Avisynth on the fly filtering via ffdshow any particular scripts for best PQ?

[Socio]

Hello AVISynth noob here,

I was wondering if any of you use any particular scripts or if there were preferred scripts for enhancing, sharpening, denoising etc… DVD playback using Avisynth 2.5 in ffdshow with Zoomplayer?

The reason I am asking is I have seen some of the results of what IIP in AViSynth can do and it is really remarkable and would like to do something similar for on the fly DVD playback.

Thanks for any info

[tedkunich]

Originally posted by Socio
The reason I am asking is I have seen some of the results of what IIP in AViSynth can do and it is really remarkable and would like to do something similar for on the fly DVD playback.

Thanks for any info

I hope you have a Cray or some other supercomputer available then... iip is SLOW... about 2fps on my Athlon 3200. LimitedSharpen does a nice job for sharpening and is reasonably fast.

T

[Socio]

On IIP I know I tried it on my P4 3.06 system the movie starts for about a second and then Zoomplayer crashes.

I will give limited sharpen a try and see what it can do.

[Socio]

Can't use the Limitedsharpen either seems the Masktools.dll crashes Zoomplayer amd I am using the latest one 1.4.16 I guess it was not made with Zoomplayer in mind.

[tedkunich]

Originally posted by Socio
Can't use the Limitedsharpen either seems the Masktools.dll crashes Zoomplayer amd I am using the latest one 1.4.16 I guess it was not made with Zoomplayer in mind.

you need to read the instructions a little more carefully... LimitedSharpen requires Masktools 1.5.1 or greater. You are several releases behind...

[Mug Funky]

if you're on a p4, you might have trouble with later versions of masktools, too. but there's a working release in the relevant thread.

here's the dll that seems to work on hyperthreading p4's:
http://jourdan.madism.org/~manao/MaskTools-p4-3.dll

you'll want to update your docs, as well, so it'll help to download the latest regular masktools release. also watch the thread in avisynth development to see if this weirdness gets sorted out anytime soon.

you could of course disable HT. it seems to only make things much less stable in my experience. maybe i'm just unlucky.

[edit]

please test all the versions that manao has uploaded, if you have time - he doesn't have a p4 and needs others to test his stuff. i don't have one either, but use them occasionally.

[Ark]

Originally posted by Socio
Hello AVISynth noob here,

I was wondering if any of you use any particular scripts or if there were preferred scripts for enhancing, sharpening, denoising etc… DVD playback using Avisynth 2.5 in ffdshow with Zoomplayer?

The reason I am asking is I have seen some of the results of what IIP in AViSynth can do and it is really remarkable and would like to do something similar for on the fly DVD playback.

Thanks for any info

Unfortunatly a thing like that can't be done ATM. You're talking about POST-processing, but IIP and Limited Sharpen are PRE-processing scripts, and can't be used in real time (well, maybe with the Pentium10 20000 Mhz which will be released in 2050 :)).

Similar things in ffdshow can be to use *light* xsharpen plus some "normal" sharpening+debocking, but nturally the results will not be the same.

[Socio]

Tedkunich,


Yes I saw that later never the less 1.4.14, 1.4.16, 1.5.4, all crash ZP.


Thanks Mug Funky,

I will try that P4 dll today and see how it works! I will also give disabling HT a try for stability purposes.

Ark,

So far I have Undot().Lanczos4Resize(1280,720).XSharpen() working with pretty nice results with with little cpu over head a zero slow down, infact, I get a lot less CPU overhead this way versus using ffdshows Lanczos re-size and sharpening filters. I have a lot more tinkering to do and will post some before and after pics later to get some feedback.

I do have another question, when you leave the parameters blank ie. () instead of say (30,40) for XSharpen does that just set the filter to its default parameters?

[Mug Funky]

on a plugin where defaults are programmed, yes it will.

you can also script this in your own functions like:

function blah (clip c, int "value")
{
value = default(value,8)
return c
}

as you can see, that does nothing, but the "default" statement is the one you want to see. and observe that "value" is in quotes, but "c" isn't - this tells avisynth that passing c to the function is compulsory, where explicitly setting "value" is optional. so in a script you can go:

blah(last), or
last.blah(), or
last.blah(8), or
blah(last,8), or
last.blah(value=8)

and they'd all do the same thing

[Socio]

Thanks for the info Mug Funky,

I messed around a little bit this afternoon and found that the P4 dll does not crash Zoomplayer and I can use Limitedsharpen to an extent on the fly! I say extent because I can not resize and have to use low settings otherwise it is to slow but it is still a noticeable improvement. I can resize using the Xsharpen however and it looks good but not quite as good as limited.

