Any previews of typical situations for using denoisers?

[Anakunda]

Hello, is there a webpage or yutorial with screenshots of typical situations for using various denoise filters, ie. to hint an user which of FluxSmooth or other filters should he/she use for denoising particular situations? Especially I'd be interested for filter usage guide for smoothing old analogue TV programmes, unsharp and full of noise/grain. I'd like best to have enpicted various situations of imperfect sources with assigned recommended filter(s) beside it.:thanks:

[johnmeyer]

You definitely should search the forums for the answer to this. Search on the word "noise" and restrict the search to the AVISynth Usage forum, and only search in the title sections. You will definitely find the answer you seek. You'll get your answer in a minutes rather than having to wait days for people to respond, and you'll get dozens -- and for a topic like this which is discussed almost every day -- you'll get hundreds of excellent replies.

If you want a comparison of all the various denoisers, this too has been discussed many times. The way to search for this is to type in the name of two or three denoisers, using AND between them. This will quickly lead you to threads where different denoising approaches are compared.

If you do what I suggest, you will find many threads that start with your identical question. Here is one such thread:

What is a high quality denoiser? (http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?t=148569&highlight=mdegrain+fft3d*+flux*)

[edit] and then there is this sticky:

Speed and compression of different denoisers (http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?t=51181&highlight=fluxsmooth+pixiedust)

It is quite old, but it provides a nice list of denoisers.

[/end edit]


So, always try to search before you post ...

[Anakunda]

OK probably you`re right but I hoped there's somewhere a gallery showing all existing denoisers within one place with usage comparisons. If there's not I probably will have to dive into the topics.

[Guest]

Did you do any internet searches at all, or are you just hoping someone will do it for you?

If you think such a site is valuable, and you can't find one, consider creating one. You will learn the answer to your questions and maybe help others too.

[Mini-Me]

OK probably you`re right but I hoped there's somewhere a gallery showing all existing denoisers within one place with usage comparisons. If there's not I probably will have to dive into the topics.

Unfortunately, that's what you'll have to do. I've done a lot of searching on the forum, and the in-depth comparisons between denoisers are pretty old. For instance, the sticky thread that johnmeyer referenced is from 2003 and hasn't been posted in at all since 2008. Most of the denoisers listed in that thread are rarely if ever mentioned on the forums anymore, presumably because the newer alternatives are flat-out better...but that is only my assumption. None of the threads I've seen give a thorough treatment to the pros/cons/use cases of various newer denoisers, e.g. MCTemporalDenoise, TemporalDegrain, TNLMeans, smart usage of MDegrain1/2/3, and motion-compensated versions of dfttest, TTempSmooth, FluxSmoothST...and the list goes on. Motion compensation radically transformed the playing field, and it's a shame nobody wants to seriously revisit the topic.

That said, the MCTemporalDenoise thread (http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?t=139766) has some conversation, and it's regularly posted in. I haven't read much of the thread (it's long), but most of the recent discussion will probably be found there. (I know that's not exactly what you're looking for, but it's something.) Note that MCTemporalDenoise basically uses fast denoising to create a temporary motion vector search clip, then it uses other denoisers including MDegrain and I think TTempSmooth for some settings. It has lots of settings, so it's a good one to experiment with. This is also a good thread to take a look at (http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?t=132310).

Other than that, the best reference might be http://avisynth.org/mediawiki/Denoisers, which catalogs *.mp3guy's opinions. Ordered rankings still give limited information though, and the page seems to be at least a few years old. (For instance, he references MVDenoise1/2/3, which Fizick said three years ago was obsolete (http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?p=1153368#post1153368); apparently, MDegrain is flat-out superior.)

I tried reviving discussion about this here (http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?t=160928) to get the experienced posters' current thoughts on the topic, but it didn't really take. I've learned a little bit more since then, but nowhere near enough to feel I "get it," and I haven't bumped my thread to avoid being annoying or running afoul of the rules. You're not alone.

[johnmeyer]

... apparently, MDegrain is flat-out superior ... I certainly haven't found anything better for general VHS restoration. I've posted my scripts several times, so I won't repeat that here.

The denoising of VHS is an excellent first step. However, the part I keep working on is trying to extract a little extra detail. Using a good deck, a TBC, and the proper deck settings (use the edit switch!) is the most important, but I keep trying various sharpening approaches to try to get a little extra out of the capture, after denoising. We had a lengthy discussion about this when nickhope asked for help with his fish video:

Original PAL DV video (http://www.mediafire.com/?bqcc8wyc991km5m)

In the discussion in this forum, I never quite finished the job correctly, but we ended up continuing the discussion in the Sony Vegas forum, where I finally got everything working:

Sony Vegas Forum Denoising Discussion (http://www.sonycreativesoftware.com/forums/ShowMessage.asp?ForumID=4&MessageID=769027)

This is the result of using the posted script to denoise that VHS video:

Denoised, levels corrected, & sharpened (http://dl.dropbox.com/u/1561578/LIBbatfish-orbicular1a%20%28Denoised%20by%20johnmeyer%2C%20with%20limited%20sharpenfaster%2C%20interlaced%2C%20strength%3D500%2C%20color%20curves%29_rev6.avi)

[jmac698]

John,
Just thought I'd mention that the description of neat video sounds like a free filter that exists, which profiles noise to remove it. I can't seem to find it now.
Good job on the filtering.

