 to enable your attachment. I'd like to try your plugin.

Best regards,
SleepEXE

[sh0dan]

SleepEXE - nice trick ;)

Just edited the original post.

[Zarxrax]

I have done a whole lot of anime encoding over the past year or so, and I use 2d Cleaner on practically EVERYTHING. I have done tests between 2d cleaner and smart smoother, and found that 2d cleaner gets quite better compression ratios at the exact same visual quality as smart smoother does. I have also found that a radius of 5 (11x11 area) in 2d cleaner is the optimal radius size. I also typically use a threshold of about 5-10. And I have also found that using the 2d cleaner gets MUCH better compression ratios than does temporal smoother. (Though I will admit I have only started using temporal smoother in the past few weeks and am not too experienced with it yet).
Anyways, I just want to say that I think anime should always be cleaned, even if its dvd source. MPEG2 just sucks when it comes to anime, I see horible artifacting in many of the dvds I own, and this artifacting only becomes worse if you encode to divx without taking care of it.

[SleepEXE]

Nice work, sh0dan, the sample pics in your HTML readme look pretty impressive (thanks for the good readme). I think your examples illustrate what can be done with pretty noisy/artifacted sources, and it appears to do a nice job. I don't generally work with very noisy sources, however, I sometimes run some very lengthy filter chains in an effort to improve compressibility, so I'm interested to see how this filter will do. The Simpsons are probably the worst I've seen in a long time, so I'll definitely try it there first.

Thanks again,
SleepEXE

[SleepEXE]

Wow, your filter works great!

As a single filter solution, I think it works better than any I've come across to date, all with a minimal amount of tweaking. I've yet to find that magical filter chain that will solve my Simpsons troubles, so I decided to try it with The Andromeda Strain. This DVD contains a lot of random noise typical of "older" films.

Your filter appears to do a better job dealing with the smooth gradients, rather than creating splotches of uniform color or an "oil painting" effect. As a side effect, the Hi-Q filter doesn't compress quite as well, but it does a better job preserving small textures and overall visual quality...which in my opinion is a smarter smart smoother. Combining with a light temporal filter makes a very effective one-two punch, and is a good deal faster than my more elaborate filter chains.

Thanks for the good work, looks like I'll be using it religiously.

Best regards,
SleepEXE