What is the most compressible Sharpening filter? (I know the question is an oxymoron)

[ArdenDag]

Yes yes, I know when you sharpen you are losing compressibility, but I'm looking to know what is the sharpening filter that for you has provided the best results in terms of low bitrate encodes? I've tried using a sharper resize (Lanczos included) it doesn't make my encode sharp enough for my tastes, so I want to add a sharpening filter.

It is a 103 minute anime, and I want it to fit on 1 CD (.avi filesize < 700 MB) so my video has to be < 600 MB (as my audio and overhead counts for the other 100 MB)

I have been playing around with various sharpening filters, but have yet to find that 'perfect' setting which will allow me to sharpen 'enough' while not taking away from the overall compression of my video (and in turn ruining the quality, of course).

So I'm looking for some opinions from all you experts out here.

HELP! :)

[Zarxrax]

Warpsharp is by far the best for sharpening without effecting filesize. I think it actually makes the output file slightly smaller. However it doesn't really do a good sharpening job most of the time, in my opinion.

[Richard Berg]

MSharpen is probably the closest filter to what you're looking for, though you should definitely play with WarpSharp and see if it helps any.

[ErMaC]

I will also recommend warpsharp - it is the only sharpening filter which increases/doesn't affect compressibility. All other sharpening filters make video harder to compress.

However WarpSharp isn't a silver bullet. Frankly I stay away from sharpening filters other than WarpSharp though because I think they sometimes just produce ugly results cause I don't like sharpened stuff ^_^

[Marc FD]

are you going to play it with a harware decoder ??

because, IMHO, if you want HUGE sharpenning, download ffdshow, and take a look at the sharpen panel.

it's even waaaay to sharp for my friends, so i use soft sharpenning now.

BTW, warpsharp is cool, it's the only filter i'ld use for pre-processing, but like Zarxrax said, it's not really sharpenning : it's making edges thinner ...

finally, just an little hint from a (bad ^^) anime encoder :
never sharpen anime sources until they are oversmoothed or you use hardware decoding (like VCD,SVCD,CVD ect...)

[ArdenDag]

Thanks for the suggestions.

I'm going to try WarpSharp.

are you going to play it with a harware decoder ??

No, as I said, I'm aiming for a 700 MB .avi, so this is for computer use only.

I am encoding the video at 800 kbps, so the quality is going to be very low, and I know this, but I want to get the best quality even with this very TIGHT limitation.

It being anime doesn't help. It having a lot of dark sections doesn't help either. I was playing around with smoothing filters like convolution3d with its various presets. I just was attempting MSmooth with its default settings (playing with its settings produced VERY UNUSUAL results, so I left them as is). I also played with SSHiQ, MSharpen and Unfilter with various degrees of sharpening/smoothing to get the results I wanted, but the mosquito type noise that is common in anime just doesn't go away with whatever smoothing I do which keeps detail, so... I tried to get as much of that taken care of without losing the detail I want.

I attempted again an encode with this script (clipped):

telecide(guide=1,post=false)
decimate(mode=2,cycle=5,quality=3) (I originally played with threshold settings and also adding a FieldDeinterlace() call to catch combed frames that weren't decimated, but the blending caused a reduce in quality and speed that wasn't worth the frames that looked interlaced while watching the film. I didn't mind it that much, so I left it out)

LanczosResize() (I'm at work, so I don't have numbers)
ConvertToRGB()
MSmooth() <--- default settings
ConvertToYUY2()
Unfilter(50,50) <--- Currently using for quick sharpening, does a decent job
Tweak(sat=1.4)

So... this produced results that were acceptable, but I'm wondering what I could tweak to get results that will give me a slight gain in quality.

Encoding a certain part of the video that I chose (800 frames) gets me an average quant between 4 and 5 in 2 pass encoding with DivX 5.02, with B frames and GMC enabled.

