What's wrong with UnFilter?

[Holomatrix]

Hi, I don't know what I did but when encoding with Unfilter my video has virtical bars running down the video. What versions of Avisynth and Unfilter should I be using? I'm running Avisynth 2.07, should I go back to 2.06? not sure what version of UnFilter, I'm not home right now.
Thanks

[trbarry]

Are you sharpening? This can happen if you set the parameters too high and over sharpen, or if you run UnFilter twice. Does it still happen if you tone it down a bit?

- Tom

[Holomatrix]

I'm just using UnFilter(20,20) I'll change avisynth to 2.06 and see what happens.

[Holomatrix]

Actually, I changed the UnFilter version instead and everything looks OK. The older version dated 26/06/2002 60k gives these lines when used with Avisynth 2.07, the newer(old) version dated 02/07/2002 64k does not give this problem.

EDIT: I read another thread about UnFilter doing a great job on low bitrate black area smoothing I want to check out. I encoded this movie on 1CD and looks alright but you can really see blocks in the solid black (dark) areas.

[MaTTeR]

Tom,

I think I've noticed this also happening with the latest YV12 build. I was sharpening with a (2,2) parameter and even tried a (4,4). So far it's only showing up in one particular scene which contains alot of fog with a dark background. I think I still have the clip and screenshot here if you need it.

[cjv]

Originally posted by MaTTeR
I was sharpening with a (2,2) parameter and even tried a (4,4).

That's interesting. On my machine, using anything < Unfilter(5,5) while still staying (+,+) is basically an expensive no-op.

Just for fun, try encoding a short clip with Unfilter(4,4), then with Unfilter(2,2), then without Unfilter() at all.

My findings show that they will be byte-for-byte exactly the same. Tom, can you confirm this..that < Unfilter(5,5) is a no-op (at least for NTSC DVD resolutions)?

cjv

[trbarry]

Why don't you try running Subtract or Compare on them? At 4,4 it wouldn't do much but I've heard reports that it helps remove the black blocks for some reason even at 5,5.

edit: oops, your last sentence suggests maybe you did run compare, yes?

MaTTer -

There were 2 YV12 versions (see above). The first filtered chroma also, causing problems. Are you using the newer one?

- Tom

[Holomatrix]

Does it remove black boxes at 20,20? as well as sharpen?

[Bulletproof]

I've noticed that if you do Unfilter(-1,-1) with the YV12 version that it will put colored bars on the left and right side of the video. This doesn't bother me much anyway since -1, -1 probably almost does nothing anyway.

[Holomatrix]

Ok, I'm going to try a combo of Lanczos,Unfilter and Fluxsmooth. What order should I use?
Thanks

[MaTTeR]

Originally posted by trbarry
MaTTer -

There were 2 YV12 versions (see above). The first filtered chroma also, causing problems. Are you using the newer one? Good question:) I knew you were going to release a new build that didn't filter chroma but had no idea you already got around to it. So yeh, I'm 1 version behind but I'll grab the latest and give it a shot.

@Bulletproof
Does that still happen with the newer build which doesnt filter chroma?

@cjv
I wasn't really looking to sharpen this particular encode, I mainly use low values on over-sharpened sources just to reduce DCT blocks.

[cjv]

Originally posted by trbarry
edit: oops, your last sentence suggests maybe you did run compare, yes?
Yea, I just did a simple fc /b in windows. I guess consdering that unfilter works on a scale of 100, using a value of 4 might not be strong enough to cause it to even kick in on all sources.

Anyways, Unfilter(5,5) is still one of the best things to happen to an encode. Thanks for the great filter (and all your other ones too like TomsMoComp()..simply amazing!)

cjv