processing a file that is 720p at 29.97 fps...

[Lathe]

Heh, it should have told me something when I did a search for the above title and of all the results that I got back, not ONE was from Doom9, Videohelp, Afterdawn, nothing... :)

So, I'm pretty much guessing that this file that I have which is at a 720p resolution and at a frame rate of 29.97 is likely NOT supposed to be that way...

I mean, it looks pretty good. It's an old film that is not commercially available and I GUESS since it is progressive (as shown by MediInfo) when I stepped through it frame by frame I didn't see any blurring or combing or anything like that. Soooooo, I'm wanting to run it through a few Avisynth filters, nothing heavy, but I'm kind of thinking that before I do that I really need to know what I should do about this resolution at this frame rate, because I'm pretty darn sure that it is NOT part of the Blu-ray standard.

Since it is not telecined (I think) I cannot really IVTC it I'm pretty sure, right? So, I guess I can take a snippet of it and run it through TSMuxer and put it into a BDMV folder to see how my OPPO will play it or how it will look.

Anyway, any suggestions as to what I should do first?

Thanks!

[Sharc]

Upload a sample of few second duration

[FranceBB]

Uh... if it's not interlaced nor telecined and there aren't any interlacing issues (combing/blending) but you still think there's something "weird", it might be because of dups. I would say to run TDecimate and let the filter automatically guess whether a frame is a dup or not, btw I don't actually know how accurate will it be, considering it's an old material...
Besides, you mentioned the Blu-ray standard; are you actually trying to make a Blu-ray? Because although Blu-ray discs are almost all progressive, they could be interlaced as well, in fact old discs used to be like that.
Anyway, upload a sample so that we can see what's that about and we can make a script for you. ;)

[manono]

...when I stepped through it frame by frame I didn't see any blurring or combing or anything like that.
Did you look for dupe frames? Every five frames? Because films, by definition, aren't 29.97fps. If you can get it back to 23.976fps then you have a file that can be made into a Blu-Ray keeping both resolution and framerate.

Anyway, as suggested, if you can't figure it out yourself, 10 seconds of the video, a sample with steady movement, will be enough for others to decide what you have and how it should be treated.

[Lathe]

Uh... if it's not interlaced nor telecined and there aren't any interlacing issues (combing/blending) but you still think there's something "weird", it might be because of dups. I would say to run TDecimate and let the filter automatically guess whether a frame is a dup or not, btw I don't actually know how accurate will it be, considering it's an old material...
Besides, you mentioned the Blu-ray standard; are you actually trying to make a Blu-ray? Because although Blu-ray discs are almost all progressive, they could be interlaced as well, in fact old discs used to be like that.
Anyway, upload a sample so that we can see what's that about and we can make a script for you. ;)

Thanks kindly to both of you.

Yeah I took a snippet and put it in a BDMV folder and it seemed to play just fine on my OPPO player. There were a FEW instances where it looked like the frame jumped a little, but overall it seemed okay. On another thread where a guy was asking about converting from 29.xxxp to 23.xxxp the person said 'why...? 29p should run perfectly smoothly' So maybe I really don't need to do anything. I'm just pretty sure the 720p and 29.xxx frame rate are likely not supposed to go together. I'll attach or link a snippet. Basically all I really want to do is do some simple tweak stuff (uh, Avisynth, not the drug...) because the picture is a bit washed out.

I chose a snippet where there is some good movement...

http://lathe-of-heaven.com/split.9.m2ts

[Lathe]

Did you look for dupe frames? Every five frames? Because films, by definition, aren't 29.97fps. If you can get it back to 23.976fps then you have a file that can be made into a Blu-Ray keeping both resolution and framerate.

Anyway, as suggested, if you can't figure it out yourself, 10 seconds of the video, a sample with steady movement, will be enough for others to decide what you have and how it should be treated.

Yeah, from some reading I got the idea that some kind of 'decimating' gets rid of the xtra frames, etc. I need to learn more about that. Fortunately MOST of the stuff that I have like this that I want to mess around with is usually DVD Mpeg capture stuff at the usual DVD specs. But, this one was different...

