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spoRv

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Join date
6-Jun-2011
Last activity
11-Oct-2024
Posts
2,804
Web Site
http://forum.fanres.com

Post History

Post
#619797
Topic
[OUT - ruLes] Original Unaltered Trilogy restored using Laserdisc editions - A New Hope (Released)
Time

Harmy said:

I'm pretty sure that as long as you give them credit, they wouldn't object :-)

You know, I'm "old style"... I prefer to ask, before, if I can use something, also if I'm allowed to do it freely... (^^,)

But, if you think they will agree, I'll add theis sountracks to my project!

Harmy, what do you think... should I continue with my project? It seems (almost) nobody cares if I will improve my OUT or release my SET... I'm feeling a bit demoralized these days... (##n)

Post
#619784
Topic
[OUT - ruLes] Original Unaltered Trilogy restored using Laserdisc editions - A New Hope (Released)
Time

Project update:

thanks to my own SET project, I discovered something more to improve the OUT project too:

  • a better method of upscaling the median&average laserdisc captures
  • color correction for OUT is not needed - just a bit of more saturation is
  • the new sharpen/denoise script will be less aggressive than the old one
  • a proper color matrix will be used this time for the final release

 

plus

  • a re-recorded italian soundtrack - with proper hi-fi quality
  • a synchronized french soundtrack - especially near the end
  • completely redone sountracks, 2.0 Dolby Surround encoded
  • 8 half-dark frames restored
  • proper file size of the .m2ts file to fit a DL DVD

 

Still thinking about adding a good avisynth comb filter, because I have not seen any annoying dot crawl or rainbow problems on the old OUT; feedbacks about this are appreciated.

I'd like also to add Hairy_Hen and Belbucus soundtracks, and I preferred to have their permission first... but Hairy_Hen didn't answer my message, and Belbucus has not visited this forum in the last two months... what do you think? Should I add those soundtracks to my project without their permissions? Of course, credits will be left intact.

After finishing SW SET, I will start immediately the OUT improvements; I think that OUT 2.0 will be released next month, if anybody cares...

P.S. the german, french and spanish subtitles are not literal... if someone would help me to fix them, it will be a great thing!

Post
#619778
Topic
Star Wars: A New Hope [SET ruLes 1.0] - AVCHD & BD RELEASED!
Time

Project update:

the median/2x uspcale file is ready.

I improved a bit the color correction scripts; I used the median and average mix method I explained before here, but I was still not enterely happy with the result... so I was "forced" to use the autowhite in some (really few) scenes... now the colors are consistent (almost everytime) during the whole movie.

Now the PC is rendering the color corrected file - it will be ready before midnight; then, I will process the color corrected file with the sharpen/denoise filter, and downscale it to the right resolution - it will take further 3 days of PC work!

Post
#619708
Topic
Do these animation films need preservation?
Time

bkev said:

hi Andrea,
I know you're busy with your Star Wars projects but I was wondering if these were still captures you were considering doing.

You are right... still working hard on both SET and OUT projects... right now, too!

BUT, this doesn't mean I forgot my intention to capture some Disney cartoon... it's only postponed... I'm still not sure which one I must start with... maybe BatB? TLK? Fantasia? Cinderella? Toy Story?

Post
#619684
Topic
High-End video capture cards
Time

Moth3r said:

If it helps, the PDI Deluxe is called the SweetSpot in Europe.

http://www.pluggedin.tv/sweetspot/

Thanks for the link!

I investigated further, and discovered that:

  • it has old chipset(s) - my card has newer
  • the comb filter is not 3D - like my card
  • it's "only" 9-bit ADC - like my card
  • it seems that it works only with AGP graphic cards - I have PCI-E
  • its price is too high!

 

So, I think I will delete it from my wishlist, because I don't want to spend 200€ for a capture card that is basically like mine, if not worse... at the same price, I think the newer Blackmagic Intensity will be better; for a lot less, the HD 750 based cards will be equally good, if not superior thanks to features like 12bit ADC and 3D comb filter...