[johnmeyer]

The Neat filter is a commercial product. Some people say it is great, but every time I try it, I am unimpressed. I have tried, many times, to get people to post their results (this is over in the Sony Vegas forum), and they seldom do. The few times I have seen results generated by someone who seems enthused, I see a result which is horribly over-filtered: the noise is gone, but so is the detail.

[Anakunda]

Hi, after some collecting, I've gatehered these denoisers:

FluxSmoothT
VagueDenoiser
Deen
UnDot
SmoothD
FFT3DFilter
MVDenoise
DenoiseMD1/2 (script)

At the moment I found the nicest picture with Deen and FFT3DFilter with some best settings. FFT3DFilter is slow but not as much as I was afraid of.
If there's missing some essential denoiser please suggest.

Also I beg for advice how to best compare the denoisers output for particular video. Is it opening avisynth script with media player and taking screenshot at certain frame, then making screenshot?

[naoan]

Deen is a monster detail killer, I wouldn't use it zealously, but if that's how you roll... Just try dfttest and tnlmeans/nlmeanscl too.

for previewing I'd suggest avspmod http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?t=153248

[Dogway]

I mainly stick to only a few ones:

dfttest: spatio-temporal (good for digital artifacts)
mdegrain: temporal (good for analog artifacts)
tnlmeans: spatio-temporal (good overall, specially animations, but helly slow)

They are all recent and generalist, if I use any other one is just to combat a very specific type of noise/artifact, or Id rather make a mix of the above with masks...

[Mounir]

I agree Deen kills many details but is useful for anime/cartoons in my experience. I have tested a script of johnmeyer myself "motion-compensated" did a good job on poor recordings and was overkill or counter productive on decent recordings, slightly noisy (vhs sources)

To this day, after many tests (checked with vectorscope, test patterns and by eyes) my prefered one is fft3dfilter (or the gpu version) for real footage with two instances, one for the luma one for the UV (maybe 3 sometimes with U,V separated, rare though)
example:
fft3dfilter(sigma=2.0,sigma2=8.0,sigma3=7.0,sigma4=9.0, bt=1, bw=16, bh=16, ow=8, oh=8,plane=3, sharpen=0.0,interlaced=false,dehalo=0.0) # UV
fft3dgpu(bt=3,sigma=1.5,sigma2=1.4,sigma3=2.0,sigma4=9.0,bw=32,bh=32,ow=16,oh=16,sharpen=0,plane=0,mode=1,precision=2,interlaced=false,oldfft=false) # Luma

This filter work a bit like Neatvideo but work in YUV and thus is better in my eyes. Most of the time noise is located in high & mid frequencies so u have to play with the sigmas values
a good technique is to use neatvideo and make a noise profile then u click on the profile and read what it says, where the noise is more abundant high, mid, low, very low frequencies then you can tweak the sigmas with fftt3dfilter accordingly and with more accuracy.

On the road of denoisers i found out removing noise introduce banding and discovered the joy of re-graining (grain=noise) a video so you might wanna explore that aswell

[Anakunda]

Thanks for suggestions, aftr some trying I find fft3dfilter and MVdegrain most effective filters for most situations and have a question yet, is this conclusion correct?:
Movies captured on analogue material mostly contain moving noise and therefore MVtools(2) should be used to cleanup the picture, while movies captured digitally use static noise only (if) and that's why fft3d is better for them.

[Nightshiver]

You can't really expect us to answer if it is "correct" as only you can determine what is pleasing to your eyes. The MV set of tools are extremely versatile and can be adapted to nearly any situation, so it is a good choice.

[Anakunda]

Thank U. I have tried the MVTools for old BW movie and here the FFT3Dfilter shows being almost ineffective. Instead MVDegrain3 picture looks very smoothly. This is script I use:

super = MSuper(planar=true)
bv1 = MAnalyse(super, isb = true, delta = 1, overlap=4)
fv1 = MAnalyse(super, isb = false, delta = 1, overlap=4)
bv2 = MAnalyse(super, isb = true, delta = 2, overlap=4)
fv2 = MAnalyse(super, isb = false, delta = 2, overlap=4)
bv3 = MAnalyse(super, isb = true, delta = 3, overlap=4)
fv3 = MAnalyse(super, isb = false, delta = 3, overlap=4)
MDegrain3(super,bv1,fv1,bv2,fv2,bv3,fv3,thSAD=400,planar=true)

Here's the raw picture: http://img36.imageshack.us/img36/3574/81raw.png
This is cleaned by MDegrain2: http://img844.imageshack.us/img844/3863/83mv2.png
and this by MDegrain3: http://img830.imageshack.us/img830/7019/84mv3.png

The 3rd choice looks best for me but slightly blurred. Is there an MVTools option how to sharpen the result slightly?