SmootherHiQ Vs. Convolution3d
 

Hi all...

I made some tests last night, comparing Convolution3d(preset MovieHQ) and the SmootherHiQ Plugin by Klaus Post.
I like to use FaeryDust as my Temporal Cleaner, because for me it still works best. But using FaeryDust and Convolution3d makes the picture just too blurry for my taste. Now I've come to a good solution for this. SmootherHiQ.

:wink: The filesize for my sample with SmootherHiQ was 200kb lower than the one made with C3d... and in my eyes the picture was a lot less blurry. here's my script and the settings I used for SmoothHiQ...

try it out and tell me what you think... of course this is only if you don't mind the slowness of FaeryDust. :wink:
btw: SmoothHiQ is not noticable faster than C3d...

You can download the filter here:

http://cultact-server.novi.dk/kpo/av...th_hiq_as.html

Trying it now! I'll let you know my results! :)

did you try it pyro? :wink:

Yes I did. :) Sorry I'm a bit late though, I got distracted as ToK kept screwing up. I havent actually done a straight comparison yet, but on my results so far, I have to say I agree with you. :D

I think there might be a bit of an issue when using it with TemporalCleaner() as the output looks much more noisy than it should have been, and I removed TemporalCleaner() and the filesize dropped by about a megabyte in size. 8O After removing that the output looked very clean and sharp. :D I modified your settings a bit though, and used
because I normally use LQ instead of HQ with Convolution3D, so I thought I'd be able to get away with a bit of extra smoothing with SmoothHiQ.

I'm off to encode the same clip with Convolution3D now, I'll be back in about an hour (I hope :wink: ) to let you know my results.

Well using FaeryDust already gives you plenty of temporal cleaning I think, so there's probably no need for TemporalCleaner() in your script.
Since SmoothHiQ is a Spatial Smoother only, I combined it with FaeryDust, to have one good Temporal smoothing filter and one good spatial. Convolution3d is a spatio-temporal cleaner, as I recall.

i tested your settings too, jellygoose.
the video indeed is a bit less blurry, not much, but i could see it.
i now will test pyro´s suggestion, too

It seems to me that SmoothHiQ, although it is indeed a sharper picture, causes quite a lot more mosquito noise than Convolution3D, enough to make me favour Convolution3D. But I havent tried it with DCTFilter yet, so I'll do that now.

Jellygoose, any particular reason for having mergechroma and mergeluma after FaeryDust and SmoothHiQ? I normally put them before...will this make a difference? :?

Well my reason for doing this was that I wanted to smooth the original picture before blurring it. the difference would be, that the picture would be blurred, and after that the blurred picture would be smoothed. try it out, and let me know what you think looks better... i'm encoding right now, so I can't test it...
As for the mosquito noise: I cannot affirm that, but you know it's all a question of taste. however I looked at the 2 sample clips in BitrateViewer, and the Q-Level of the SmoothHiQ Clip was .01 points below the one made with C3D... that's not a lot, but still is another point for SmoothHiQ in my eyes!

Turns out most of the noise was in the source. Man, it seems like noisy DVDs are getting more and more common... Well I also did some very close up noise comparisons with AvsCompare and, to me at least, there is really NO visible difference between Convolution3D(preset="movieLQ") and SmoothHiQ(5,15,25,200,10) BUT the sample with SmoothHiQ is smaller!! So with slightly moderated SmoothHiQ settings (for example the settings you used, 3,15,25,192,10) we can get a sharper picture for a much smaller filesize! :D I wonder what kwag has to say on this... (Hint, hint! :wink:)

EDiT: I put the mergechroma and mergeluma back at the beginning of the script, as I thought it looked very slightly better...I didn't really see much difference though.

Haven't had a chance to compare yet! I'll see if I can try it later today :wink:

-kwag

Well, here's my comparison:

http://www.digitalfaq.com/archives/i.../2003/03/1.png

As you can see, there's barely any visual difference between the two filters.
My 45 second sample file size with C3D was 7,465KB, and the one with SmoothHQ was 7,351KB. A difference of 115KB, which is VERY significant for the time of the sample. But the big difference was the time to encode. For the SHQ, it was 6:36, and for the C3D, it was 5:13. That's over one minute 8O
So if you want to cram the most quality/space, and you don't mind waiting an extra ~20% encoding time, go for SHQ :D :wink:

-kwag

I think I'll go for SmoothHiQ then. :D

I also found you can increase the values to (5,25,35,200,10) with no noticable difference! :D

"I think I'll go for SmoothHiQ then"
i'm going too pyro! :)

Kwag, :)
in all my tests for months,i got
more compression(less size) take more time and
less compression(more size) take less time...ever!

Jelly, thanks for this news! :wink:

:!:

@PyRoMaNiA,
You might as well just go with something this:
The file size is slightly (~80KB) larger than with SHQ, but the quality is far better. I noticed that SHQ looses A LOT of detail, viewed on a HDTV. Here's what I mean. Look carefully at the grill of the TV:
http://www.digitalfaq.com/archives/i.../2003/03/2.png
Look at the details lost with SHQ ( also lost with C3D with movieLQ preset ). SHQ kills too much details :roll:

Edit: Forgot to mention that encoding speed for the sample with the script above was 5:00 :D. Far better that C3D(LQ) or SHQ :wink:

-kwag

8O
hey Kwag,
really fantastic diference!

thanks for the script too!