So... I'll give WarpSharp a try and get back with this, as soon as I'm off work *sigh*

[ErMaC]

OK First off:
Turn off GMC!!! It's experimental, doesn't increase quality but instead causes nasty colortrail artifacts.
Second, Msmooth before you resize for better quality.
Third, use ConvertBackToYUY2() instead of ConvertToYUY2() because it helps to alleviate color conversion artifacting (since it assumes your video has been upsampled to RGB and thus doesn't attempt to do averaging and such).

[ArdenDag]

Will give it a go tonight! :)

Thanks

[ArdenDag]

Ok, here are my .avs scripts for 2 attempts, and my average quant for the portion I encoded. Weird, but warpsharp didn't do what I wanted to do with the standard parameters, and the instructions in english are kind of weird, so can someone explain in layman's terms how to use it to lightly sharpen? ;)

Anyway,

Script 1:

LoadPlugin("C:\PROGRA~1\GORDIA~1\mpeg2dec.dll")
LoadPlugin("C:\PROGRA~1\GORDIA~1\decomb.dll")
LoadPlugin("C:\PROGRA~1\GORDIA~1\unfilter.dll")
LoadPlugin("C:\PROGRA~1\GORDIA~1\Msmooth.dll")

mpeg2source("C:\Documents and Settings\Arden\Desktop\Kiki's Delivery Service.d2v")

Telecide(Guide=1,Chroma=false,post=false)
Decimate(Mode=2,Quality=3,Cycle=5)
FieldDeinterlace(full=false,blend=true,threshold=10)

crop(26,74,668,406)
Trim(8100,8900)

ConvertToRGB()
MSmooth(strength=3,threshold=10,mask=false)
ConvertBackToYUY2()

LanczosResize(512,336)

Unfilter(50,50)
Tweak(sat=1.4)

This gave me decent quality (but I will probably still play with the thresholds in Telecide before I'm finished, to see if it will improve anything or catch the few fields that are interlaced and pass by it). Encoded in DivX 5.02 with following settings:

2 Pass, 800 Kbps. B-frames.
Max Keyframe Interval 125. DRC settings I was playing with. Minimum Quant 2, Maximum Quant 5 (I was trying to force it to never use a quant higher than 5, I know I can't keep this and expect my filesize to be right, so I will change it, I was just using it for this to test)
Average quant = 4.4 (about, I forgot and didn't write it down ;) )

Script 2:

LoadPlugin("C:\PROGRA~1\GORDIA~1\mpeg2dec.dll")
LoadPlugin("C:\PROGRA~1\GORDIA~1\decomb.dll")
LoadPlugin("C:\PROGRA~1\GORDIA~1\unfilter.dll")
LoadPlugin("C:\PROGRA~1\GORDIA~1\warpsharp.dll")

mpeg2source("C:\Documents and Settings\Arden\Desktop\Kiki's Delivery Service.d2v")

Telecide(Guide=1,Chroma=false,post=false)
Decimate(Mode=2,Quality=3,Cycle=5)
FieldDeinterlace(full=false,blend=true,threshold=10)

crop(26,74,668,406)
Trim(8100,8900)

ConvertToRGB()
MSmooth(strength=3,threshold=10,mask=false)
ConvertBackToYUY2()

LanczosResize(512,336)

WarpSharp(depth=128, blur=3, bump=128, cubic=-0.6)
Tweak(sat=1.4)

Same encoding settings, but I didn't get the sharpening I wanted. The average quant, of course, was lower. Average quant = 3.77.

[Guest]

>Telecide(Guide=1,Chroma=false,post=false)

The chroma option has no effect when post=false. You can omit it.
Also, you should use all lower case for the option names!

>This gave me decent quality (but I will probably still
>play with the thresholds in Telecide before I'm finished,
>to see if it will improve anything or catch the few fields
>that are interlaced and pass by it).

The only threshold that will affect field matching is gthresh. If you have only a few interlaced frames slipping by, I'd recommend using the manual override capability to force them to be deinterlaced.