Sorry, I snipped it into 1 minute segments. Next time I will make them smaller. I think this one is about 25 Megs.

[Sharc]

Sorry, I can't download your file. Did you upload it to a file hoster?

When you step through the frames do you see a repetitive pattern of progressive frames like A B C D D E F G H H I J K L L .... (DD, HH, LL represent duplicated frames). If so, it would be 2-2-2-4 hard telecined 24p film. But unless we get a sample it's all speculative .....

[LemMotlow]

I chose a snippet where there is some good movement...

http://lathe-of-heaven.com/split.9.m2tsGood sample. I don't know what you're viewing this with, but it's pretty clear that the original was 3:2 hard-telecined. The clueless idiot that made this video used field-blend deinterlacing to digitally immortalize and publicly advertise his mistake. There's nothing you can do about it. View it frame by frame and you'll see field-blending ghosting on motion frames in 2 of every 5 frames.

Your OPPO can play it as a "video-data-only" mt2s. But you can't author and burn it to disc as official 720p BluRay.

[Sharc]

+1
This file is has been hopelessly butchered. Poor Humphrey ...

[tebasuna51]

I agree with LemMotlow.

Go, for instance, to frame 79 of your sample, is more or less perfect. Also frames 80 and 81.
Frame 82 is a mix of two original frames.
Frame 83 is clearly a mix of two frames from different planes, the original one have two fields that can be separated, but here are blended and encoded as progressive.

All your sample follow the same order 3 frames OK, 2 frames blended.
You can't recover the original fields to do a inverse telecined 29.97 -> 23.976

[Sharc]

selectevery(5,0,1,4)
changefps(23.976)
throws away the blended frames but leaves you with a very jerky playback.
One could perhaps try to interpolate instead of frame repeat..... new artefacts are likely though ....

[wonkey_monkey]

There's nothing you can do about it.

You can't recover the original fields

This file is has been hopelessly butchered. Poor Humphrey ...

Wow, you guys are such a bunch of quitters ;)

http://i.imgur.com/hY0pbtS.png

http://i.imgur.com/vH114pl.png

Work in progress.

[StainlessS]

Just out of interest, I decided to try Exblend() v1.03 Beta2, and it seems to be producing a reasonable level of success (about 94.0% blend detect [EDIT: Ideally about 96% or more]).
Although your sample is somewhat static (not much movement so not really good short clip for testing).

Here:- http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?t=157337&highlight=exblend

ExBlend not intended for this type of blending, but seems to be working OK.

EDIT:
https://s20.postimg.org/8bgnggjul/hump_zpsfrj5pkpu.png (https://postimg.org/image/ywj6c0m7t/)

[Sharc]

I had some success with

srestore(frate=23.976,omode="pp3").tdecimate()
It produces 23.976p but leaves some artefacts.

QTGMC(InputType=3,Preset="fast")
helps to clean these up.

[LemMotlow]

I'd just buy the DVD. Life's too short to spend it fixing unnecessary mistakes. There are too many idiots out there with computers. I rtecofded that movie off TCM with a DVD recorder at 6200kbps -- looks sharper than the 720p, which is starting to look like blown-up VHS.

[wonkey_monkey]

My code (now that I've tidied it up a bit):

function humph_unblend(clip clip) {
a=clip.trim(0,-1)+clip
b=clip
c=clip.trim(1,0)
d=clip.trim(2,0)

y8_rpn(a,b,c,d,"
if n 5 % 2 == then
[c1] [c2] + [c0] [c3] + 0.5 * -
else
[c1]
endif
")

selectevery(5,0,1,2,4)
}

Requires rgba_rpn/y8_rpn 0.2beta (http://horman.net/avisynth/download/rgba_rpn0.2beta.zip), and is hardcoded to work only when the first of each pair of blended frames falls on a frame whose decimal number ends in "2" or "7" (which is the case for the sample).