Here are my preliminary results without resize will post a before and after re-sized Xsharpen pics later still fine tuning it.

I think the limitedsharpen looks the best except for some of the edges like the edges on the two vertical beams in the cockpit and the airfoil edge on the right side of pic. If I can fix that anomaly I won't bother with resizing and just stick with limitedsharpen for on the fly DVD movie watching.

Normal

http://img92.exs.cx/img92/927/No-sharp.jpg

Xsharpen Settings=XSharpen().Undot()

http://img92.exs.cx/img92/4973/Xsharpen.jpg

LimitedSharpen Settings:LimitedSharpen(ss_x=1.0,ss_y=1.0,Smode=3,strength=40).Undot()

http://img92.exs.cx/img92/3397/limited-sharpen.jpg

[Socio]

I made some slight modifications to my on the fly settings for even better image quality. Here are three more pic's, what do you think?

Normal

http://img116.exs.cx/img116/7307/Normal.jpg

LimitedSharpen Settings: Undot().LimitedSharpen(ss_x=1.0,ss_y=1.0,Smode=3,strength=60)The image is sharper but more noise was introduced, look at plastic band on back of chair for example and that vertical stripe behind Yoda's head.

http://img116.exs.cx/img116/9427/limitedyoda.jpg


LimitedSharpen + ffdshow denoise3d Settings:LimitedSharpen(ss_x=1.0,ss_y=1.0,Smode=3,strength=60) with denoise3d at L,0 C,1.07,T 3.98 HQ loaded before Avisynth-Limitedsharpen. Much cleaner image, I am not sure it can be made any better for on the fly no-resize unless someone has any other suggestions?

http://img116.exs.cx/img116/6052/New-uber-yoda.jpg

I got to looking at the image above and it maybe to sharp I lowered the strength to 40, makes face look not quite as sharp but gives it back its more glossy natural look.

http://img116.exs.cx/img116/8149/Uber-tone-down.jpg

[Socio]

I have been messing arround all day testing and playing movies and I just can't get it any better than LimitedSharpen+denoise3d for on the fly HTPC dvd play back. If Didée's limitedSharpen can do this good on its lowest setings, I for sure have go and get a dual layer DVD burner so I can use Didée's IIP\LimitedSharpen combo for uber DVD's!

Here are two more pics for your viewing pleasure as you can see the PQ improvment for being on the fly is pretty dramatic:

LOTR Normal

http://img23.exs.cx/img23/1697/LOTR-normal.jpg

LOTR with limited sharpen +denoise3d

http://img23.exs.cx/img23/6786/LOTR-uber.jpg

[Didée]

Scopio, you are definetly running a faster machine than I do - together with denoising, I won't get realtime on my XP1800.
But since you can, you perhaps should try to crop the black borders also, and invest the saved processing time (smaller area to process) into lanczos-resizing to the fullscreen playback resolution (or sharp bicubic like e.g. [x,y,-.2,.6], that's faster than lanczos).
You could also try Lmode=2, for a little stronger contrast boost. Speed is the same. Perhaps you can set strength even a notch higher then - or not, you will see.

BTW, you don't urgently need a DL burner - with iiP one can make not too bad rips even at 4.4 GB ;)

Oh, and ... for any eventual future screenshots, could you *please* make shots from the *same* frame, not from nearby frames. If one switches forth-back between the comparison frames, it's not only annoying if the content moves, but also makes it difficult to spot the exact amount of difference.

However, your Denoise3d+LS realtime processing seems pretty fine for me. What else to say? :)

[Socio]

I have tried cropping from avisynth via ffdshow it self and it crashes Zoomplayer every time I try but will try the sharpbicubic as you suggested and see what improvements I get and if it lets me crop with it..

As far as screen capture, sorry, I try to get as close as possible but I am capturing in Zoomplayer and it clicks off in time not frames so even if it capture at the exact same time it will not be the exact same frame. However I think there is a way to display frames in ZP, never used it but, I will look into it.

Thanks for the reply!

[Socio]

Thanks again for the tips Didée,

Resizing after sharpen works and looks awesome!

I had been trying to do it in reverse resizing before sharpen which took to much processing power, I also got cropping to work via Avisynth as well.

Here are my new settings in case others are interested in trying this:


Import("C:\Program Files\AviSynth 2.5\plugins\LimitedSharpen.avs")

crop(8,8,-8,-8,true)
LimitedSharpen(ss_x=1.0,ss_y=1.0,Smode=3,strength=40)
Lanczos4Resize(1280,720)