[ArdenDag]

I know that neuron, hehe, but I leave the options there because I'd rather not have to remember the options when I intend to change them to TRUE.

And I'll take your suggestion to use all lower case, I normally do, but I copied and pasted that line from a thread here a while ago, and the person typed them with upper case.

Thanks for telling me that gthresh is the only threshold that affects field matching. I had difficulty understand what exactly each threshold did, so I experimented to see ;)

Also, I read the manual overriding functions in Telecide, Decimate and FieldDeinterlace in the readme, now, where do I put the override files? It said to put it in the same directory as the Avisynth filters, so if I have them all in the GKnot directory, I should put my override files there, and just reference them by name? (i.e. ovr="kiki.dec", etc etc)

[Guest]

Originally posted by ArdenDag
Also, I read the manual overriding functions in Telecide, Decimate and FieldDeinterlace in the readme, now, where do I put the override files? It said to put it in the same directory as the Avisynth filters, so if I have them all in the GKnot directory, I should put my override files there, and just reference them by name? (i.e. ovr="kiki.dec", etc etc) No, the help file says the override file must be in the same directory as the script (the AVS file). Actually, you can put them anywhere and give a full path name in the 'ovr' option but I find it convenient to keep the file with the AVS file, because it keeps the syntax short and sweet as well as keeping related files together. So, for example, I might have:

Sopranos.avs
Sopranos.tel

where Sopranos.avs looks like this:

...
Telecide(...,ovr="Sopranos.tel")
...

YOu can use the 'show' option to verify that your overrides are taking effect (the display will show "[forced]").

A new version of Decomb soon to be released will support specification of frame ranges in the overrides file.

[ArdenDag]

I must have misread that, oops :)

Ok, now can someone help me with tweaking the WarpSharp settings? heh ...

Ok, so I was playing with the different blur settings, setting a blur of 1 (which should blur less) actually seemed to blur more? Confused me, anyway, I don't think WarpSharp is doing the sharpening I want.

I will probably move back to Unfilter or MSharpen, depending on how each of them treats me :)

[Guest]

Maybe you are being unrealistic about what sharpening is and what it can do for you. Perhaps you could post a typical frame in JPEG that you think needs sharpening.

[ArdenDag]

I might be being a tad unrealistic in what I want, but I'm picky, and I would rather have a sharper end result with slight noise than a smooth result with less noise.

I will post a couple examples of what I am looking for. Give me a few minutes to upload the JPEGs

[ArdenDag]

Ok, here we go, hopefully I'm not being annoying just looking for answers to questions, ya know.

All of these pictures were taken as output frames from VDub, the script file used in all is:

Telecide(Guide=1,Chroma=false,post=false)
Decimate(Mode=2,Quality=3,Cycle=5)
FieldDeinterlace(full=false,blend=true,threshold=10)
crop(26,74,668,406)
LanczosResize(512,336)
Tweak(sat=1.4)

The only thing I changed in each instance was what filter I added.

First picture, no filter, just what's above.
Second picture, Convolution3d(preset="animeLQ") before Resizing.
Third picture, no smoothing, just MSharpen(strength=100,threshold=15) after resizing.
Fourth picture, no smoothing, just Unfilter(50,50) after resizing.

http://www.msu.edu/~daghlian/kiki1.jpg
http://www.msu.edu/~daghlian/kiki2.jpg
http://www.msu.edu/~daghlian/kiki3.jpg
http://www.msu.edu/~daghlian/kiki4.jpg

Picture 1 was fine in terms of quality (for me) and speed wise is of course the best (I'm running on an AMD Duron 750, so speed is an issue, somewhat). But for me it wasn't sharp enough, so...

Picture 2 is just comparing how Convolution does its work, I noticed some slight differences, but without motion (i.e. video clips) much work isn't noticable.

Picture 3 is too sharp for my tastes, and at the default strength and a slightly altered threshold, I think the noise generated, and detail lost is a tad high. I haven't yet played around with the settings on MSharpen.