[manono]

...when I stepped through it frame by frame I didn't see any blurring or combing or anything like that.
Do you understand why, whenever asking for help with a video, you should always - always - post a sample? And not one that consists of people mostly talking but one with steady movement? What you said was dead wrong as 40% of the frames are blended (blurry). It's only seen when there's movement but it explains what went wrong (LemMotlow was the first to define the problem), and once the problem is known, the fix can also be discovered. Like StainlessS, I'd go with ExBlend followed by the decimation:

ExBlend().TDecimate()

That'll give you 23.976fps and it's ready for Blu-Ray.

[Lathe]

Oh my God! Guys... I feel so frigg'n awful about this... I thought that maybe I could discreetly fix this and learn something, but as horribly embarrassing as it is, I have to be brutally honest and admit that I was the wretched, vile culprit who did this... :o

I am so sorry... But, I was just recently starting to learn Avisynth and I humbly admit that the first few times I BELIEVED MediaInfo that the information was interlaced and I used BDRB's decomb / deinterlace script on it. Fortunately, I only did this to I THINK 3 films before I learned differently.

GEEZ... I feel so bad causing all you guys all this trouble :(

BUT... the good news (IF any of you are still 'speaking' to me, that is...) I was working with an ISO backed up on one of my many HDDs and it was taken from discs that I received in one of my many, many trades with other collectors. Thankfully, since there is at least ONE bloody thing I do moderately well, I have everything categorized and know pretty much where everything is. So, I found the ORIGINAL disc which has the print BEFORE I so brilliantly P*$$ed all over it. I took MakeMKV and extracted another UNtainted MKV file of the film and I posted a snipped (hopefully with more motion) on my site.

So, if I haven't COMPLETELY destroyed whatever good will MIGHT be left here, I will include what I'm guessing will be a much better snipped of the film. I'm guessing (not that my thoughts have any credibility any more...) that this is just basically telecined like most my other films like this, since just about all of them were captured by some DVD device, I believe.

Please forgive my stupidity, and I frigg'n PROMISE never ever to do that again now that I know...

http://lathe-of-heaven.com/knock.mkv

[wonkey_monkey]

But are you really sorry?

It's okay, I forgive you. For your sample, this is all you need to fix it:


separatefields
selectevery(5,0,1,2,3) # or (5,0,1,2,4), or (5,0,1,3,4), or (5,0,2,3,4), or (5,1,2,3,4)
weave


For different starting points you may need to adjust which number of 0-4 you remove in the selectevery (I've listed the possibilities).

[manono]

TFM().TDecimate()

[Sharc]

@Lathe
It's 2:3 hard telecined.
So as davidhorman writes, or as discussed in your other thread(s):

- Import it into BD-RB
- enable IVTC
- Select Convert SD to HD (720p)

and BD-RB will produce a Blu-ray compatible file and folder structure which you can burn and which your OPPO will play without hassles.

[Sharc]

TFM().TDecimate()
Yes, but without resizing it would leave him with a format (720x480p 23.976) which is not strictly Blu-ray compliant (primary stream). Very most players will play it, but his OPPO seems to be extremely picky ......

[LemMotlow]

Yes, but without resizing it would leave him with a format (720x480p 23.976) which is not strictly Blu-ray compliant (primary stream). Very most players will play it, but his OPPO seems to be extremely picky ......720x480p 23.976 + DGPulldown = NTSC compliant DVD with 3:2 pulldown flags. Same for BluRay, but probably needs re-encoding for BD.

1280x720p (add black pixels for side pillars) + reencode as MPG2/h.264/AVC for BluRay/AVCHD, will be BluRay/AVCHD compliant at 23.976. Will look like soft and mushy blown-up VHS or SD.

Better off leaving it as SD DVD. Resizing has its costs. I don't know why people think they're gaining something. Will no longer play properly on 4:3 or 4:5 PC or TV displays, will be both letterboxed and pillarboxed, all 4 sides.

