Filters with Rebuilder

[vikingship]

I am very pleased with Rebuilder results thus far. My latest project appeared a little fuzzy and was wondering how I apply some of the filters and if any one has a suggestion to increase clarity.

Thanks

[SansGrip]

Funnily enough I just posted (http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?s=&threadid=80070) on why using filters with DVD-RB is generally a bad idea because of how DVD-RB currently works.

Whether sharpening is a good idea or not (I'd say it usually isn't) depends on your source material. If it's real progressive with pulldown applied via field flags it can't hurt, but if it's interlaced, hard telecined or hybrid then sharpening will likely produce some unpleasant side effects.

Of course, if your TV is standard definition you probably won't notice. But that's not to say you won't be getting a higher-definition TV in the future...

Sharpening is a tricky issue. I've seen movies that look really crisp and nice on an SDTV look absolutely appalling on an HDTV because of over-zealous application of edge enhancement during mastering. If you're going to sharpen it (perhaps with a filter implementing an unsharp mask) then be very conservative with the strength parameter.

[Msc_Alex]

Originally posted by SansGrip
Funnily enough I just posted (http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?s=&threadid=80070) on why using filters with DVD-RB is generally a bad idea because of how DVD-RB currently works.
Then you have never seen my original of the life of brian, men undot and deen did miracles on that title !:cool:

[TheSeeker]

on some movies that are grainy and noisy to begin with then filters might be a good idea. Like the Deer Hunter.. Man that is one crappily mastered dvd.. though what can you expect the movie is over 30 years old... But if you have a nice new crisp clean progressive source, filters are almost assuredly going to degrade quality.

[SansGrip]

Exactly -- it depends on the source. Newer titles are better, but I still come across a fair number that require a little preprocessing to make them "perfect."

[TheSeeker]

So how does one examine a dvd and know what sort of preprocessing to apply to it to make it "perfect"? Just wondering because i would like for my backups to be perfect progressive for when i get my hdtv and prog scan dvd player

[SansGrip]

By far the most common problems I find are related to telecine. Either a hard telecine has been applied -- where the material is pulled down and then encoded as interlaced -- or the telecine was done poorly or inconsistently. (I tend to back up a lot of indie movies rather than big-studio releases. Indie productions generally have far less money available to spend on DVD mastering, and so the quality can often be compromised.)

These kinds of problems often aren't noticible on standard definition sets, but I most definitely see them on my HDTV (even though my standalone player is not progressive).

I personally like to use Donald Graft's Decomb package for IVTC stuff. It comes with good documentation, and there's lots of information on Doom9 about IVTC and interlacing issues.

The other main problem I encounter is excessive noise, either from a bad master or when the material was shot on very fast film (or, occasionally, it's added in postproduction). There are, as you know, many smoothers available. Funnily enough I tend to use FluxSmooth (temporal only), but I hear good things about UnDot and Deen combined, as well as VagueDenoiser, MipSmoother, etc. Dust can be fantastic, but there's no native 2.5 version available as far as I know.

It's arguable that one shouldn't try to reduce the graininess of a movie because it's somehow not "true" to the source. This is debatable because, if you want to get pedantic, only those who've actually viewed the negatives produced from postproduction know how it's "supposed" to look. No-one else knows if the DVD version they claim to be canonical even remotely resembles how the director intended. One assumes they mostly come close, but that's not always the case.

While I object as strongly as anyone to excessive smoothing/sharpening of the source material, and believe it's best to keep it pretty damn similar to the original, I'm also a realist. There's only so much grain you can keep if you want to compress that superbit DVD-9 down to a DVD-5 without great macroblocks everywhere. I personally prefer to reduce the high frequencies a little (I'm not talking making a movie look like a cartoon, or smearing the stubble on guys' faces whenever they move their heads, I'm talking some light, conservative filtering) so that I have more bits available to encode the important stuff. I'd rather see less grain and an overall lower Q than precisely the same amount of grain as the original (as if I'd possibly ever be able to tell without doing a side-by-side compare...) and more macroblocks.

But, of course, that's just my opinion. Many object unconditionally to any kind of preprocessing, and they have valid reasons. I think my reasons in favor of it are valid too, but it's a deeply religious subject and I have no intention of starting a flame war ;).

[SansGrip]

Originally posted by TheSeeker
So how does one examine a dvd and know what sort of preprocessing to apply to it to make it "perfect"?
Just realised I didn't really answer your question...

