AviSynth sharpeners for 720p videos?

[orion44]

Which AviSynth sharpener would you recommend for sharpening 720p videos?

[hello_hello]

I'm still partial to LSFMod.
http://avisynth.nl/index.php/LSFmod

When I asked google to find it for me, I discovered there's an updated version I haven't tried yet.
https://github.com/avisynth-repository/LSFmod

And Dogway has a couple of versions in his function collection.
https://github.com/Dogway/Avisynth-S...s/LSFplus.avsi
https://github.com/Dogway/Avisynth-S...s/LSFplus.avsi

[orion44]

Thanks.

I think I'll use the original LSFmod for now.

Which AviSynth denoiser would you recommend to use in combination with LSFmod for denoising 720p videos?

For DVDs, I always used FFT3DFilter or DFTTest because they produced the most visually pleasing result,
but I'm not sure if they are suited for denoising 720p videos.

[hello_hello]

I've been using TemporalDegrain2 a fair bit lately, although it's pretty slow.

For some sources (it depends on the type of noise) QTGMC in progressive mode can denoise really well and it's much faster than TemporalDegrain2.
QTGMC(InputType=1, Preset="very slow", EzDenoise=2.0) or something like that. I'd recommend trying QTGMC for DVDs sources too. The main downside I find is that it can enhance any existing halos a bit, but it'll generally remove more noise before it starts blurring than most other denoisers, plus it'll stabilize the picture a bit which often helps for standard definition.
If you don't increase the denoising enough to remove all of it, it sometimes pays to use a faster speed preset otherwise QTGMC can stabilize the remaining noise too much and the effect can be a bit like watching video through a fly screen, if that makes sense.

For light noise I find a simple MDegrain function can work quite well for HD.
MDegrainNL.zip

If you happen to be working with 1080p sources that you're downscaling, it's usually better to denoise before you downscale as it tends to blur fine detail less regardless of the denoising method. Obviously it's slower though.

And I almost never encode without adding something like GradFun3() from DitherTools to the end of a script. It only supports 8 bit video but it can help a great deal with preventing banding after denoising. For high bit depth sources (or for 8 bit) Dogway has a similar function. You'd use it like this:

ConvertBits(16)
GradFun3plus()
ConvertBits(10, dither=0) # or convert back to your preferred bitdepth.

[orion44]

Yes, I'm downscaling 1080p Blu-rays to 720p and would like to just slightly sharpen them before encoding.

[Selur]

FineSharp is intended to sharpen downscaled (using DPID might also be worth a try) content.

[hello_hello]

Originally Posted by orion44

Yes, I'm downscaling 1080p Blu-rays to 720p and would like to just slightly sharpen them before encoding.

If you try QTGMC you can crank the denoising up higher for 1080p without much motion blurring. I try not to go much beyond EzDenoise=2.0 for SD or 720p, but 1080p seems to require a higher level to remove an equivalent amount of noise. I'm pretty sure EzDenoise uses FFT3DFilter by default, but QTGMC has an option for denoising with DFTTest instead. The NoisePreset argument (as opposed to the Preset argument) also switches between them depending on the NoisePreset used.

For both TemporarDegrain2 and QTGMC you mightn't need additional sharpening as they tend to sharpen a little anyway, but it depends on the source.

Sometimes one denoising method will work better with one source while another method works better with a different source. I usually compare at least a couple of them for each video.

[hello_hello]

As I still happened to have a couple of examples on my hard drive, there's four screenshots in the attached zip file, two originals and their denoised/encoded versions. They weren't downscaled.

The QTGMC example used:

QTGMC(InputType=1, EzDenoise=1.5, Preset="Fast")
GradFun3()

and for the TemporalDeGrain2 example:

TemporalDegrain2(degrainTR=2, grainLevel=2, PostDither=0)
Convertbits(16)
GradFun3plus()
ConvertBits(10,dither=1)

It's more obvious for the TemporalDegrain2 screenshot, but you can see they sharpen a bit.
I picked a couple of frames where there was a bit of motion as if the denoising blurs fine detail, that's where it'll happen first.