[Lathe]

TFM().TDecimate()

Thanks guys... That's what I thought. I just basically have to do the IVTC thing like all the others. Thankfully, I can go back and redo the other 2 I screwed up :)

[Lathe]

@Lathe
It's 2:3 hard telecined.
So as davidhorman writes, or as discussed in your other thread(s):

- Import it into BD-RB
- enable IVTC
- Select Convert SD to HD (720p)

and BD-RB will produce a Blu-ray compatible file and folder structure which you can burn and which your OPPO will play without hassles.

Yep, your first idea was the best Sharc. I've already done some others and they turned out just great. No more believing MediaInfo about deinterlaced material! :sly:

[manono]

Yes, but without resizing it would leave him with a format (720x480p 23.976) which is not strictly Blu-ray compliant (primary stream).
Did he say the second one was intended for Blu-Ray? He can either encode it for DVD (or MP4 or MKV, whatever) or resize it and add borders if intended for Blu-Ray.

[Lathe]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Sharc

Yes, but without resizing it would leave him with a format (720x480p 23.976) which is not strictly Blu-ray compliant (primary stream). Very most players will play it, but his OPPO seems to be extremely picky ......

720x480p 23.976 + DGPulldown = NTSC compliant DVD with 3:2 pulldown flags. Same for BluRay, but probably needs re-encoding for BD.

1280x720p (add black pixels for side pillars) + reencode as MPG2/h.264/AVC for BluRay/AVCHD, will be BluRay/AVCHD compliant at 23.976. Will look like soft and mushy blown-up VHS or SD.

Better off leaving it as SD DVD. Resizing has its costs. I don't know why people think they're gaining something. Will no longer play properly on 4:3 or 4:5 PC or TV displays, will be both letterboxed and pillarboxed, all 4 sides.

Yeah, the whole deal why I have to resize it (or at least add borders to make it 16x9) is all because of my inability to render ANY kind of MKV file that will play on my OPPO. It is the darndest thing... It just absolutely will NOT play any MKV file that I render through x264 no matter what I change. So... basically what I have to do to make any file that I re-encode playable on it, is to put it into a BDMV structure. THAT my OPPO will play just fine. Funny too, because I have a ton of MKVs that are from, well, let's say 'various sources', and unless the ref or B frames are too high, it usually plays just fine, even with really squirrelly parameters otherwise. But, when I try to do it, no matter how simple I make it, it ALWAYS chokes the player. I even wrote OPPO about it and even they don't know why...

So, no big deal... But, because of that ONE vexing limitation, if they are old 4x3 films especially and I want to re-encode them, use Avisynth, or x264, I absolutely HAVE to create a 16x9 file that will play as a Blu-ray (or perhaps an AVCHD folder)

[Lathe]

Did he say the second one was intended for Blu-Ray? He can either encode it for DVD (or MP4 or MKV, whatever) or resize it and add borders if intended for Blu-Ray.

Yes Manono, exactly right...

[StainlessS]

Sorry, Posted in wrong thread, removed,.

[LemMotlow]

Yeah, the whole deal why I have to resize it (or at least add borders to make it 16x9) is all because of my inability to render ANY kind of MKV file that will play on my OPPO. It is the darndest thing... It just absolutely will NOT play any MKV file that I render through x264 no matter what I change. So... basically what I have to do to make any file that I re-encode playable on it, is to put it into a BDMV structure.
Where have you been getting your format information? BestBuy? CNet?

720x480 23.976fps video encoded as MPEG2 or h,264/AVC with 3:2 pulldown flags for 29.97fps playback is BluRay compatible and is treated as faux interlace by BD players. Hell, every damn standard def DVD or BD Hollywood retail movie is produced that way. And your 16:9 display will put the side pillars there for you on a 16:9 display. Jeez.

Neither of My OPPO's will play mks's. Neither will my Denon or Panasonic. Most external players won't play mkv. Ever heard of MP4, m2TS, TS? There are many more. Jeez again.