One of the best indicators of telecine problems is to preview the VOB(s) with DVD2AVI. If it keeps jumping between progressive and NTSC, or ends up saying the material is less than "FILM 95%", there's a good chance you'll have artifacts if you encode as-is. (If it's pure FILM or pure NTSC there's no problem. You can deinterlace the latter with FieldDeinterlace if you want to make it progressive. I usually do.)

For example, The Shield Season 1 Volume 1 (R1) ends up being FILM 92%, if I remember correctly, and looking through the D2V file I can see numerous points in each episode where something went badly wrong during mastering. In such cases I'll follow the instructions in the Decomb documentation to determine the best settings (threshold etc.) for doing a smart IVTC on it in order to get truly progressive output. Telecide and Decimate can work miracles with the correct settings.

At least, I would do that, except I currently can't with DVD-RB. Support for IVTC is certainly at the top of my personal wishlist :).

[vikingship]

Thank you for all the good advice. I have something to work with now. Can someone explain how I apply a filter like deen or whatever? Where I put the file and how to apply it is what I am looking for. Also what best filters people have had luck with.

Thanks

[SansGrip]

You need to add filters under the Options -> AVS Options -> Advanced (Expert) Options -> Filter Editor.

As for how to use specific filters, I suggest the Avisynth forum is the best place for such questions, if you can't figure it out from the documentation.

Good luck :).

[vikingship]

Thanks for the start. I looked in the avisynth forum and saw no how to thread to use the filters.

[wmansir]

See this thread (http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?s=&threadid=77208&highlight=loadplugin) on how to use filters with DVD-RB. It is slightly out dated because jdobbs introduced the Filter Editor in DVD-RB, but the Filter Editor applies to all VTSs, so it is still a good idea to use RB-OPT if you only want to filter certain VTSs.

Take note of DDogg's comment at the end, it is very useful in combination with the Filter Editor because you only have to place one line in the Filter Editor and can do the rest of your work in normal text files. I also explained a similar, but slightly more advanced version in this post (http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?s=&postid=509903&highlight=fluxit#post509903).

[SansGrip]

Originally posted by wmansir
I also explained a similar, but slightly more advanced version
Nice idea. I also found the rest of the thread very entertaining ;).

[vikingship]

Awesome!! Thanks guys

[TheSeeker]

If Im doing a field deinterlace on interlaced source and I put undot().deen() AFTER the fieldeinterlace line then will this work? cause I know that is only for progressive source. Or will i need to do the:

Seperatefields()
Filter()
weave()

technique?

[wmansir]

Once it is deinterlaced the source is progressive, so you can use filters as normal.

The example you posted above could be used when you want to retain the interlaced property, but use a filter that only works on progressive material. However, I'm not sure how well the filter will work in that situation. It may cause artifacts, but at the very least it will be less effective than on progressive material.

[TheSeeker]

Does deinterlacing it really degrade quality if watched on a regular tv. The only reason im really deinterlacing it is that eventually I will be getting an hd tv. so im trying to make all my dvds with that in mind. So will this movie be watchable on a regular tv in the meantime?

[wmansir]

It will play less smoothly when deinterlaced. For real video material it's not too bad, but it can be more apparent on telecined material. With Telecining you get duplicate fields (half frames), and Deinterlacing turns those into duplicate frames, so the video stutters. Ideally you would IVTC it, but you can't do that with DVD-RB yet.

[TheSeeker]

Could that be done before feeding it through Rebuilder? IVTC I mean.

[wmansir]

No, you would have to re-author the disc with something like Big3, and if you were doing that you wouldn't need DVD-RB.

[TheSeeker]

@wmansir

So what filter would you recommend as a light noise reduction maybe very light smoother for the Taken mini series im doing? Im trying it right now with undot() and deen() along with a field deinterlace and just a quick view showed a somewhat promising result so Im letting it finish. But i have heard good things about fluxsmooth and dustv5. Just wanted to know your opinion on the whole matter.

[SansGrip]

FluxSmoothT (temporal-only version) is good with light noise if you use a threshold of, say, 4 or less. Dust is great but only works on Avisynth 2.0x (at least, so I believe) and it's damn slow. The good old built-in TemporalSoften works well, too, if you use conservative values for the threshold.

But if you want light filtering, avoid spatial or spatio-temporal filters. Go for a temporal filter and keep the thresholds low. Experiment :).

[TheSeeker]

where can i get the fluxsmootht plugin. I see fluxsmooth 1.1a. does that include fluxsmootht?

