MSHARPEN vs PASS 2

[Asrial]

Not sure which forum might be best for this question.

I have an encode that, under pass 1, is only 195mb (which is what I want).

If I run MSHARPEN() in my AVS file, it increases the size to ~270mb. This would mean that I would need to run a 2nd pass to decrease the size to 200mb.

Do you think the effects of MSHARPEN() aren't worth that kind of data loss or that it's only a minor amount of loss and MSHARPEN() would still be useful?

[jkwarras]

Sharpen filters will always increase encoding size because they increase detail and therefore the bitrate needed. As you said, in 1 pass (i supposed you're talking about quality based) the size with and without the filter will change a lot (depending on the strengh/settings you use). So if you still want to fit the movie to a specific size and you're planning to run a 2 pass encode make sure that you're running it at an enought bitrate, because low bitrates and sharpen are not a good idea: you'll probably get a lot of compression artifacts.

[superdump]

Encode it and see for yourself if it's worth it. :)

[Owen]

Why dont you leave the video unsharpened for compression and use ffdshow to sharpen on playback?
That way you get the best of both worlds.

Owen

[Asrial]

I don't have ffdshow installed. I try to require as little files as possible for playback and stuff.

Plus, what if I encode something that requires you to do X option on ffdshow and someone who downloads it doesn't do X option? Then it looks messy for them.

[jkwarras]

I usually use sharpening in ffdshow (unsharp at 20) that is low cpu usage (i'm running on a Pentium III 800Mhz, 256 MB ram) with noise and postprocessing. It looks good to me if the film is good encoded. Don't apply sharpening if hte film is badly encoded you'll see a lot more of artifacts.

That's an opinion but i don't reaaly see the point in using sharpening for a lossy encode, since it increases a lot the bitrate and if you're compressing at a low-medium bitrate the results are not very good (lots of artifacts). Sharpening is good for losless encoding (huffyuv) or high bitrates encoding (DV...) since you don't notice any quality loss.

[trbarry]

I haven't tried it but doesn't sharpening also increase the bit rate with lossless encoding?

- Tom

[jkwarras]

Yes, sharpening does increase the bitrate need in losless encoding. This is not a problem if you don't care about final size (ex. editing film/video, applying effects). When aplying it to a lossy format, even at high bitrates like DV, is not recommended to render several times your video, because you decreases quality: is better to apply as much as possible all your effects/filters once.