[Lathe]

Where have you been getting your format information? BestBuy? CNet?

720x480 23.976fps video encoded as MPEG2 or h,264/AVC with 3:2 pulldown flags for 29.97fps playback is BluRay compatible and is treated as faux interlace by BD players. Hell, every damn standard def DVD or BD Hollywood retail movie is produced that way. And your 16:9 display will put the side pillars there for you on a 16:9 display. Jeez.

Neither of My OPPO's will play mks's. Neither will my Denon or Panasonic. Most external players won't play mkv. Ever heard of MP4, m2TS, TS? There are many more. Jeez again.

Despite your rudeness... I already know about DVDs, thanks...

Also, my OPPO does indeed play MKVs as I clearly bloody said, if you had read my last post properly. It simply does not play MY encodes to MKV.

Where did you learn how to read...?

From watching Duck Dynasty...?

[Lathe]

BTW, I appreciate getting that straight about the telecined stuff (as opposed to interlaced) I'm unearthing my original discs now on the few that I pooched so that I can redo them properly, thanks to you guys kindly straightening me out.

Thanks!

[LemMotlow]

Regarding MKV I'm going by your earlier remarks about your own mkv's as well as all the maverick mkv's I've tried playing on any of my players. Out of 10 I get maybe one MKV that plays on one player or another, but home made isn't all that great anyway so I just don't meddle with it. The internet and tech forums are flooded with the struggles of these format conversions and media convolutions, and frankly I got tired of meddling with what already works. By the time I get through one of those conversion threads I'm too exhausted just thinking about it. Now we have trusting souls with their stuff on cloud, but miss a few payments and poof your stuff is gone. Then there is an article I found about certain OPPO players (or was it all their players?) that won't play DVD or BluRay transferred to otherstorage devices (example, this one (http://watershade.net/wmcclain/BDP-103-faq.html#are-iso-files-or-blu-ray-or-dvd-directory-structures-supported-on-external-media)). This is too much craziness for me, I lost patience with this sort of thing long ago and just let others self-destruct trying to beat city hall.
:)

[hello_hello]

I don't know about "most" external players not playing MKV. Both the Bluray players here do. There's a Plasma and two LCD TVs here with built in media players that'll play MKVs. One is DivX certified which ironically means it's a little more limited than the non-certified players in respect to bitrate, and it doesn't support DTS, but High profile Level 4.1 AVC in an MKV is pretty much standard. Xvid in an MKV is fine. My other half owns an old Sony Bluray player manufactured before they evolved to include USB inputs. It'll still play MKVs if you burn them to disc.
The main negative is a couple of the players don't support anamorphic video in an MKV, but the same applies to MP4 too.

For the sample from post #18.... it's already Bluray compliant, but you could apply IVTC and any other filtering and encode the 23.976 progressive output using soft pulldown to make it Bluray compliant again. http://www.x264bluray.com/home/480p-ntsc

Is there a weird line down the right side of the sample? Kind of like a mirror or split effect or am I imagining it?
I've never authored a Bluray complaint disc in my life as I mostly use MKV so I can't comment on any player oddities (if only there was an MP4 equivalent of MKVMergeGUI), but I don't like encoding black borders and I often resize even if it is evil, so I'd probably do the following to output a Bluray complaint resolution (if required) and set --SAR 10:11. Cropping the "line" down the right side means hacking off a bit more picture top and bottom than ideal to keep the correct aspect ratio, but it's either that or black borders.

tfm(order=-1).tdecimate()
crop(6, 8, -18, -8)
Spline36Resize(720,480)

Does the black level need adjusting? Something like this maybe?
Ylevels(12,1,255,0,255)

[Lathe]