Denoising.zip (36.5 MiB)

[Atak_Snajpera]

I wrote my own sharpening script with aSobel and CAS plugins

Function MCAS(clip video,float "Strength") 
{
Strength = Default(Strength,1.0)

LevelLimit=(video.BitsPerComponent==8) ? 255 : 1023
IntensityMask=ConvertToY(video).Levels(0,2,LevelLimit,0,LevelLimit,coring=false)
EdgeMask=aSobel(IntensityMask,chroma=0,thresh=255,SetAffinity=false).invert.Levels(0,2,LevelLimit,0,LevelLimit,coring=false).Blur(1)
SharpMask=Overlay(IntensityMask,EdgeMask,mode="Multiply",opacity=1.0)
SharpenedVideo=CAS(video,1.0)
video=Overlay(video,SharpenedVideo,mask=SharpMask,opacity=Strength)

return video
}

4k downsampled to 720p

OFF


50%


100%

[Emulgator]

Looks nice !

[orion44]

Originally Posted by Selur

FineSharp is intended to sharpen downscaled (using DPID might also be worth a try) content.

Does FineSharp have a built-in denoiser?

[Selur]

Does FineSharp have a built-in denoiser?

it tries to remove/avoid oversharpening, so kind of,...

[orion44]

Originally Posted by Selur

it tries to remove/avoid oversharpening, so kind of,...

Do you by any chance know which denoiser was most commonly used with FineSharp back in 2014,
when x264 was at the peak of its popularity?

Which denoiser would you recommend to be used with FineSharp for encoding 720p videos?

[Selur]

short: can't really say

long:
Which denoiser to use, always depended, and still depends, on the source and what noise you want to remove.
10 years ago, most of the denoisers available now were already present.
The only 'new' thing in a long time have been that there are more machine learning stuff which especially in the anime&cartoon fraction is used more and more.
This makes sense, since those types of contents can be filtered on a frame-by-frame basis without a temporal component.
Knowing what folks consider as 'popular' is hard, I can't even tell what one would call 'popular' nowadays.
You can look through old threads here in the forum and have a guess.
side note: Didée often noted that most of the stuff he wrote were designed for SD content, should work with HD content, but might need parameter adjustments. So don't be surprised that lots of scripts from that time will need parameter adjustments.
=> can't really say

Cu Selur

Ps.: I wrote a Vapoursynth port of Atak_Snajpera MCAS for those interested.

[Katie Boundary]

Originally Posted by orion44

Yes, I'm downscaling 1080p Blu-rays to 720p and would like to just slightly sharpen them before encoding.

You'd be best-off just using a really sharp rescaling filter. A cubic with b=0, c=1 should do well.

[DTL]

In AVS+ core of 3.7.x there are also SinPowerResize and UserDefined2Resize for downscaling with possible sharpening effect. Also in JPSDR plugins expected soon release of UserDefined4ResizeSPMT in JincResize executable (or all plugins compiled in single .dll).

Tried to test DPID for comparison but it not working for me - always throws error invalid arguments. Test

LoadPlugin("DPID.dll")
ColorBarsHD(3840, 2160)
DPID(1920, 1080)

Edit: Issue found: DPID() need z_BilinearResize() to be present in AVS+ environment from avsresize.dll (external plugin dependancy - not AVS+ core fucntion). And no good error message about z_BilinearResize() not found exist.

I tested DPID: It really restores lots of finest detailes from higher resolution original. But it do not meet requirements for band-limiting and spectrum shaping and this cause ringing at upsizers (in display upsizer for example based on sinc or jinc ringing kernels). It may be good for generating content non-ringed upsizers like point resize and pixel-art type of images.

[manolito]

Originally Posted by Selur

FineSharp is intended to sharpen downscaled (using DPID might also be worth a try) content.

Exactly, and it does not denoise. If you need denoising, either do it separately or use a different plugin.
From the Finesharp doc:

to make 720p look more like being 1080p

Side note:
If you use FFmpeg, you can get a very similar result by using this additional command line entry:

smartblur=1.5:-0.35:-3.5:0.65:0.25:2.0

Cheers
manolito