Picture 4 is ideal in terms of the clarity and sharpness of the picture for me. This is what I'm aiming for, ideally, but it doesn't always return the same results in each circumstance, which is why I'm looking for a better 'overall' solution.

Sorry if I'm being long winded :) Just here to get help, as I always do :)

[Guest]

Simple question for you: what do you mean by "sharp"?

[Marc FD]

> so this is for computer use only.

are you AGAINST opensource devellopement ??
this question may seem strange, but i just want to mention 2 things :
- it's know that XviD is much better than DivX 5.02 pro on anime.
- at 800 kbps (huge bitrate for this resolution) quality is so good that you'll recover everything at playback. then, even with a old CPU, enabling post-processing (if you don't like mosquito nois) and adding sharpenning with ffdshow after is possible.

you could achieve the sharpness you want. without any problems of compressibility.

MPEG-4 codecs (and DCT-based in general) are bad to encode sharpenned stuff. i don't understand why you don't want to sharpen at post-processing time.

BTW, sharpenning will never give you more quality, when i see how sharp your source is.

i really don't understand. do you really want your problem to be solved ??

Regards,
MarcFD

[ArdenDag]

Originally posted by neuron2
Simple question for you: what do you mean by "sharp"?

I guess the pictures I posted didn't give you an impression of what I thought was sharp. The tone of your questioning suggests you don't want to help me, so I will withdraw all of my questioning on this thread and go back to experimentation on my own. It seems that you don't understand what I want, or my lack of understanding of the definitions of certain words seems to be limiting my dialogue with you.

I will post a more complete and thorough question when I realize what I said wrong here. But thanks, Neuron, for indirectly telling me that what I was asking was not what I wanted.

are you AGAINST opensource devellopement ??

My referring to 'this is for computer use only' was just stating that the .avi I intend to create will ONLY be played on computers, not on ANY hardware players. You seemed to have taken this statement WAY out of context. I have no intention to release this .avi to anyone but friends whom I wish to see it.

this question may seem strange, but i just want to mention 2 things :
- it's know that XviD is much better than DivX 5.02 pro on anime.

Where on doom9's website is this stated? My only set of research on encoding started about a month ago on this website. I started with GKnot, and have been slowly moving towards making my own AviSynth scripts and playing around with the various filters that are available, and seeing what works best FOR ME.

It is WELL KNOWN that what works best for one person will not work best for someone else. And in the forum rules it explicitly asks you NOT to ask for what is BEST. That is not what I asked here.

- at 800 kbps (huge bitrate for this resolution) quality is so good that you'll recover everything at playback. then, even with a old CPU, enabling post-processing (if you don't like mosquito nois) and adding sharpenning with ffdshow after is possible.
MPEG-4 codecs (and DCT-based in general) are bad to encode sharpenned stuff. i don't understand why you don't want to sharpen at post-processing time.


First, I was told that 800 kbps is NOT a huge bitrate for this resolution, as my compressibility check in GKnot told me I should lower my resolution, or raise my bitrate to get a decent compressibility on this movie with DivX 5.02 (I have NOT used anything but DivX codecs, and for the moment I don't wish to change that.)

Also, I didn't mention why I wanted the movie to be encoded with the sharpness I wanted. I want the movie to be seen the same on EVERY computer it plays on with no tweaking of any settings, no downloading of any extra programs. Just Windows Media Player and the downloading of DivX decompression codecs that WMP does automatically. This is also why I'm weary of using any 'OTHER' codecs to encode this movie.

BTW, sharpenning will never give you more quality, when i see how sharp your source is.

i really don't understand. do you really want your problem to be solved ??

I know sharpening will not give me more quality, I was weighing COMPRESSIBILITY versus SHARPNESS, and was looking for the filter that would provide me the best results without overall quality loss that occurs with over-sharpening.