AJA and Viewcast are on another planet, and I think they will not be so far from the other cards when used to capture "simple" laserdisc video signal... so, I'll leave it out of the competition - just because they are not worth their price for what I intend to use a capture card, not for their quality that I think is really high!

Post
#619680
Topic
High-End video capture cards
Time

althor1138 said:

The Diamond ATI Theater 750HD does come with a composite input as well as s-video.  The connector you are seeing on the back isn't s-video, it is a connector for a break-out cable which has composite,s-video, and stereo audio connectors.

Sorry, I didn't study well enough! (^^,) I changed the first post accordingly.

Could you confirm that, between all its settings, it has also the 3D/2D comb filter advanced settings?

If so, I must add this one to my wishlist...

Post
#619665
Topic
High-End video capture cards
Time

...once upon a time, I was happy with my video capture card... it is based on the Philips SAA-713x chipset, has a 9-bit ADC, 4-line adaptive comb filter, could capture uncompressed... and it's better than ones based on BT8X8 chipset!

Then, also thanks to this forum, I discovered that there are much better video capture cards around...

The requirements:

  • MUST capture uncompressed YUV 4:2:2 (and, if possible, HuffYUV too)
  • MUST have a REALLY good comb filter ALSO for PAL signal
  • MUST capture PAL and NTSC

 

  • 10-bit ADC and over preferred
  • PCI highly preferred; then PCI-E, USB 2.0, FireWire
  • Composite and S-Video input - RGB and/or Y/Pb/Pr are welcome
  • TBC will be appreciated, but absolutely not mandatory
  • VirtualDub capture really appreciated, but not mandatory
  • No TV tuner whenever is possible

 

During my usual internet searches, I found some interesting products - in no particular order:

 

Aja Kona LHe Plus

overly exagerated for laserdisc captures, price out of many pockets... has a 12-bit ADC, but only a 3-line comb filter; could capture audio too, but analog is XLR balanced...

 

Viewcast Osprey 530

Seems very good, but have not find deep info about it. The 4-channel capture cards of the same brand have 3-D + 2-D comb filter, so it's highly probable that this one has it too.

 

Black Magic Intensity Pro

10-bit ADC, 24-bit analog audio input, price not too high... maybe the right compromise; but it seems that SD capture is there as a "bonus feature"!

 

Pixel Magic PDI Deluxe

IIRC used by the X0project, and works well with DScaler too! But was not able to spot anywhere used...

 

ATI Theater HD 750 -> Asus My Cinema ES2-750 -> Diamond TVW750PCIE

12-bit ADC, 2-D 5-line and 3-D comb filter (will the latter work with PAL too?!?), and NO hardware MPEG2 encoder like the 650... Someone thinks that its AGC has problems.

 

I'm thinking to buy the Pixel Magic PDI Deluxe - if only I could find one! - or the Blackmagic Intensity Pro.

What do you think?

Post
#619631
Topic
Laserdisc players - screenshot comparison
Time

I "resurrected" this old thread of mine, just because today I posted in another thread some info about comb filters... then I realized I have a PAL CD-Video with a test card like the one Moth3r used here, so I decided to use it...

Here you are the screenshots - they are unprocessed, but the source is REALLY bad, full of speckles like the most part (if not all) of CD-Video around... the frame is always the same, captured with the same capture card, using the same cables (Monster Cable S-Video and LINN composite) - HuffYUV

Pioneer CLD-D925 composite:

 

Pioneer CLD-D925 S-Video:

 

Pioneer CLD-D925 through Panasonic DMR-ES15 DVD recorder:

 

Pioneer CLD-D925 through Pioneer DVR-320S DVD recorder:

 

The Pioneer DVR-320S clearly has the worst picture... look at the grey grid, and the red bar on the bottom of the circle.

The Panasonic DMR-ES15 has a strong TBC - clearly it can't be seen on static images, but when seen in motion, the captured clip shows almost no sync problems, unlike the other three clips. But the image is not the better - look at the grey boxes on the left, near the white ones... or, better, they are not grey!

