Msharpen and Msmooth shimmer

[budgie63]

Hi all,

After lurking and learning for some time I have come for advice on something that has me stumped. When encoding DV in CCE I like to use both Msharpen and Msmooth (I have gotten particularly good results from Msmooth on DV). However, I have a problem which is confined to both filters. On viewing the encoded video there is always a distinct shimmer, or flicker, on the detected edges of panned, or moving video. It is also present on stationary video but is very minor.

Now, given the number of forum users who use Msharpen, I'm guessing that someone has tackled this problem before.
My settings for Msharpen are generally:

MSharpen(15,50,true,false,false)

I have used either SeparateFields/Weave and Stickboy's Unfold/Fold and tried placing the msharpen command within and outside these parameters. BTW, which is correct, I'll guess they should be outside (ie after the unfold/fold).

Calling other noise reduction filters (I use almost all of the popular ones) does not produce this shimmer effect, only these two produce it.

TIA

Daryl

[jkwarras]

Msharpen will not really help in DV footage. It aims to sharp edges, and DV is already oversharped. Even at low values i personally think it's not useable in DV. Edges blocks quite a bit with this filter. It's really useful for anime since it sharpen black lines and edges, no ttouching the rest (and then not amplifying noise in other parts of images).

Try it on a real image, with some text on it and look at the text edges. Edges will "dance" a little.

[kempfand]

Msharpen will not really help in DV footage If I still want to sharpen your DV a bit, what filter or script would be recommended ?

Compressability is a non-issue for me (I use 60 min MPG2 for a DVD-R). Also, I've searched the forum and found quite some filters such as:
- BiCubicResize(720,576, 0.0, 0.6, 0,0,720,576)
- SSXSharpen() [using mf's SharpTools-v0.3.avs)
- aWarpSharp
- aSharp
- UnFilter
- MSharpen

All the threats focus around Animes in this context, so I would appreciate some guidance (realising that Animes require different filtering, yet some of the mentioned filter can probably well applied to DV from their applied algorithms).

I have also run some test-encodes and looked at the result on TV. I liked asharp(2,4) as well as UnFilter(+30,+30), but as said above, I miss the technical understanding to really 'know' which of the other filters or scripts are suitable for non-Anime.


DV is already oversharped I agree, but here is my situation: Initial encodes from my cam (a Sony PDX10P) produced some problems (some 'nervous' picture, kind of 'flickering' when watched on TV). I found that using Dust or BilinearResize solved all problem, at the expense of some (noticable) bluriness.

I then read in a camera-forum, that the recommendet setting for this cam is to reduce the custom-preset for sharpening (the cam has a special setting for it). Doing this makes the 'flickering' go away, and the image as seen on TV is really pleasing, but my feeling is that adding back some sharpening-'illusion' would be nice.

Kind regards,
Andreas

[digitize]

Super Sample Xsharpen will work well on non-anime video also, it works quite well. One thing though is that it requires a good bit of cpu and does hurt compression, but as you said the latter doesn't bother you. Anyway I suggest using Super Sample Xsharpen as it looks quite good as compared to other sharpening techniques.

[malkion]

On certain videos, I like the "illusion" of addgrain(1,0,0) or addgrain(2,0,0). Not sure if this is what you're looking for but it does the trick for me sometimes.

[Didée]

If you have as much patience as you have bitrate, then you could give iiP (http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?s=&threadid=70916) a try: It will sharpen your footage greatly, it will keep compressability reasonable, - and it will run @ < 2 fps.

- Didée

[jkwarras]

For DV you should try Unfilter. It's simple, fast and sharp quite well. It sharpens all the image so, it also sharp grain, blocks and flickering so don't oversharp too much. But for me, it works good.

If you apply it after your 'blurring' filtering, it will 'recover' some details of your image. I've also tried asharp, but it brings me the same problems as msharpen with edges, they tends to 'dance' a little.

You should also give a try this functions (separetly):

- iPP: http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?s=&threadid=70916
- HybridFuPP: http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?s=&threadid=70734

For HybridFuPP you can try high preset in order to preserve as much details as possible while it will filter a little and sharp edges and details. I recommend you that one.

Adding grain as others suggested here is also fine, it brings a film 'feeling'. If you like that apply it at the end of the script, after all the filtering.