Regarding MKV I'm going by your earlier remarks about your own mkv's as well as all the maverick mkv's I've tried playing on any of my players. Out of 10 I get maybe one MKV that plays on one player or another, but home made isn't all that great anyway so I just don't meddle with it. The internet and tech forums are flooded with the struggles of these format conversions and media convolutions, and frankly I got tired of meddling with what already works. By the time I get through one of those conversion threads I'm too exhausted just thinking about it. Now we have trusting souls with their stuff on cloud, but miss a few payments and poof your stuff is gone. Then there is an article I found about certain OPPO players (or was it all their players?) that won't play DVD or BluRay transferred to otherstorage devices (example, this one (http://watershade.net/wmcclain/BDP-103-faq.html#are-iso-files-or-blu-ray-or-dvd-directory-structures-supported-on-external-media)). This is too much craziness for me, I lost patience with this sort of thing long ago and just let others self-destruct trying to beat city hall.
:)

Fair enough... Appreciate your reply and your sentiments. My OPPO plays normal, run of the mill MKVs as long as the ref frames are not too high (up to 7 or 8 I think with 720p stuff, and up to 4 or 5 with 1080 stuff) and if the B frames aren't too high (about 3 or 4 as per Blu-ray standard) and if the buffers aren't setup weird.

It pretty much plays all the basic stuff, and one thing that REALLY helps to preview snippets and such, is using the USB drive. But, I don't really get too esoteric with what I'm trying to play or trying to do.

Good comment about the 'Cloud' too...

[Lathe]

I don't know about "most" external players not playing MKV. Both the Bluray players here do. There's a Plasma and two LCD TVs here with built in media players that'll play MKVs. One is DivX certified which ironically means it's a little more limited than the non-certified players in respect to bitrate, and it doesn't support DTS, but High profile Level 4.1 AVC in an MKV is pretty much standard. Xvid in an MKV is fine. My other half owns an old Sony Bluray player manufactured before they evolved to include USB inputs. It'll still play MKVs if you burn them to disc.
The main negative is a couple of the players don't support anamorphic video in an MKV, but the same applies to MP4 too.

For the sample from post #18.... it's already Bluray compliant, but you could apply IVTC and any other filtering and encode the 23.976 progressive output using soft pulldown to make it Bluray compliant again. http://www.x264bluray.com/home/480p-ntsc

Is there a weird line down the right side of the sample? Kind of like a mirror or split effect or am I imagining it?
I've never authored a Bluray complaint disc in my life as I mostly use MKV so I can't comment on any player oddities (if only there was an MP4 equivalent of MKVMergeGUI), but I don't like encoding black borders and I often resize even if it is evil, so I'd probably do the following to output a Bluray complaint resolution (if required) and set --SAR 10:11. Cropping the "line" down the right side means hacking off a bit more picture top and bottom than ideal to keep the correct aspect ratio, but it's either that or black borders.

tfm(order=-1).tdecimate()
crop(6, 8, -18, -8)
Spline36Resize(720,480)

Does the black level need adjusting? Something like this maybe?
Ylevels(12,1,255,0,255)

Thanks kindly for the input and the suggestions!

Heh... it's funny that here with all you really expert guys, that you would say that about black borders :) I don't mind them really, but like you I also do not mind cropping a bit to (what I feel anyway) optimize a particular situation. And, I will likely be called an outcast, but depending on the content, I am happy sometimes just zooming in on old 4x3 content with the display...

Interesting what you said about black levels. I still don't really know anything about that (but I WILL look it up!) But, what I've done is I did have BDRB IVTC it and go ahead and make it 720p. Then what I did as far as the 'color', since to me the picture looks like it could use a LOT more contrast, is I did just that. I added Avisynth to BDRB's settings to boost the contrast and lessen the brightness to 'balance' it, I added 'greyscale' too, and I thought it came out pretty well. Hmmm, I didn't notice the 'line' you talked about; I'm sure it's there, I just didn't notice it.

I personally don't mind a picture looking a tad sharp, even if most 'puritans' recoil in horror at ANY kind of perceived manipulation or 'unnatural' looking film grain, etc. I mean, I DON'T wan to make it look like 'THE MATRIX' or anything, but I don't mind sharpening or deepening the contrast to what I feel anyway is a good looking level, but without hopefully overdoing it.