I have read a few articles on the effects of sharpening on film material, and the fact that DVDs are even released with these 'Edge Enhancements' added to the source. I know a lot of people hate them, I know they reduce quality, and I know that the overall file size of something that is EEed is going to be higher for the same overall quality.

But, as you can see, I am well aware of this, and I seem to want this solved anyway.

Thanks for the few people who pointed me towards a filter that did provide a somewhat general solution to my problem, it's a shame no one could generalize the parameters of WarpSharp for me, I'll go back to searching and see if I can find a few threads that can guide me on this.

[Aktan]

Originally posted by ArdenDag
Just Windows Media Player and the downloading of DivX decompression codecs that WMP does automatically. This is also why I'm weary of using any 'OTHER' codecs to encode this movie.


Um I don't think WMP downloads divx automatically either... =P

[Guest]

Originally posted by ArdenDag
The tone of your questioning suggests you don't want to help me, so I will withdraw all of my questioning on this thread and go back to experimentation on my own. It seems that you don't understand what I want, or my lack of understanding of the definitions of certain words seems to be limiting my dialogue with you. You don't know us very well if you can say such a thing. "sharp" is one of those subjective mealy-mouthed concepts that stands in need of a precise definition. I was trying to reach that point of understanding so as to help you better.

I will post a more complete and thorough question when I realize what I said wrong here. But thanks, Neuron, for indirectly telling me that what I was asking was not what I wanted.I simply asked what you mean by 'sharp'. Why are you taking offense? It could mean many things: spatial resolution, global contrast, local contrast, edge contrast, edge width, color purity, lack of noise, etc. What is wrong in trying to establish what measure you are trying to improve?

[MaTTeR]

ArdenDag,

If your looking for shrapness then you could start by turning off B-Frames in DivX5. DivX5 in itself tends to blur frames compared to say XviD but D5 blurs even more with B-Frames IMHO. Just my 2 cents...

[ArdenDag]

Originally posted by neuron2
I simply asked what you mean by 'sharp'. Why are you taking offense? It could mean many things: spatial resolution, global contrast, local contrast, edge contrast, edge width, color purity, lack of noise, etc. What is wrong in trying to establish what measure you are trying to improve?
Sorry that I got a little frustrated there, but it seemed that you and marc were just telling me I'm going about what I wanted all incorrectly (Marc especially) and he seems to want to throw XviD down my throat.

I've read some of Marc's other responses on threads, and I know he can get people frustrated easy, so I tried to be subjective with his suggestion, but when he basically TOLD ME that XviD is BETTER than DivX 5.02 on anime (wow, seems it's proven now, eh), I got a tad more frustrated than I should have.

As for you, neuron, your line of questioning just sounded to me like you were talking to someone who just didn't understand anything, and maybe I don't know much about how the filters work, or what the filters exactly do, but I DO understand what changes they make in visuals, because I can see them myself.

When you asked:

Maybe you are being unrealistic about what sharpening is and what it can do for you. Perhaps you could post a typical frame in JPEG that you think needs sharpening.

and

Simple question for you: what do you mean by "sharp"?

I took offense to it because I misunderstood HOW you were asking me these questions. They just didn't seem like you were asking in the kindest way.

But, like I said, it seems my dialogue was not 'up to par' to explain what I wanted clearly. Now let me try and explain what I want with the definitions you've given.

These three describe what I want most from my encode:
Global Contrast
Edge Contrast
Color Purity
I used Tweak to adjust the washed out colors I had in the movie, so I thought I had the Color Purity taken care of.

If you noticed in my pictures, picture 4 adjusted the contrast overall and also make the edges more visible (atleast to my eyes).

Picture 3 did this as well, but did so a little too strongly, and in return seemed to degrade the quality (caused jaggedness and added noise) more than I thought was acceptable. But I also mentioned that I had not yet played around with the settings of MSharpen (which you have written) so maybe you can give me some ideas.

