Bad DVD mastering, suggest filters

[wasco]

Hello,

first of all, I've been following the forum for quiet some time and I must say that this is the sole place where I can read so many different opinions :) All that to say that I admire most people here for their continuing effort to answer to as much threads as possible, keeping the spirit in the ripping game.

So, without further a-do..

I am ripping friends episodes, pff and it's a hell of a job. I want them all easily accessible on my computer so I don't have to put in and switch the DVD all the time. (only 4 episodes / side / DVD)

But someone kinda screwed up the DVD mastering in my opinion. (look at the shot, straight from the DVD) Now I want to hear your suggestions on filters I can put before the resizing (or after) to improve the quality-versus-size rate.

What are your suggestions??

http://www.wasco.be/ds/picture/friends-frame.jpg

[jggimi]

Hello, wasco!

I noticed this is only your second post, though you've been a member since July '02. And your first post a year ago was also about filters for episodes of Friends! :rolleyes:

I'm moving this question to the AviSynth Usage forum, where you're likely to have a larger audience of filter knowledgable folks.

[wasco]

yes jggimi you are right about my post history. I haven't replied much to posts indeed but I'm reading alot though. I'm not as smart as others in general it seems :) btw thanks for moving the topic, I had no idea where to post it. There are so many subsections and frankly it's a mess sometimes ;)

i tried ripping them that time and I succeeded :)
but that time it was season 1->5 and the mastering problem was somewhat different. It had a bad interlacing so it got 'burned' into the movie and I couldn't find a filter that helped me at the time.

Now the problem is somewhat different.

[ronnylov]

I can't see anything bad in the picture.
What exactly is the problem?

[wasco]

well it's a screenshot from the DVD-source and it looks like a television capture in my opinion.

[jorel]

straight from the DVD,right?

i see little "shivers",little dots on the faces
and the "blur" on the arm (in moviment)!
is this (all)?

<edit>
we post at the same time Wasco,
i need to know if my "impression" of the picture is right!
:)

[Acaila]

well it's a screenshot from the DVD-source and it looks like a television capture in my opinion.No offense, but it's meant to look like a tv capture. It was created for television broadcasts so the quality already wasn't top-notch, because you can get away with a lot on TV. The DVD was probably created from the same disks that were used for broadcasting.

In my experience there's no such thing as DVD quality (as you're used to from newly released movies on DVD) on a DVD from a TV show. Your picture looks exactly like all other TV shows that I've seen on DVD.

[wasco]

ok Acaila, thanks for that info. Good to know that it's acceptable... well not acceptable, but at least common.

what would you suggest to spice up the image?
especially the background is kinda noisy and I think the encoding is putting alot of bytes into that.

[digitalman]

I know Sanford and Son is an old show, but the reruns on TV Land are good to great quality. On the DVD forget about it. The transfer is horrible. They tried fitting 8 interlaced 29.97 episodes on one DVD. It just does not look good. I too agree that the Friends transfer was not that good but a lot better than the Sanford and Son transfers.

[sh0dan]

@digitalman: Friends is shot on film IIRC, so it should be telecined. In other words, most of the show should be able to be converted to 24fps. I have however no experience with the actual source, so I'm just guessing.

You might want to try VagueDenoiser. The parameters in the help-file should give you a good starting point - perhaps with a slightly higher threshold.

Using post-processing on MPEG2DEC3 might also help (cpu=4 might be a starting point).

I'd also recommed a sharp resizer (lanczos if possible), since the material seems rather soft.

[Piper]

I agree with the comments regarding the screenshot resembling a tv capture. It looks like any typical analogue capture that I see daily with my AIW.

That said, here's the avs script I typically use weekly on Coronation Street which is a NTSC, pure interlaced video source.

#Output to DVD using TMPGEnc
AVISource("d:\capture.avi") # 720x480 Huffyuv Capture Source

UnDot()
GuavaComb(Mode = "NTSC", Recall = 75, MaxVariation = 25, Activation = 90)

# Deinterlace Source
KernelDeint(order=1,threshold=0,twoway=true,sharp=true)

# Denoisers
PeachSmoother(NoiseReduction=35,Stability=15,Readout=false,Spatial=20,NoiseLevel=3.129,Baseline=2.571) # Use Readout=true to determine NoiseLevel & Baseline levels
#FluxSmooth(2,-1) # Currently experimenting with.

# Crop & Resize to Half D1
Crop(8,0,-8,0)
LanczosResize(352,480)
LetterBox(28,38,0,0)

# Squish Luminance
Limiter()

# Output to TMPGEnc
ConvertToRGB()

The goal of this script is to provide a gentle cleaning & deinterlacing the source as well as making it more compressible.
In your case you'd run it through Decomb for a film source rather than KernelDeint().

If I know that I'll be outputing to both DivX and DVD, then I'll omit the last line and compress it to another Huffyuv source. I'll then create another "source" avs file and add ConvertToRGB() if output to TMPGEnc, or omit it if not.

I hope this helps.

[Edited] - Moved Undot & GuavaComb above KernelDeint to reflect Wilbert's suggestion.

[Didée]

Piper,

I hope that script is written from memory, not cut&paste?

You have Peach Smoother doing spatial work *before* you do the deinterlacing. That is a general no-no.

- Didée

[Piper]

@Didée

Yes you're absolutely right, it was done from memory. I've made the changes which now accurately reflects my script.

[wasco]

ok thanks, some pointers like these is just what I needed, thank you all. I'm gonna experiment with them and let you know how it went.

thanks!

[Wilbert]

It's better to use Guava before any deinterlacing, because it can mess up the interlace patterns.