The same problems could be found in the D925 composite output; in the D925 S-Video the problem is still here, but really reduced, compared to the other three captures.

 

Conclusions:

  • the Pioneer DVR-320S comb filter (the one used for PAL signals, that *maybe* is a 5-line one) is not good as the straight composite and/or S-Video output of the CLD-D925; it's better to avoid it with PAL material. BUT, IIRC, when I tested it with Video Essentials' Snell & Wilcox zone plate, it was better, due to its 3D comb filter used for NTSC. Further investigation needed.
  • the Panasonic DMR-ES15 could be really useful if used with a VCR, due to its good TBC. But, as laserdisc *usually* has not sync problems, it could be not useful for laserdisc captures (apart for some material onto CD-Video...)
  • the CLD-D925 composite output - or/and the capture card composite input - is not that bad, considering that the capture card comb filter is a 4-line one; still, there are some residual chroma noise
  • the CLD-D925 S-Video output is the best in this test; its comb filter is a mere 3-line type, but clearly it's superior to the capture card's one, maybe because the composite output of the D925 is just a recombined S-Video signal, or just because its comb filter is better than the 4-line one of the capture card, or thanks to both things...
Post
#619583
Topic
Star Wars: A New Hope [SET ruLes 1.0] - AVCHD & BD RELEASED!
Time

Some updates - for the few still interested in this project...

Black crushing & white clipping (supposed) problems

I thought I captured the laserdiscs with wrong settings (default)... so I took one of the laserdisc I captured before, and did some tests. For example, I took the scene right after the opening crawl: I let the laserdisc player play that scene over and over, and with the Virtualdub histogram in capture mode I discovered that the image histogram (luma values) are inside the left and right borders, except when there are explosions, with flashes the image with totally white screen - only in that case, the right border (white luma) stay a bit out of border; I don't think this is a problem, so I decided to not recapture the laserdiscs again, as the default settings are 99% accurate.

But I realized that my captures' luma range is 0-255, and not 16-235 as I thought before... it's true that the "extend luma white point" and "extend luma black point" in Virtualdub capture mode make the image "tv compliant" - infact, when flagged, the image range is "compressed" and forced to stay in the 16-235 luma range, but the exceeding black and white parts are clipped... so, if I use Avisynth to convert my capture from full range 0-255 to tv range 16-235 will be the same, if not better - and if I will decide to release a full range version, I will just not do the conversion! Obviously this fact applies also to my OUT captures... hope this fact will help someone else!

Color correction

At the beginning, I was sure that all the movie had wrong colors, so I was testing the same color correction settings with different scenes, and in some it was perfect, in others so-so, and in others completely wrong... so I realized that only some scenes are affected by the pinkish tint, and many are good "as is"...

To test my assumption, I ran the whole movie through an avisynth script: on the left, the unprocessed movie, on the right, the movie with autowhite corretion; the second part of the movie is almost all color correct, as both images are quite the same. Of course, the initial scenes inside the Tantive corridors and in Mos Eisley were afflicted by the pinkish tones.

But not all the scenes with wrong colors were corrected in the right manner by autowhite (obviously, as it is a "stupid" filter, as written also in the avisynth wiki)... for example, in the desert scenes, sometimes the sand were yellow - instead of pink, so it was right, but sometimes it was grey!!! If the autogain is applied, many times things get better, but the contrast fluctuated a lot, and in few cases there are on overly exagerated grain in the whole picture.

It's safe to say that autogain CAN'T be used for color correction, but autowhite can, in limited cases - at least, this is what I have discovered during my tests. But, HOW can I use autowhite, where it make its work good for a part of a scene, and bad for another? Must I use it for the whole movie, check where the job is wrong, and change the wrong scenes with my own color correction?

At the end, the usual little 25-watt light bulb appeared over my head... what if I use a median of three color version of the same image? the first will be the unprocessed, the second will be the autowhite corrected, and the third the manual corrected... if the first and second would be (quite) the same, the manual correction will be discarded, if the autowhite is overly exagerated or plain wrong, the result will not contain that...

