Joel Hruska said:
One difference I do know between PAL and NTSC is that PAL doesn’t have the same problems with aliasing that I’m trying to clean up with commands like TR2=5 or TR2=4. Some of the issues I have spent time fixing for NTSC just aren’t in the PAL copy.If the NTSC sources are THAT bad, that you have to anti-alias by QTGMC-temporal-filtering with a window of 4 or 5, it’s really time for the PAL sources… I would never use this. If QTGMC, then always TR2=0 and StabilizeNoise=false. There are better ways to filter noise.
FrankB,
Pleasure to meet you. Before we discuss relative processing technique I should probably provide you some samples. For example:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zMaMHT4skn0
That’s the most recent version of the NTSC credits that I’ve done (set YT to 4K for actual quality). Check two things, specifically:
1). The degree of antialiasing in the nacelles on the runabouts as they fly past just before the blue light burst.
2). The station pan immediately following the blue light burst.
Compare against the following in the same two areas:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OqG_A72Q5fM
You will find that the antialiasing is improved in both areas, with the last ripples of QTGMC’s earlier run quashed now. These are visible in the station pan. Now, quashing the ripple has caused a buzzing artifact later on in the credits that I’m exploring methods to get rid of. I’m confident I’ll nuke it. The net effect of TR2=4 or TR2=5 is a substantial improvement in the final output.
If the NTSC sources are THAT bad, that you have to anti-alias by QTGMC-temporal-filtering with a window of 4 or 5, it’s really time for the PAL sources… I would never use this. If QTGMC, then always TR2=0 and StabilizeNoise=false. There are better ways to filter noise.
Then please, by all means, check the output links I’ve posted or any of the others on my channel. I would love to hear your improvements for further improving the quality of my work. I just posted 15 videos on Monday in various Topaz modes and across multiple episodes. I can provide actual clips of these rather than links as well, but YT is probably easiest for speed and to give you a good idea. If you set YT to 4K I don’t lose much quality, even if it is compressed.
https://www.youtube.com/user/Dputiger
I have spent 20-40 hours per week for the past nine months running thousands of encodes of Deep Space Nine. DS9, however, is also my first project. I have never found a formula to beat the following (with the exception of the TR2=4 / TR2=5 settings, which are new introductions to my method of handling the project and are still under evaluation).
If you run the script below without calling TR2=4 / 5 in either line – leaving it at default in both calls – you get the second video. If you call it as below as TR2=5 in both scripts, you get the first video.
QTGMC2 = QTGMC(Preset=“Very Slow”, SourceMatch=3, TR2=5, InputType=2, Lossless=2, MatchEnhance=0.75, Sharpness=0.5, MatchPreset=“Very Slow”, MatchPreset2=“Very Slow”)
QTGMC3 = QTGMC(preset=“Very Slow”, SourceMatch=3, Lossless=2, Sharpness=0.5, MatchEnhance=0.75, InputType=3, TR2=5)
Repair(QTGMC2, QTGMC3, 9)
I’m actively testing the impact of only calling TR2=4 /5 in one of the two runs before the repair. Oftentimes, this still provides a subtler version of the same effect and I prefer to use the lightest touch possible. The script above is the one that actually produced the output you watched, so that’s the one I’ll stick with for now.
If you want 23.976 fps output, just throw TFM() and Tdecimate() ahead of the QTGMC calls.
I almost forgot. I can give you screenshots of the difference between the baseline DVD and the results of my method with the TR2=4/5 call in it.
Baseline DVD. From PastPrologue.
https://www.extremetech.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/Screenshot-705.jpg
Identical screenshot after processing. Zero upscale:
https://www.extremetech.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/Screenshot-708.jpg
Finally, the image after upscale.
https://i.imgur.com/AZaBHLI.png
The slight color shift is something I know how to unwind. Just hadn’t done it yet.
So that’s a demonstration of the level of quality and noise processing I currently achieve, at both the frame level and in motion.
If you know a better way to clean up the former into the latter – possibly by preserving more detail on Bashir’s forehead, where my method is losing some of it – I’d love to incorporate it. I’m willing to trade a little forehead wrinkles on a 27 year-old actor in exchange for the improvements the above generates, but I’d prefer to get more improvement without trading anything in the process. 😃
If you’d like to see clips via a different method I can also make that happen. Let me know if you have a Microsoft account.