Vhs => Rm

[Chyron]

Hi!

I've got several PAL VHS tapes which i want to transfer to low-bitrate
RM files. I captured them to PicVideo Mjpeg (768x576, quality 19).But when I filtered them in VDub (getting very nice DivXes btw), and tried to compress to rm9, result was very unpleasuring.I thought that lossy mpeg4 compression was the reason and re-do them,this time to HuffYUV. But result was the same - blockfest, even at 500 kbits - i didn't tried higher, as then it will be as large as DivX.
So after several fruitless attempts including enabling of nf-high and changing of video qualtiy in RP, and usage of SmartSmoother with overkill treshold and various temporal filters in VDub i decided to ask:

What filter chains and tricks people use?

I target to 320x240/384x288 at 225(preferable)or 384 kbit.

P.S. Inspired by Doom9's review, I converted few DVD rips from DivX to RM9 - result was great. So more it's strange.

[^^-+I4004+-^^]

So after several fruitless attempts including enabling of nf-high and changing of video qualtiy in RP, and usage of SmartSmoother with overkill treshold and various temporal filters in VDub i decided to ask:

What filter chains and tricks people use?

I target to 320x240/384x288 at 225(preferable)or 384 kbit.

P.S. Inspired by Doom9's review, I converted few DVD rips from DivX to RM9 - result was great. So more it's strange.


_no its not!chroma/luma noise in those capturings destroys the rm9 encoder,you can NOT use vdub's tempsmoothers(look my post covering the rm9 little above) cause they introduce "lag" & won't work in frameserve mode(i presume you use that?)

so i use avisynth as intermediate between those two(vdub&encoder):asynth filters CAN tempsmooth your video even if they are fed into it by vdub frserve(they(asynth tempsmoothers) have their own buffering systems)

filters i use:temporalsmoother(asynth version(code from vdub version):part of "mpeg2dec.dll" plugin by "dividee"(as i can remember))
at "7"(for noisier videos,less for videos with less noise)

&smartsmootherhiq(asynthversion,although you can use vdub's:it doesn't have "lag" & works in frserve mode..) at "3,20,25,120,0"
(smsmoother(at least for me) is there just to "pickup the pieces" after temp.smoother,to lessen the noise in high motin scenes
(as you may know temp.smoothing introduces "noise-leftovers" in motion scenes)-so i keep smsmoothhiq at low parameters(& i dont like smoothin on spatial base too much_its "overblur"))

if you wan't your high motion scenes intact:all you can do is NOT to filter & keep bitrate real high(but it seems to me that in this domain you'll get better results with xvid/divx_rm9 really HATES noise!)
(this especially goes for lo res you mentioned)

[Chyron]

Thanks! I never used AviSynth before - had no reason to. But looks like i need it. So now i'm reading guides :)
Notes.
1st: I used file mode, not frameserving - as this allow to watch final result and use temporal filters :)
2nd. Temporal Smoother??? No, i prefer FlaXen's VHS tool - exactly by mentioned reason - setting temporal bias and temporal error allows to leave much less trails. Plus nice chroma shift etc.
3rd. Looks like that deinterlace filters i used also took part in confusing RealProducer - when i feed to it fullres interlaced version and enabled deinterlace+resize, result was much better. But not ideal yet:)
Actually that bugs me most :)is that i get several RMs (in RealVideo8, not dvd source - air translation) which looks better than all my attempts.
Thanks!
P.S. I prefer smooth video over detailed. So most filtering i use is for that.BTW reason i like DivX5 ;)

[Chyron]

Thanks again!
AviSynth kinda do miracle - though video was a bit oversharpened for my taste, it looks very good after conversion to RM. at 384 kbit it looks almost as frameserved images, at 250k it's reasonably good - better than any attempts to use other codecs, and very watchable, esp. on TV. Thanks!
P.S. And this thing kinda works faster than vdub filters - no numerous rgb->yuv->rgb conversions as in vdub...so looks avisynth is tool of choice to stay on my hdd :)

[^^-+I4004+-^^]

>And this thing kinda works faster than vdub filters - no numerous rgb->yuv->rgb conversions as in vdub...so looks avisynth is tool of choice to stay on my hdd

i disagree!vdub seems to b efaster in this kind of filtering
make such comparision:
use asynth's smoothers(ie. softeners) to make an avs file....,try to code this with vdub....look at fps rate_stop your test there
use vdub's smoothers,try to code,look at fps rate again
i think you'll see vdub is A LOT faster in smoothing filters

but you can't use vdub to smoothen->rm anyhow so you gotta have both....

i think that this i your impression if you coded with rm on lower res._but overall there's no gain in speed_
think vdub will be at least 2fps faster when encoding to divx than asynth-rm combo.....

cause i tested asynth vs. vdub filters for speed recently....

[Chyron]

Well, maybe i'm wrong, but i used vdub alot as filtering util, now just as encoder - fast recompress mode, what also kinda speed up. And i used convolution3d twice in filter chain. Maybe i'm wrong, but 2.8 fps looks more than 1.9 (with same looking result) :)