Well, I did some tests along the whole movie, using four quadrants (unprocessed, autowhite, manual correction, median) and I exclaimed: "in media(n) stat virtus!" (virtue stands in the middle)... it corrected all the autowhite problems.

I'm also thinking about getting an hardware color corrector (I'm after a cheap Sony XV-C900, PAL) and use it instead of avisynth... it will color correct real time, with its two joysticks for black and white adjust... what do you all think?

Last thing: as my captures are YUY2, I used ColorYUV (and ColorYUV2) avisynth filter for color correction, to avoid any conversion to RGB and back... but at the beginning, I applied the color correction to YV12 video! And discovered that, despite the fact that the filter works with YV12 too, the results sometimes are completely wrong! So, the lesson learned is: color correct YUY2 video with ColorYUV BEFORE converting the video to YV12! (^^!)

Comb filter and rainbowing

On my OUT project, I used the same capture chain used here: Pioneer CLD-D925 laserdisc player, S-Video out to the capture card, with Philips SAA-713x chipset. I chose to use S-Video instead of composite, because, after all the tests I've done, it seems that the result is slightly better; also if the capture card comb filter for PAL signals should be 4-line, Vs CLD-D925's 3-line, the composite output is just a recombination of the S-Video signal, so I think it's wiser to use the player S-Video directly.

But I tested also other laserdisc players and units - CLD-600 and LD-V4300D, both directly, via composite to capture card, and through DVD recorders - Pioneer DVR-320S and Panasonic DMR-HS15 - used as external comb filter.

It's difficult to get information about the comb filter type present on these DVD recorders; I found that the DVR-320S has a 3D comb filter, but unfortunately it works only with NTSC... with PAL, it *could* be a 5-line type, that *should* be better than capture card's one... about the DMR-HS15, many praise its TBC, but it's not needed when capturing laserdisc, as any laserdisc player has one built-in...

By the way, I remeber that when I tested those players through the DVR-320S, using Video Essentials' Snell & Wilcox zone plate, its comb filter was really good - as a good 3D comb filter it's better than 4 or 5 line one. But using the DVR-320S with PAL signal didn't improve the quality... at least, my own eyes didn't see any difference between its comb filter and the capture card's... if only I could have a PAL test card on laserdisc to test it... OR... if I take a PAL test card, 720x576, and let a computer play it through its composite output, then capture its composite output with my capture card composite in, and also with the DVR-320S and DMR-HS15, then I could clearly see which has the best comb filter, right?

Other reasons I avoided using a DVD recorder as external comb filter are:

longer video path - with everything in between that could worsen the quality instead improve it... like

LD -> cable -> A/D -> DVD digital processing -> D/A -> cable -> capture card

VS

LD -> cable -> capture card


...and the unknown processing inside the DVD recorder... it could include, apart comb filter, video DNR, color DNR, color AGC, MPEG2 conversion, and quite surely TBC, and YUY2 to YV12 conversion. Someone could argue that the latter would be not so bad for quality, but I prefer to stay inside the YUY2 colorspace as long as I can, including color correction and resizing... infact, if I have (for example) 700x340 YUY2 video, the chroma will be (at best) 350x340; useful if I want to convert to 1280x568 - where the chroma resolution will be 640x284; if I have 700x340 YV12, chroma will be only (at best) 350x170... do you think it's still the best option for resizing - also for a "simple" letterbox to anamorphic resize?

I'm also thinking at a "crazy" alternative capture technique... using the LD-V4300D RGB output, capture the separate red, green and blue image, then recover the RGB image with avisynth. I'm sure someone else has done it before, I read it a long time ago, but could not find that technique info again anymore... I know that laserdisc is composite, and the chroma resolution of a PAL laserdisc will be *at best* around 212*576, but who knows how good could be a composite-to-RGB converter inside an old industrial-grade laserdisc player... maybe it will be an interesting discover!

At the end...