One good example is the Blu-ray for the excellent film 'SEA OF LOVE'. Darn if the Blu-ray isn't SO bloody dark, you cannot see anything! So, I ran it through BDRB to a BD25 (which was just a tad smaller than the Blu-ray movie file) and used BDRB's avisynth settings basically to do the same thing as above to brighten the picture so that at least you could dang well see it! Big difference. DAMN did that encode take a while! One of the longest for a Blu-ray ever for me, probably due to the added Avisynth and high quality settings I used. I guess sometimes when they encode these, perhaps terrified of offending the puritan 'elite' Audio/Videophiles, of which I AM one, but not the 'puritan elite' and I guess rather than tamper with them, they just leave them the way they are. But, honestly, if you've seen this Blu-ray, you truly cannot see anything!

***EDIT

Heh, I just remembered that I did just exactly what you suggested on another file that I had to UNpooch like the other one we've been talking about. In this case ('CRACK IN THE MIRROR') along the top and bottom I DID notice the last few pixels had a lot of noise, so when I just did the final x264 encode with Avisynth, I did indeed chop off like 4 pixels all around even though the resulting file won't be EXACTLY 16x9 :)

[hello_hello]

I wasn't referring to noise as such, but..... I don't know how to describe it properly so here's a pic. Have a look at the very right of the imagine. It looks like a kind of reflection. It's odd, but it's throughout the whole sample. Unless every player I've tried isn't decoding it properly.....

That's what I cropped:

https://s22.postimg.org/xmqup05wh/crop.gif

The main reason I try to avoid black bars is because they lock you to an aspect ratio, unless you have a player that'll zoom. A classic example is widescreen video on a 4:3 DVD so it has black bars top and bottom. It's fine on a 4:3 screen but on a 16:9 screen you end up with black bars down each side as well as top and bottom.

Someone else may have a better suggestion but your sample looked a bit washed out to me and after stretching the luminance range a bit I think it looks better. It's similar to adjusting the contrast and there's no reason why you couldn't do some of both if need be. I used YLevels (it's similar to Avisynth's Levels() function) to "stretch" the levels towards the dark end.

Before:
https://s16.postimg.org/drudnuvyt/before.gif

YLevels(16,1,255,0,255)
https://s15.postimg.org/9zvoe7t6z/after.gif

I generally include GreyScale() when encoding black and white to kill any chroma noise, although until very recently I was blissfully unaware that black and white film was often deliberately tinted and the same tint wasn't always used throughout a movie. Night scenes might have a blue tint or an outdoor scene might have a brown one etc. I have seen movies where the tint noticeably changes and in my ignorance I assumed it was due to crappy DVD/Bluray production, but it turns out tinting was a thing back in the day and preserving the movie in it's original form should technically include any tinting.

Film tinting (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Film_tinting#Tinting_in_later_years)

I'll probably keep adding GreyScale() when encoding anyway as I find it distracting if I notice the tint change..... although I experimented with it myself last time I encoded a B/W movie and I think I prefer a very mild brown. It looks a bit softer than black and white, although that may depend on the colour temperature of your display. Not that I've actually encoded with a tint, just experimented a little.

A brownish tint:
https://s16.postimg.org/embx09cjp/brown.jpg

I don't know how the production process works exactly.... whether on it's way to DVD/Bluray the video is sometimes converted to RGB and back without expanding/reducing the levels correctly and it ends up dark or washed out. I've seen quite a bit of video with incorrect levels. For the PAL DVDs of the re-imagined BattleStar Galactica, the opening sequence is the same for each episode but there's a couple of episodes in season three (from memory) where the levels are wrong as they display differently. "Space" is grey instead of black. Expanding the levels from TV range to PC range fixes it and the opening sequence looks the same as it does for the rest of the episodes.
ie ColorYUV(Levels="TV->PC")
I've no idea how that sort of thing happens but it definitely does.