[SansGrip]

Yes. For the 1.1 release I split the filter into two, FluxSmoothST (which does spatio-temporal smoothing, just like the previous versions) and FluxSmoothT (which just does temporal smoothing and is way faster).

[TheSeeker]

@sansgrip

Ok, now im not sure if i want to deinterlace Taken. If I decide not to, could I still use your FluxsmoothT? Or would I have to use this:

SeperateFields()
FluxsmoothT(3)
Doubleweave() -> OR should I just use Weave()?

Would this result in even worse quality when viewing on a regular tv than my other version using fielddeinterlace and undot and deen? Or would it be worth a try?

[SansGrip]

It's always best to run filters on progressive material (or separate frames of interlaced material). That said, I've never noticed much problem using Flux on telecined material. It seems to be fairly gentle with that stuff.

Not sure if you should use DoubleWeave or Weave, because I don't deal with interlaced material (not yet anyway).

[wmansir]

You want to use Weave.

[Video Dude]

@wmansir, SansGrip


Can't you use temporal filters (like FluxSmoothT) on interlaced clips without using SeparateFields()?

I thought temporal filters were "interlaced safe".


Is the following script wrong:
AviSource("c:\InterlaceVideo.avi")
FluxSmoothT(3)

[SansGrip]

Originally posted by Video Dude
I thought temporal filters were "interlaced safe".
Actually, now I think about it, maybe they are, as long as the material is pure interlace, not hybrid or telecined.

Is the following script wrong:
AviSource("c:\InterlaceVideo.avi")
FluxSmoothT(3)
I suppose that depends what you mean by "right" ;). I didn't realise AVI sources could be interlaced... But syntactically it's correct. FluxSmoothT(3) will give you pretty nice smoothing without much in the way of noticible over-filtering.

[wmansir]

Now that I think about it, if your just doing temporal smoothing you probably don't want to use SeperateFields/Weave because a pixel from frame X is not in the same position as the same pixel in frame X-1 and X+1, they are actually from the pixel above or below them.

[Video Dude]

Thanks for the replies.

Thats what I had thought.

[TheSeeker]

Cool. I will have to keep that in mind. (the fact that i wouldnt have to seperate fields if i wanted to use fluxsmooth on interlaced content). One question though. Whats a good way to know for sure if your source is pure interlaced or if its hybrid/telecined? And if it is telecined could you just add a decimate() in all the avs scripts that are created by Rebuilder to take care of that?

Also as a side note. I finished encoding the first disc of Taken. I encoded it three different ways and here is what i found:

1. Encoded with DVDRebuilder, 4 pass, deinterlaced with decomb 5.21, no filters, vbr bias 25, qual prec 16 - Output was quite good, no real artifacts to speak of. A little soft, and noticeable grain. Not too bad considering the 55% compression ratio.

2. Encoded with DVDShrink with deep analysis, AEC Max Sharpness - Sharper than the Rebuilder version, no real artifacts but still grainy (But less so than rebuilder) this really surprised me, but to my eye this version looked a little nicer than the rebuilder one.

3. Encoded again with rebuilder, 4 pass, deinterlaced with decomb 5.21, undot().deen() (default settings), same qual prec and vbr bias as above - This was excellant the best of the three by far. The noticeable grain and dancy happy spots were gone from walls and flat color areas, the output was a little soft but it was mostly only noticeable with things in the background but that can be forgiven. I was surprised at the amount of detail preserved even after the filters. This turned out great.

Im currently encoding the second disc of Taken with same settings as the 3rd method except i got rid of the deen() filter and am running it only with undot(). I am thinking i might try it with FluxsmoothT and deinterlace next and see what i come up with.


@sansgrip

Would it be smarter to use the FluxsmoothST since I will be deinterlacing it or should i stick with FluxsmoothT for light Filtering?

Also some have been saying that if you deinterlace true interlaced content and watch it on a regular tv that you have some degradation of video quality. I did not see any of that at all, at least not with this particular dvd. The movie play flawlessy with no skips or jumps and the video quality looked pretty much perfect on my regular 28" tv.

EDIT: One more thing. If Im deinterlacing Taken, and since the FieldDeinterlace() happens before the ConvertToYUV() can i take out the Interlaced=TRUE from the ConvertToYUV() so its treated as progressive. Or will prog. scan dvd players and HD TV's know that it is progressive despite leaving this as interlaced=true?