Laserdisc captures done; spatio-temporally alignment to median the captures done; upscaling, denoising, sharpening scripts tested - found the best ones; median color correction tested - found good result. Now I must "mix" all these elements, and the video will be ready.

I decided - to reduce processing time, and to not stress a lot my old pc - to process things in distinct steps: tomorrow evening the median/2x upscale will be finished; after that, I'll apply color correction median and then sharpening/denoising/resizing.

Next things to do: capture audio from italian VHS, align PCM, AC3, DTS soundtracks to video, try to find the PAL french laserdisc soundtrack, convert audio to 23.976fps; correct and align the subtitles; convert to suitable release formats; mux all.

Latest news: I decided to buy another PC ("only for Star Wars project?" - "well, *not* only for that...") and it will be... another Sony VGX XL! This time with a faster CPU and a BD BURNER!!! Hope to upgrade soon the 2.13GHz E6400 (no, the Sony VGX-XL series don't permit overclock...) to a faster X6800, or better to a QX6800 - if only I could be absolutely sure it will work into my new PC!


         "...do you think anyone will read all your post until here?" (OO_)

(u°°) "...surely someone will read these last lines first!"

Post
#619577
Topic
Burn 1270x720 other than AVCHD
Time

egosum said:

My home DVD player seems not to recognise AVCHD format, so, I was looking for some software to convert it to something else, preserving two audio tracks and subtitles...

There is no DVD player that is compatible with AVCHD; only BD players could be compatible.

It was not easy, but I found AVStoDVD and ConvertXtoDVD. Both of them are excelent, they convert it to either PAL or NTSC, but the video loses resolution, it goes from 1280x720 to 729x576.

Did you mean 720x576 (as 1280x720 in the title)? It's not possible for a DVD player to play a format with HD resolution; the highest possible resolutions that a DVD player could handle are 720x576 PAL or 720x480 NTSC.

Is it possible to burn it in other way that it is not AVCHD, to check if my DVD player recognises it? I understand that 1280x720 can be passed as HQ, instead of HD, but I don't know of similar software to do this.

No, I'm sorry. The only solutions are to play the AVCHD disc on your computer, or to buy a BD player that is AVCHD compliant, or to use a Playstation 3...

Post
#619237
Topic
Virtualdub capture histogram
Time

If I want to capture in YUY2 and didn't check the "extend luma range" options, and want to stay inside 16-235 range, the histogram MUST be only blue, or could occasionaly became red?

I mean, if the histogram on the left is red, the image falls between 0 and 15, and if it's red on the right, stay between 236 and 255? In that case, I should avoid the histogram to become red, right?

 

Post
#619182
Topic
Virtualdub capture histogram
Time

In VirtualDub's capture mode, the histogram shows luma of the captured video; is it possible to adjust brightness and contrast levels to "stay inside the borders"...

what I'd like to know is: the red part of the histograms at left (luma black point) and right (luma white point) must never appear to obtain a good luma range (16-235), or they are just "red alert" - I mean, the histogram could reach those red parts but only for few moments - like the red part of analog audio meter?

Post
#619181
Topic
Preserving DTS LaserDisc tracks, specifically Jurassic Park
Time

"Did you know that laserdisc DTS soundtracks are 6ch 44.1KHz 20bit 1,2Mbps ?"

Well, today I tested a lot with a DTS laserdisc - guess which title? - and I didn't manage to save more than few seconds of DTS sound using VirtualDub... at least, I discovered that using an audio recorder - something simple like Windows Sound Recorder - is it possibile to record a laserdisc DTS sound directly from the S/PDIF input...

Capturing a DTS soundtrack along with its video counterpart could be better, to allow cutting (and/or inserting) frames, together with audio... it would be a LOT more difficult to mux only the LD DTS soundtrack with a digital video (from DVD or BD) and then find where to cut or how to align properly audio with video...