[Lathe]

I wasn't referring to noise a such, but..... I don't know how to describe it properly so here's a pic. Have a look at the very right of the imagine. It looks like a kind of reflection. It's odd, but it's throughout the whole sample. Unless every player I've tried isn't decoding it properly.....

That's what I cropped:

https://s22.postimg.org/xmqup05wh/crop.gif

The main reason I try to avoid black bars is because they lock you to an aspect ratio, unless you have a player that'll zoom. A classic example is widescreen video on a 4:3 DVD so it has black bars top and bottom. It's fine on a 4:3 screen but on a 16:9 screen you end up with black bars down each side as well as top and bottom.

Someone else may have a better suggestion but your sample looked a bit washed out to me and after stretching the luminance range a bit I think it looks better. It's similar to adjusting the contrast and there's no reason why you couldn't do some of both if need be. I used YLevels (it's similar to Avisynth's Levels() function) to "stretch" the levels towards the dark end.

Before:
https://s16.postimg.org/drudnuvyt/before.gif

YLevels(16,1,255,0,255)
https://s15.postimg.org/9zvoe7t6z/after.gif

I generally include GreyScale() when encoding black and white to kill any chroma noise, although until very recently I was blissfully unaware that black and white film was often deliberately tinted and the same tint wasn't always used throughout a movie. Night scenes might have a blue tint or an outdoor scene might have a brown one etc. I have seen movies where the tint noticeably changes and in my ignorance I assumed it was due to crappy DVD/Bluray production, but it turns out tinting was a thing back in the day and preserving the movie in it's original form should technically include any tinting.

Film tinting (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Film_tinting#Tinting_in_later_years)

I'll probably keep adding GreyScale() when encoding anyway as I find it distracting if I notice the tint change..... although I experimented with it myself last time I encoded a B/W movie and I think I prefer a very mild brown. It looks a bit softer than black and white, although that may depend on the colour temperature of your display. Not that I've actually encoded with a tint, just experimented a little.

A brownish tint:
https://s16.postimg.org/embx09cjp/brown.jpg

I don't know how the production process works exactly.... whether on it's way to DVD/Bluray the video is sometimes converted to RGB and back without expanding/reducing the levels correctly and it ends up dark or washed out. I've seen quite a bit of video with incorrect levels. For the PAL DVDs of the re-imagined BattleStar Galactica, the opening sequence is the same for each episode but there's a couple of episodes in season three (from memory) where the levels are wrong as they display differently. "Space" is grey instead of black. Expanding the levels from TV range to PC range fixes it and the opening sequence looks the same as it does for the rest of the episodes.
ie ColorYUV(Levels="TV->PC")
I've no idea how that sort of thing happens but it definitely does.

Very interesting indeed, thank you!

Yeah, I now see that little strip on the right, weird... I'll check to see if I can see it through the whole film or if it just happens to be in that snippet.

Very nice with the 'levels' change! Basically, that is what I did in a crude way with the contrast and brightness levels. Interesting about the 'tinting'. I sure didn't know about that. The brown (in this case) looks nice. Probably depending on the source, I think I personally kind of like the more stark, true B&W. But, there are likely cases where the brown would look nice.

I will definitely read about the Levels() funtion, thanks! I've gone back now and fixed (redid properly) the few captures that I screwed up before. Wow, what a difference; they sure do look better. I've been experimenting with different plugins, probably older, simpler ones, like UnFilter, MosquitoNR, and especially RemoveGrain for a couple of rougher older films. Worked really well. I figure with reading and experience, I should get a good idea as to what to use when and how much as time goes on (I hope...)

I just finished using BDRB to IVTC and convert to 1280x720 with just a tiny bit of sharpening on the older Noir film 'ESCAPE IN THE FOG' and it turned out great!

Oh yeah, I checked the Bogart film, and you are right! That little mirrored snippet is all through the film (Geez, some Videophile I am...) Glad you brought it to my attention; I'd better snip that out.

http://lathe-of-heaven.com/anomaly.jpg

I love to keep learning :)