Got new flat display, now my SD encodes looks VERY BAD

[OvejaNegra]

As the title says, now i see lots of banding, irregular edges and gernerally lower quality.

Does upscaling before encoding will help me with that?

Yes i know it's overkill.


What about banding? It's because a higher range on the chroma (>0-255) or it's something else?


What can i do for upscaling the picture and make the edges smoother?

It's true that you can make a better work if you denoise AFTER upscaling?


If someone here is doing this sutff please post your comments.

[thetoof]

banding = gradfun2db(mod)
irregular edges = many antialiasing options are out there
upscale = function nnedi2x(clip a) {return a.nnedi(1,true).turnright().nnedi(1,true).turnleft().spline36resize(a.width*2,a.height*2,-0.5,-0.5)}
or upscale with eedi2 to try to correct aliasing at the same time
+ some resize at the end to get to your desired resolution
if you have anime : msmooth to help with ringing.

sample?

[setarip_old]

@OvejaNegra

Hi!Got new flat display, now my SD encodes looks VERY BADAnd how do your original, commercial DVDs look on your new flat panel display?

[OvejaNegra]

thetoof:
Thanks, i'm going to try that and see how it looks

setarip_old: Movies looks ok (well it's not HD but looks ok) The encodes have some banding (maybe it's because i'm using FFT3D).
Anime has the edges too ugly (Well i know, it's not HD). I'm trying to make it look better.

Wich sample should i provide: DVD or final encoding?

[thetoof]

Little question here... why do you want to correct your encodes if you can watch the movie on the DVD anyways? Either do this or try a completely new encode... correcting b0rked will never look as good as improving the DVD.

[OvejaNegra]

Correct encodes???

NONONO:
I'm trying to produce better-looking encodes on my display. I'm working with the DVDs. I want upscale the DVD source and improve the edges and all the needed stuff to make them look better at high resolutions.
That's what i want.

[leeperry]

LSF and GrainFactory3 are great ways to make SD watchable when upscaled ;)

[OvejaNegra]

Sorry but why GrainFactory3?

UPDATE:

OOPS: I did a simple test using bicubicresize (1280,720).
Loooks "good" but the grain is bigger, so my usual denoisers are not working.
What can i do?
Applying LSF without denoising makes everything worst

OK this looks good, but yet need a good denoiser:
HQDering ()
bicubicresize (1280,720)
vmToon (strength=60,sharpen=true,show=false,thinning=0)

[leeperry]

to add grain, to give more depth to the picture...instead of getting dull upscaled surfaces you'll be getting fake details...the same way LSF will increase the sharpness to your brain, it's all about fooling your brain!

what I usually do is : 720p lanczos3 luma/bicubic(1.0/0.0) chroma upscale > LSF > PC levels conversion > GrainF3...try it, it's great :)

grain is life, denoising will NOT make upscaled SD look better IMHO.

[onesloth]

The encodes have some banding (maybe it's because i'm using FFT3D).
That could definitely be why. Try MDegrain instead.

[OvejaNegra]

leeperry: the i will try that, but to be honest i don't like noise on anime (on real life footage it's ok). But i will try your advice and see.
onesloth: FFT3d and vaguedenoiser are my favorites for that subtle noise on anime, but both create some banding. MDegrain will work with that subtle noise?

I will try anyway.

Thanks

[2Bdecided]

AVIsynth can do some very clever things.

But some modern TVs and some modern players (e.g. BluRay players) can do some excellent upscaling. It might not be as good as AVIsynth can achieve with lots of pre-source tweaking, but it's a lot quicker, and maybe more than good enough for "good" sources.

"Bad" sources will need fixing more carefully than ever!

Cheers,
David.

[Mug Funky]

i'd say the bands are from 8-bit processing in the display (and the naturally sharper screen compared to a CRT). there's probably also a lot of lost precision in the video card going from YUV to RGB that's showing up more on the LCD.

some things can alleviate this without touching the video, like disabling all colour management in your operating system (because it'll be 8 bit to 8 bit, causing all manner of rounding error), and trying different rendering options in directshow or your movie player (overlay versus VMR9 or VMR7, or whatever).

aliasing is most likely because you're not running in your panel's native resolution. CRTs don't have this problem because they can scan anywhere and there's no real pixels (resolution is limited by a fine screen, but the beam underneath can scan anywhere).

if all this doesn't give you desired pictures, gradfun is definitely a good choice on playback - use it with ffdshow.

@ setarip_old: if you can't say anything nice, don't say anything at all. this seems an unprovoked attack on the OP's credibility, with no attempt at actually solving their problem.

[OvejaNegra]

ok.
I'll disable color management and see what happens.
No, is just tryed all the renderers (including haali) and nothing.
and i'm using the reccomended resolution on my display.

Thanks for the advice.

[2Bdecided]

@ setarip_old: if you can't say anything nice, don't say anything at all. this seems an unprovoked attack on the OP's credibility, with no attempt at actually solving their problem.?! Unless a post has been deleted, what's there seems a sensible way to track down the source of the problem, and isolate it either to the encodes themselves, or to something else in the chain.

Cheers,
David.

[Ghitulescu]

I'm not really sure what you intend to do.

Setari_rip asked you a question about how good are the DVDs on your TV - it was (besides an insinuation) also a hint to the fact that many HDTVs are actually not good at all with SD material. Be careful when assessing the quality of the image, good quality images might mask the defects (the same way loud passages mask noise in music). Banding is a typical issue with low quality LCDs (my personal experience).

In very rare cases I think a DVD needs "improvement". Actually I've seen only 2-3 DVDs by now that were in need for improvements (one was "washed" - typical VHS transfer, yes, it was a commercial one; 2-3 were too grainy).

Comparing side-by-side DivX encodings with the original DVD you'll find it almost imediately, unless you have a small TV or a less than average quality one, that DivX might be close to the original quality only if its size would be about 1 CDR per hour (typically 1.5GB). Again my findings.

So if your TV has problems displaying original DVDs, you can't make them better by encoding them in MPEG-4. You may try however first an upscaled h.264 BD/AVCHD (see AVCHD threads) in a compatible BD player. It might be that a good software scaler is better than the hardware one in TV.

[setarip_old]

@Mug Funky

Hi!@ setarip_old: if you can't say anything nice, don't say anything at all. this seems an unprovoked attack on the OP's credibility, with no attempt at actually solving their problem.Sounds like you are mistakenly reading something into my post:

The question I asked the OP was obviously intended to determine if his perceived "quality problems" were related to the new flat panel display (poor quality playback of BOTH his encodes and original DVDs) or, perhaps his encoding methodology (good quality playback of original DVDs and poor quality playback of ONLY his encodes)

[OvejaNegra]

Well. I just removed HQDering () from the chain and now the aliasing is gone. The lines still look "fat" , but well this is not hd.
And, Yes, vaguedenoiser and FFT3d are causing the banding.

Why i cant notice the banding with my old CRT (AOPEN A70S)? I dont know.
The question is what denoiser can i use without causing banding. (because i think that maybe using gradfun after vaguedenoiser or FFT3d will be too destructive). Comments please.