Increasing compression through preprocessing
 

I've been playing with various smoothing filters and have come up with a nice combination for adding some serious numbers to the CQ level of a given movie.

Of all the combinations I've tried so far, what gives me the best compression increase is:

I got my 2-disc version of Death To Smoochy up from about 73 to 85 with these two filters 8O.

The script's output is quite smooth when viewed from WMP, and likely wouldn't be suitable for MPEG-4 encoding (or even high-bitrate MPEG-1), but for low-bitrate MPEG-1 it seems that the encoding process masks the lack of details fairly effectively. If you find this too much smoothing, try preset="movieHQ" for Convolution3D instead.

These two filters are very slow, though :?.

Anyway, that's what I've been playing with this evening. Make sure you get v4 of Dust since it fixes one of the bugs I mentioned earlier...

Test and post :).

Forgot to mention, I also used

to pull down the contrast and saturation a little. It is a very bright and highly coloured movie, and I think that was messing with the encoder somewhat.

Oh, and I also put a

before the GripFit to enlarge the top and bottom borders a little.

Hehe, this just never ends :mrgreen:
I can see it clearly in the (not too distant) future: The KVCD 300 minute (U)ltraLBR :mrgreen: :mnkypile:
-kwag

May it ever be so :D.

Hey, I've got Death To Smoochy (2-disc, 192kbps audio) up from 73 to 96 and counting. I'm still a meg or so from the target :mrgreen:.

Maxed out at CQ 100 -- about 300kB below target size. I'm now going to watch the sample on the TV... Back in a bit ;).

.................................................. .................................................. ............................................. :roll: .................................................. ........................ :roll: .................................................. ........... :roll: .................................................. ....... :roll: WAITING :!:

:mrgreen:

Looks very nice -- perhaps a little softer than usual, but not a lot. I'm thinking of trying the DVD trick (i.e. heavy smoothing followed by an edge-enhancement) next...

Of course the real test is an HDTV. Want a sample? :D

What happens if you remove the C3D line :idea:. I just did a sample and it looks really great in the PC, but I did notice some very slight "screening" effect on the film. You bet :mrgreen:

-kwag

Still get nice compression benefits from Tweak and FaeryDust, but not as much as with C3D movieLQ. CQ would maybe drop from 100 to 95 or so (that's just a wild guess).

You mean when you watch it on the TV? Try using preset="movieHQ". Bear in mind that Death To Smoochy is very difficult source material, and is quite noisy.

Uploading now. I'll edit when it's finished :).

Edit: Here it is, 6.5mB.

Just watching on the monitor.
I did use preset="movieHQ" on "Count of Monte Cristo" movie which is very dark with smoke or dust ( haven't seen the movie yet, just the sample 8) )

-kwag

It's not great ;) -- nowhere near as much swashbuckling as there should be :D.

Check the file name :wink:

It's late ;). Fixed.

There should be a "Hall of fame" sample gallery, because that definitively looks like a DVD :mrgreen:
I'm going to re-encode "Count of Monte Cristo" again, which I had done at 352x480. I think that it can go on 528x480 with these filters :mrgreen:
Just AMAZING :D

-kwag

What was your .avs script for that SansGrip :?:

Ah, remember that's for two discs. If I could get it looking like that for one disc I'd be very happy ;). I'm playing with one-disc settings now. I'll post a sample, but probably not until the morning. I'm almost asleep :).

Ok, so I lied. Here's the same 30 seconds from the one-disc version (112kbps audio). It's nowhere near as good as the two-disc (particularly anything very saturated in colour) but it's a heck of a lot better than without the extra compression from the preprocessing.

It's starting to look like I might get it on one disc at 528x480 after all :).

There's no Blockbuster or Fluxsmoot there right :?:

That looks perfectly good for one CD :D

-kwag

It's pretty good, but it's no Signs -- I'll keep tinkering with it :).

Well it seems I'll be re-encoding "Monte Cristo" with a CQ > 70 at 528x480 :mrgreen:
I just ran a sample at 70 and was ~1MB lower then predicted. And I also had 1 blocks overscan, and not 2 as I usually do for 528x480. So I figure the CQ is going to be ~74-75, and that's a hell of good quality for 528x480 :D

-kwag

It sure is. What's the movie length/AR? What script?

131 minutes, 32 seconds. Here's the script I'm using:

Looks like final CQ is going to be 71.5, as 72 was just barely over.

Edit: Aspect wide screen 16:9

-kwag

That's a very high CQ for a >2hr 16:9 movie... Mind you, it should be fairly compressible because it's quite dark and mostly low-action. Gonna post a sample? :)

You bet :D. 5 minutes to end the sample ( FaeryDust is really slow :cry: )
Then I'll cut a sample and post it here. Don't go to sleep yet :mrgreen:

-kwag

Very. However, Steady is already working on a new version (mostly rewritten, from what I can gather) that uses a different algorithm for motion estimation. Should be much faster.

I'm going to have to watch that sample tomorrow, because I'm dead in my chair here. Have a good one -- see you in the morning ;).

So it will be CQ=71 :D
Here you go: http://www.kvcd.net/count-sample-528x480-cq71.mpg
That's for one CD. :wink:

-kwag

Agreed - not great.

But, DO read the book! It's awesome!

Very nice... Man, I'd forgotten how dark that movie is :).

If you do a StackVertical compare of a sample done with, say, Flux against a sample done with FaeryDust and C3D movieLQ you'll notice quite a significant loss of detail in the latter. That's where all the compression comes from ;).

I'm thinking that movieLQ is a good choice if you really want to get something on one disc and don't have an HDTV, but otherwise movieHQ might be more suitable.

In fact what I'm really thinking is that we need a filter to do an edge detection then smooth non-edge areas and sharpen the edges simultaneously. That would be nice. But what to call it? :mrgreen:

Look in particular at Gibson's face and jacket:

http://www.digitalfaq.com/archives/error.gif

The top was done with Flux and TemporalSoften. The bottom with FaeryDust and C3D movieLQ.

What about Flux + FaeryDust
Or TemporalSmoother + C3D
Or FaeryDust + TemporalSmoother :wink: (:mrgreen:)

-kwag

Well, they're both denoisers, so you don't really need to use them together. Faery should catch all the noise that Flux does, and all the noise it doesn't, too ;).

And these are both smoothers rather than denoisers. I think we want:

Flux or FaeryDust

and a smoother, be it TemporalSoften, TemporalSmoother, C3D, or my as-yet-unnamed smoother/sharpener combo filter :).

SansNoise.

Sansgrip,

Do you know if the source code for faerydust is available :?:
I can't find it :?

-kwag

Not yet. I've gently hinted that he should release it ;).

Where can I get FaeryDust filter?

Thanks

...and I thought you were joking :mrgreen:.