[TheSeeker]

Can anyone recommend a pretty decent noise reduction filter that doesnt totally destroy details and sharpness? I have been thinking about using RemoveDirt or VagueDenoiser but i want to get some peoples input that have actually used them.

[TuRiSOft]

Originally posted by wmansir
Now that I think about it, if your just doing temporal smoothing you probably don't want to use SeperateFields/Weave because a pixel from frame X is not in the same position as the same pixel in frame X-1 and X+1, they are actually from the pixel above or below them.

In case of interlaced material and temporal filters you'd better use:
a=selectodd(last).fluxsmoothT()
b=selecteven(last).fluxsmoothT()
Interleave(b,a)
Weave()
This because of the field-based structure of interlaced frame ( by the subject , that's only my little opinion).
I'm a PAL user. What does "pure Interlaced" mean? Is it different from "interlaced"?
Thanks for the help.
Bye!!!

[wmansir]

Yes, that would work, but I don't know if it is necessary for a temporal only filter.

"pure interlaced" can mean not telecined film or a mixture (hybrid), but real 30fps video. Telecining takes 24 fps film, then repeats fields to make it 30fps. It's only used for NTSC. If you Deinterlace telecined material you either get ugly blurring or 1 duplicate frame in every 5. Read this (http://neuron2.net/LVG/telecining1.html) for more info.

[wmansir]

[Repeat the above post a dozen times, before I deleted them]

[jdobbs]

Wow. Now there is a point well made :)

[wmansir]

Doh! :eek:

Now I remember trying to get that post to submit before heading to bed, it kept timing out and didn't show up when I refreshed the thread. I think I just gave up eventually and put the post in a scratch text file to be posted the next day.

We must not have lost many posts if these have shown up. :)

[SansGrip]

Originally posted by TheSeeker
[B]Would it be smarter to use the FluxsmoothST since I will be deinterlacing it or should i stick with FluxsmoothT for light Filtering?
Personally I wouldn't deinterlace. Also personally, I never do spatial smoothing on natural material (i.e. not hand-drawn or computer-generated) because I find it softens too much. I tend to stick with FluxSmoothT. But YMMV :).

[TheSeeker]

What is a pretty good, light settings for fluxsmoothT?

[Snowlocks]

Hi,

I am trying to remove some subtitle from a movie I captured and converted to DVD format. What I like to do is used dvdrebulter filter capablity to compress it and at the same time use the subtitle removal filter. What filter should I used to remove the subtitle and where can I download?

thx

[jdobbs]

I assume this is a subtitle that is a part of the video, not one that uses DVD subpictures? If so there is no filter I know of that will do it well. You might start at this page (http://rds.yahoo.com/S=2766679/K=avisynth+subtitle+removal/v=2/SID=e/TID=F526_111/l=WS1/R=1/IPC=us/SHE=0/H=0/SIG=125qe3b79/EXP=1116500313/*-http%3A//www.animemusicvideos.org/guides/subremoval) or this site. (http://www.compression.ru/video/subtitles_removal/)

[Snowlocks]

Jdobbs,

Thx for the reply. Yes, they are part of the video. I checked out those two filters and they look like what I am looking for, but.. The x-logo is to remove logo, can it remove subtitle? The other filter is not an avisynt filter, so I don't believe can I use it with DVDrebuilder. I assume I probably have to import it into avisynth before I can use it. I guess what I am looking for is an equvalent filter that I can type into DVDrebuilder filter screen like the
"Undot().Deen().". It been awhile since I use DVDrebuilder, so the syntax is not correct. Any body has any experience in subtitle removal filter, please give suggestion and advice, it will be greatly appreciated. In general, I like to make DVDrebuilder, avoid using virtualdub or avisynth, the one stop central application that will remove subtitle,apply detail enhance filter, and compression.

Thx to ALL that make DVDrebuilder and RBFarm possible.

[jdobbs]

You can use VirtualDub filters with AVISYNTH using the filter editor in DVD-RB -- look up the "LoadVirtualdubPlugin" command...

There are others... I was just trying to get you started.

[Snowlocks]

Hi Jdobbs,

Thx for the info. I will lookup that command tonight.

thx

[Snowlocks]

Jdobbs,

sorry for a newbie question. If I can import the filter into avisynth, can I used that filter in the dvd-rebuilder editer?

thx
snowlocks

[Snowlocks]

hmmmm nevermind. I found my answer just by ready some more of the great advice from this forum :)

snowlocks