*sigh* It seems that I've made a couple people mad. I didn't mean to, I just felt like the person who always gets kicked around just because he's not popular, you know?

[^^-+I4004+-^^]

i wonder why everyone is setting the priority to
"compresibility" tests and keeping the filesizes
low?
are the cdr's so expensive?
really?

if you want sharp image,that means it compresses
not so well as smoothed image..
no big philosophy there....
put 1 movie to 2 cd's and you're there!
or put it to 3cdr's and you can sharpen some
more...

i too like my image sharper and if some noise is
the price(and higher bitrate too),i'm only glad to
pay it!

you can't have that low (800kbit/s) bitrate and
sharp image..that's for sure.....
anyone who toyed with sharpening filters knows
that.......
( you'll have mosquitos,you'll have noise that's
grainier than the source's noise,blocks....all
sorts of problems.....but i'm sure you saw that
already )

also,i've done some test with codecs (it's
understandable that EVERY codec smooths the image
same as every resizer does it...) any i concluded
that divx3 gives me sharpest image
( all my tests are on "real-life" images...)
nic's xvid isn't yet quite there,but improvements
over the previous releases are huge!
and if improvements continue it might be there
soon.....
divx4.12 is worse than xvid in any case....
lately i'm experimenting with mpeg2 (SVCD) and
sure it can't beat divx3 on the same bitrate....
(but i'm surprised how good CCE really is..)

so what am i saying?
only that EVERY codec smooths image too much for
my taste (i'm acustomed to very sharp (& very
noisy?) analog image ) and some sharpening is
needed.......(obviously some folks at dvd
mastering biz feel the same so they introduce edge
enhancement etc.,but i don't have dvd player so i
won't judge their work )

this also means that bitrate needs to be cranked
but then final result is no bitrate saving,purely
compresable video which reminds me of looking
through foggy windscreen....and i really mean that
thing is NOT good for eyes...(as my eyes can
really feel strange if i give them something which
is essentially image out of focus and they
repeatedly try to focus it without
success....sometimes digital video is like
that....real blurry!)

[ but sure it's subjective thing!many people don't
mind it or so it seems....... ]

(lately i've been using graft's "unsharp mask" (VD
filter) with nice results...xsharpen is there
too,but doesn't have all the stuff "mask" has....i
recently dloaded "msharpen" and "unfilter" to see
what can asynth do but haven't tested them yet...
i presume "msharpen" will beat "unfilter" as it
practically has no more than 1 parameter,and
graft's filters tend to be always a bit more
configurable then the rest...not that graft alone
produces decent filters.....for example cnr is
nice stuff too,but marc didn't make me too happy
because he included motion detection "switch-off"
only to YV12 version of filter....what about us
capturing people marc? there are some rally and
moto-races to be cleaned.......hehe....)

{ oxymoron ? don't get me started ! heh )

cheers

Ivo

[Zarxrax]

I don't think tis so much the cost of the cds, as the inconvenience of having to switch in the middle of a movie, or to actually keep up with the various discs. I've got over 500 cd-rs, and they are practically worthless to me because I am too lazy to look through them all if I want to find something :p

[Marc FD]

>because he included motion detection "switch-off"
>only to YV12 version of filter

no, in the avisynth 2.5 version.
there's a scd in YUY2 too.

in-topic :

what's creating smoothness is motion compensation. XviD is very good to this game, way better than DivX sbc. that's why your is image a bit softer, and why sbc needs huges bitrates (3 cds... lol).

you know, you could "regress" the XviD codec to give a DivX sbc effect. but you'll have all the inconvenients with.

btw, when i give encodes to friends, they need a codec to decode it anyway (for DivX sbc, DivX 5, XviD or whatever else), i simply give them ffdshow, and if they want sharpness, they can have it as much as they want.

to finish :
you have a source.
- if you sharpen it, you alter it.
- if you encode it, you alter it.
- sharp is less compressible.
- the less compressible it is, the more you alter the source.