What are your experiences about capturing video and DTS audio from a laserdisc? Any feedback is welcome, as the usual little voice popped into my mind whispering "... you have a BUNCH of Jurassic Park laserdiscs... NTSC, PAL, DTS, Dolby Surround, CAV, CLV, Box Sets, english & italian, a making of... and don't forget those Lost World discs too... why don't you start a new Jurassic Park 1+2 DTS [ruLes] project?!?" (^^,)

Post
#619141
Topic
Star Wars: A New Hope [SET ruLes 1.0] - AVCHD & BD RELEASED!
Time

CapableMetal said:

BTW, the latest clips look great!

Thank you very much! It's great when someone shows his appreciation for my work, and keep me going on with my project!

You_Too said:

To comment on the latest clip, it looks like the shadow detail has been crushed.

Still thinking about what may be the cause of it... I used two different VDub versions for capturing the first clip (1.9.11 for D925, 1.8.8 for 4300 and 600), and only the newest 1.9.11 for the second clip, using the same D925 player for all the three editions. Is any difference in quality and reliability, when capturing analog video, between different VDub versions?

Or maybe it is because I didn't flag neither the "extend luma black point" nor the "extend luma white point"? I don't think the problem lies here.

Or (and I think the problem, and the solution too, is here) it is because in the first clip I passed the laserdisc signal through the Pioneer DVD recorder, using it as comb filter, with its white level set high?

If it's the latter, it's just a matter of recapture everything (sic!) with the right white/black settings - find the right contrast and brightness on VirtualDub video proc amp settings during capture, this time looking carefully at the histogram, instead using the defaul settings...

OK, I'm ready to recapture all (Xx/) ..."errare humanum est"!

Post
#619119
Topic
Star Wars: A New Hope [SET ruLes 1.0] - AVCHD & BD RELEASED!
Time

You_Too said:

To comment on the latest clip, it looks like the shadow detail has been crushed.

I don't know... because in the last clip I uploaded, that scene has NO color correction! To be sure, I checked all the three original captures, and they look like the same as the median result, as the upscaled and the sharpened/denoised results...

Maybe is due to the fact that the first screenshot came from the first tests I made, using three different players - and two through dvd recorder's comb filter; maybe there are different gamma settings on the laserdisc players, or on dvd recorders, or in the combination of two... who knows?!?

***

Well, let's change the clip! Now I took Mos Eisley scenes; on the left, the original colors, on the right the color corrected. And this time I used a low bitrate (2000kbps) as this is only a test clip, and for that purpose, the quality is good enough... so, at 12MB, anyone would be happy to download and review it:

SENDSPACE

***

About color correction, some thoughts came into my mind... "I made this simple color correction in Avisynth - that is a powerful tools, and free - in, counting only time devoted to "invent" the simple script and testing it, let's say ten hours; this is my first attempt at color correcting a movie, and I'm only a young old padawan learner, but the result is decent, surely better than the original pinkish mess, so... why THEY didn't do color correction with the laserdisc master at the time (1997) with all their powerful hardware - computers and also analog gears - and software, or why THE OTHERS didn't make something similar when they broadcast the DVB version (2004-5) when surely digital color correction was easy and not so expensive as, for example, could be in 1997?"

By the way, IIRC, avisynth were released around 2002, and could be used for the DVB broadcasting color correction... but I digress! (++_)

Post
#619008
Topic
Star Wars: A New Hope [SET ruLes 1.0] - AVCHD & BD RELEASED!
Time

CapableMetal said:

Less certainly is more. I wish some of the studios would realise this when applying DVNR to blu-ray masters!

I'm happy I changed idea and gone into the "less is more" philosophy also about avisynth script - I always follow that philosophy when I build web sites.

I thought you were using a DVD recorder pass-through for comb filtering? I know that the s-video on my CLD-2950 is horrible compared to the composite output (which I tend to use with the "HQ Filter" off, but cannot disable it on the s-video output), I thought that was the case with most LD players, with the exception of the very best NTSC players?

