What would you recommend for sharpening live action videos?

[Chainmax]

I'm building a capturing machine in the near future and most of my initial projects include several family videos that will probably need lots of smoothing/denosing. I wanted to knwo if you guys could recommend me some sharpening filters or functions so as to improve the final output.

[mf]

Originally posted by Chainmax
I'm building a capturing machine in the near future and most of my initial projects include several family videos that will probably need lots of smoothing/denosing. I wanted to knwo if you guys could recommend me some sharpening filters or functions so as to improve the final output.
Sorry to chirp in with my own work again, but I've successfully used supersampled xsharpening on live-action video. It may be too subtle for your homevideos though.

[Chainmax]

Don't be sorry. I want the best possible filters, if yours are among the best it's just obvious they'll get mentioned frequently :).

Why do you say homemade videos might not benefit as much? BTW, some of the videos I want to convert have been filmed by semi-professional people (i.é: background music, some basic computer effects, etc), do they fall within what you'd cathegorize as homemade?

[mf]

Originally posted by Chainmax
Don't be sorry. I want the best possible filters, if yours are among the best it's just obvious they'll get mentioned frequently :).

Why do you say homemade videos might not benefit as much? BTW, some of the videos I want to convert have been filmed by semi-professional people (i.é: background music, some basic computer effects, etc), do they fall within what you'd cathegorize as homemade?
Because they might be too blurry to get sharp properly. There is only a certain sharpness range on which it actually works good.

[Chainmax]

OK then, how about UnSmooth? I'm too lazy to read the whole thread, would it be more suited?

[Chainmax]

Come to think about it, maybe sharpening isn't such a good idea for live action. After all, edges are basically non-existent in live footage, right? Maybe using something like Tom Barry's addgrain would yield better apparent detail. What do you think?

[Chainmax]

Well?

[mf]

Sharpening works fine for live-action too. And adding grain and stuff won't really help you much, and UnSmooth has thus far been so evil that I haven't found a good use for it yet (in all cases it amplified artifacts so far that the detail gain wasn't worth it).

[Mug Funky]

home movies often give weight to the truism "you can't polish a turd"...

i've done some good things with homeshot DV video, but nothing that can be automated. i have to change my approach each time to get good results.

usually i wouldn't sharpen at all. sharpening is pain for something with a low signal-to-noise ratio.

my advice is just encode it how it is as far as possible, and leave it until something comes out that can fix it more (like how sick people freeze their heads...:))