suppose you want to have maximum sharpness / maximum quality and minimum bitrate. you have two choices :
1) encode a sharpenned source with DivX sbc.
2) encode a cleaned source with a recent codec (DivX 5 qpel no bf no gmc, XviD). play it with ffdshow/sharpen as much as you want.

at high bitrates, like 2000+ kbps (3 cds), first solution is of course better.
but at "normal" bitrates, 600-1000 kbps (1h-2h/1 cd), you _may_ prefer the second one, because with the first option, you'll have a _lot_ of macroblocks/ringing , and most people would use post-processing because it looks really ugly. especially with anime, because you notice noise even more. as soon as you need post-processing, your sharpenning is useless. with first solution, you'll of course loose "crispness", but ffdshow's post filters provide a wide range of effect, i think you can find what's best for your eyes.

i've no stock-options in XviD, nor any filter. i'm a coder who release filters to HELP people, and really, i think i know (more or less) how to ripp anime....

honestly, that's not my problem, i recently encoded mononoke hime (2h08) to one CD is 640x, and trust me, it was sharp and clean like the DVD, even in fastest scenes.
i'll leave this tread now, and i wouldn't try to help people to make things sharp anymore.

good luck :)

bye,
MarcFD

[ArdenDag]

Originally posted by ^^-+I4004+-^^
i wonder why everyone is setting the priority to
"compresibility" tests and keeping the filesizes
low?
are the cdr's so expensive?
really?

No, I have a purpose for this movie, and the purpose requires I have it on ONE CD. Does this have anything to do with CD-R costs? No. Does it have to do with ease of use with 1 CD, and the fact that the entire movie is contained on 1 CD? Basically. I'm not getting into why I want it on 1 CD, I just do.

you can't have that low (800kbit/s) bitrate and
sharp image..that's for sure.....

Sure I can, but at the cost of quality.

Also, it seems a lot of people on these boards are avidly recommending XviD. All encodes I've done with XviD have been problematic, and I have yet to play and fix the problems. XviD is still in ALPHA.

If I were using AS 2.5 and MPEG2DEC3, feeding avisynth with YV12 input directly, then I would use XviD, as it seems this might be the way to go, but for the moment (with a lot of filters still in development for use with YV12 [including Decomb, I will not switch until neuron finishes his Decomb for YV12]) it's not a good move for me, even if motion detection and other things good for anime (especially) are better with XviD. This is a personal preference, and whatever you preach to me about how much better XviD is, I will not switch yet.

i've no stock-options in XviD, nor any filter. i'm a coder who release filters to HELP people, and really, i think i know (more or less) how to ripp anime....

So you would consider yourself an expert on ripping anime, and I'm not saying you aren't, I don't know you, nor do I know how much anime you've ripped. But your rips of anime could very well be perfect and 'DVD-like' to you, but they might not be to me. Everyone's EYESIGHT and PREFERENCE is different. If you don't think so, then you are sorely mistaken.

honestly, that's not my problem, i recently encoded mononoke hime (2h08) to one CD is 640x, and trust me, it was sharp and clean like the DVD, even in fastest scenes.
i'll leave this tread now, and i wouldn't try to help people to make things sharp anymore.

Ok, I guess you are very opinionated, and I guess you just want to leave because I don't want to take every one of your suggestions. Oh well.

[Stabmaster-Arson]

"SBC [b]REQUIRING High bitrate and 3 CD's"

Whats this talk about?
SBC can produce some of the best results p[ossible, on 1 or 2 cd's.

[ArdenDag]

I think it best to lock or close this topic, all it's producing is arguments and frustration. The whole concept I was questioning was lost here anyway.

neuron, I will message ya, and hopefully get your insight on the best way to accomplish the sharpening I mentioned in this thread, if you can't help me, maybe you can redirect me as to how I can accomplish what I want without pulling my hair out trying to tweak filter settings? *grin*

[Guest]

Thread closed by request of originator.