When I used the composite out of the CLD-D925, I saw the rainbow effects around the white, superimposed display info; when I used the S-Video, the rainbow was not there anymore, so I think with this player the comb filter is better than my capture card. About CLD-2950, maybe, as it is older, the comb filter is not that good as the D925; and I set the HQ always off, and it stay off also using S-Video.

Watched it and its looking good, however there is a serious misalignment of one of your captures on the first shot (look at the small moon, the Tantive's engines, then the Star Destroyer). There is also a combed frame as Threepio looks up and says "What's that?".

You are a keen observer; about the misalignment, I think now it's fixed - the german capture was off only in this scene, but as it was really dark I made the wrong alignment...

About the combed frame(s): they are frames from 4663 to 4666, but they must be in the master, at least in the PAL one used with these THX laserdiscs, as they are present in all the three laserdisc editions, and in all of the several test captures I made with different players and connections, so... maybe if they are good in the NTSC SE, I could use those frames from there...

Looks great! Its difficult with the SE because all of the transfers suffer from colour issues, you're doing a nice job.

Thanks, I think it's not perfect, but surely better than the "original" pinkish!

I just stick with SetMTMode(2,0) at the start of a script which is maybe not as fast as manually assigning filters to threads but is enough of a performance boost. My scripts tend to be quite basic because I've found filters that I prefer and that do a good job, all of which seem to work nicely multi-threaded. I depends on the filters you are using and how much filtering you're doing, of course. As you say, some filters just can't benefit. I tend to use the default filter settings a lot of the time too, only changing settings if something doesn't look right (for fine adjustment). I rarely have scripts that occupy more than 30 lines, usually they're only about 10 lines, but then I haven't tried layering different sources! The results I get from the filters I use are very good, too. Sometimes keeping it simple is enough, I'm sure I read on another thread that the upscaling scripts for DJ and You_too's project was only a few lines...

I use also SetMTMode(2,0); yes, it improves speed, but I discovered that the best thing is to save the aligned/median/upscaled result (with lagarith) and then feed it to sharpener/denoiser/color correction script, and save with the preferred codec (e.g. AVC1 for the test clip). With this trick, the total processing time would be a lot less, and, I want to change something in the enhancement script, I have not to process the whole script, but only the enhancement, as the aligned/median/upscaled is saved as .avi - got the idea?

About the lenght of the aviscript: only to align the three captures, I used about 30 lines of code - more than 50 are used for OUT; for median, maybe five or six; for color correction, sharpener, denoiser, upscaler, about ten.

Right now my PC is processing another test clip; it's the same, but fixed at the beginning (hope so) and color corrected; now I must go to work, but I'll post it in the evening.

***

Last thing: anybody has the french 1997 SE THX laserdisc trilogy - separate movies, not in a box, with the FRENCH audio? I'd like to add the french soundtrack...

Post
#618970
Topic
Star Wars: A New Hope [SET ruLes 1.0] - AVCHD & BD RELEASED!
Time

g-force said:

Dude, that looks so much better! I think it's still a little waxy, as in too denoised. I wonder if you could back off the denoising a bit and gain more processing speed.

The sharpness looks good!

Thanks, I'm happy you appreciate my work!

I must confess that I like this last "less is more" script way more than the long script I used before. To me, if not perfect, it's almost perfect - and, because "perfection is not of this world", I could be happy anyway!

I know it's a little waxy as you wrote... I tried also MCTemporalDenoise(settings="low) (this is the default setting) but the result was still too noised; I like also the settings="high", but the processing time was incredibly higher, and the result, if carefully inspected, too waxy, so...

Maybe the script I tested is the "right" compromise - and, I repeat, I tested A LOT of filters in a year of testing, and I prefer to re-release soon the SW:ANH [OUT ruLes] with improved audio (and in sync french soundtrack) plus improved video, than waiting and testing for weeks (or months) to achieve a visual result only slightly better than the actual one: avisynth is WONDERFUL, but with so many filters, plugins, scripts, the possibilities are unlimited, but my time unfortunately is not! (°°,)

CapableMetal said:

If there's rainbowing, then I'd give it a try. I've had limited/poor results using some of these filters in the past, and I believe if your comb filter is doing a good job then you should have minimal rainbowing already.

I used the 925 S-Video because, in my comparison tests, its comb filter resulted better than my capture card. I didn't noticed rainbowing, but you know, "four eyes are better than two"... and six are better than four etc.

So, if anyone else would like to download the OUT ruLes test clip, and let me know its problems, it will be really helpful!

With laserdiscs, after median/averaging captures, I simply use DeGrainMedian for noise reduction (and it does a nice job for the most part), Msharpen used subtly to bring back some small details, if I upscale then a combination of nnedi3_rpow2 and a Spline64 or 36 resize, depending on my needs. If there is visible colour banding then a dithering filter (like GradFun3) can help.

Today was "capture day #2"... hard work... I finished to capture all the three editions, and carefully aligned them both temporally and spatially, and then medianed... now I'm testing the script I tested yesterday on OUT

here you are the usual clip at SENDSPACE (70MB)

download it, and tell me what do you think.

I'm still testing a basic color correction, as the laserdisc picture is still pinkish - but not as GKar... - here few examples:

Not perfect, but not too bad... (^^,)

 

Next days I will test the filters you suggested - if you want to help me, could you please post an example script?

I occasionally add and remove filters as needed, but those tend to do a nice enough job. Using an MT version of AviSynth helps a lot. If you have a dual core CPU then I'd try it, it should greatly increase your render speed and give that idle core something to do ;)

I use avisynthMT too - but some filters still does not improve speed with it...

Hope to release the ANH [SET ruLes] .m2ts file before the end of this month!

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#618790
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Star Wars: A New Hope [SET ruLes 1.0] - AVCHD & BD RELEASED!
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At the end, I found "the peace of mind" thanks also to all your feedbacks, and now I want to follow a new philosophy, "less is more"... in other words, use as few filters as I can - to not overprocessing as I did with my former script.

But, anyway, should I add a derainbow filter? And what about a smoother? Will be they useful? Will be they really needed?

The last words to the experts.

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#618775
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Star Wars: A New Hope [SET ruLes 1.0] - AVCHD & BD RELEASED!
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CapableMetal said:

Wow, what processing is happening in your script? Could you post an example? That's certainly very slow, and I'm curious as to how you're applying filters.

First, more than 200 lines of getting rid of black frames, aligning pixel perfect, median and average - I avoid to paste it here... then, at the end:

ROUGH.nnedi3_rpow2(rfactor=2, cshift="spline64resize",\

fwidth=ROUGH.width*2, fheight=ROUGH.height*2).\

LimitedSharpenFaster(strength=200).\

MCTemporalDenoise(settings="medium").\

ResampleHQ(1280,544)

 

 

I tested the filter before nneed3, in between, and after resamplehq, and "in media stat virtus", so...

My advice is to keep it simple. I've watched the SET sample you posted before and its not as clean as I expected, there seems to be a lot of noise in the picture and I'm unsure as to what has caused it. What format do you capture to?

HuffYUV YUV.

It also suffers from the 'tiled' effect that is inherent to the PAL SE laserdiscs (a crude description, but I don't know what else to call it), its visible in your sample mostly as faint vertical lines, but appears as little tiles if you purposely boost the brightness too high on a raw capture; I usually use DeGrainMedian as a noise filter and it tends to fix this.

I'll test it.

Would doing that not take the same/similar amount of time, but using two scripts?

I used only the first two lines of the preceding script to save lagarith video (2.70 FPS); then the resulting upscaled video is processed with the last three lines (0.86 FPS)... not bad this time!

You_Too said:

If you have a multicore processor you could check what the possibilities are of accelerating that render time.

There's multithread-supporting versions of avisynth and some plugins support it too. It could help a lot.

I think that new sample looks pretty good!

I use the multicore avisynth DLL; I applied SetMemoryMax and SetMTMode with different settings, but the speed didn't improve. Any hint wil be highly appreciated (my PC has a Core 2 Duo E6300 with 3GB RAM)