:wink:

Thanks jorel,

Also, correction to the above, you may use Convolution3D(preset="movieLQ") and the time difference (for me) was only 2 seconds longer that using HQ. The file size also dropped, and the difference to SHQ is now only 23KB larger that SHQ :mrgreen:

-kwag

thank you again friend!!!!! :D

ps:
would you create a thread for "thanks"?
i will be the leader!!!
:!:
:wink:

@kwag:

that is indeed a big difference! I haven't noticed that yet... however don't you think you should put the temporal cleaners and smoothers before the spatial ones? test again, and see if the filesize or quality changes...

Yeah right kwag! you washed that grill out with MS-Paint on the first picture, just because you wanna show how great YOUR scripts are!! :punch: just kidding buddy, 6 beers is just too much at this heat :drink:

Try breaking those images and examining them in PicSwith...
8O You will see a huge difference. :wink:

I believe you. I'm sure there's more room to improve. there are many great filters out there! :wink:

You're right muaddib 8O, even the colors are messed up (washed out) by SHQ :!:

-kwag

hi muaddib :wink:

PicSwith...????
where i get it?

thanks!
:D

So SmoothHiQ wasn't so HiQ...back to Dust+Convolution I go! :lol:

I guess it is HiQ, because the Hi(Q)uality details dissapear :lol:

-kwag

hey, I'm not the guy who created this filter :D
however I guess this thread has led to something :

if this is what you guys go for right now, i'll test it! wait right here! don't move! :wink:

test this too... :D

Use instead of C3D

http://www.kvcd.net/forum/viewtopic.php?t=3366&start=45

I will!

:lol: Heavy Testing Here! prepare for very interesting results!! 8O

Change Convolution3D(preset="movieHQ") for Convolution3D(preset="movieLQ") . Details are also well preserved in HQ parameters, but file size is smaller :wink:

-kwag

ok, here are my first results.
First of all : Forget SmoothHiQ :lol:

Kwag, you're script really did beat the SmoothHiQ one by far! In my tests: filesize was smaller, Q-Level was smaller and I did see less artifacts. however I still think that C3d blurrs the picture too much. I'm not talking about details like the grill or something ( :wink: ) I just think that the overall sharpness is gone whenever I use C3d. It's all a matter of taste I guess.

Then I tried STMedianFilter for C3d and in my eyes the results are AWESOME! 8O

Filesize dropped by about 2.5% compared to C3d.
Q-Level dropped by 0.2 points compared to C3d.
Speed increased a little.
And as far as I see it the picture looks simply sharper and less artifacts are seen when motion appears.

this is the script I used. Please try this out and compare it to the script that you think is best.

Notice that mergechroma and mergeluma are used after the smoothing, since this gives me a lower Q-Level in Bitrate Viewer.
Happy Testing!

In my (very limited :wink:) tests in avscompare, this newest script definitely looks cleaner than the Convolution3D one. Haven't compared file size or anything yet as I'm only viewing these scripts in AVScompare, but so far, looks good.

what did you compare that script to?

I'm trying your script right now, one encode with STMedianFilter(8,15,4,7,8,15), and another one with Convolution3D(preset="movieLQ").
I'll post results here.

-kwag

Here it is:

http://www.digitalfaq.com/archives/i.../2003/03/4.png

The difference is almost indistiguisheable, but still, I see a little detail lost. Zoom in so you can see what I mean after you save the picture.

The script used was this:

Of course one with STMedianFilter(8,15,4,7,8,15) and the other with Convolution3D(preset="movieLQ")
File size diff was 100KB ( lower with STM ). But I do see a little more artifacts on movement with the STM, but maybe it's my eyes :?

-kwag

I see what you mean. It's barely visible, but it's there. what about the overall sharpness? do you see a difference there?
what does bitrate viewer say? same Q-Level?

Everything else is basically identical :!:, however that little fault I circled has me wondering what side effects could cause on overall picture quality :idea:. Maybe it can't be seen, but maybe it can be "feeled" in overall perception :?
The Q is about .02 lower (better) with STM, but that's not visually noticeable. I do see a file size difference by changing the order of filters 8O, so probably more tests should be conducted to find out the optimal position :idea:

-kwag

"I do see a file size difference by changing the order of filters."

yes Kwag,
i post (don't remember where..) a few months:

resize first, filters in the end of the script:
less time to encode,more size.

filters first ,resize in the end of the script:
more time to encode,less size.

changing the order of the filters:
everything changes too... is a big confusion,
depending of the filter and the order!!
:!:

Eagerly awaiting the outcome on this one! :wink: Gotta love these kinds of threads. :D

And since everyone seems to be in the "testing mood" :wink: , I thought I'd bring up a couple things mentioned by Sansgrip and GFR awhile back in JellyGoose's "Mergechroma to gain Compression?" thread that seem to have gone rather unnoticed:

Sansgrip wasn't aware at that time that we're limited to only 1 instance of Dust per script, but still, this could prove useful with other filters to gain a bit of compression, no? Anyone tried it?


also in that thread:
:idea: I just thought a few compression-hungry testers might want to revisit that thread and try out these suggestions to see what they bring. :wink:

-d&c

@dazed and confused: I already tried stuff out. Last week I made a couple of tests using heavy filtering on chroma and only light filtering on luma. The result was ok. It was actually the same as it would have been using moderate smoothing on both, and the time to merge the chroma and luma takes VERY long. however i'll start experimenting again later tonight!

Does anyone else find these values used in kwags latest script blur the picture too much? I'll try some more stuff, hang on!

This filter order got me the smallest filesize... :D
LegalClip()
BilinearResize(528, 478, 7, 0, 626, 480)
mergechroma(blur(1.58 ))
mergeluma(blur(0.05 ))
TemporalSmoother(radius=2, strength=2)
SpaceDust()
TemporalCleaner(ythresh=5, cthresh=10)
STMedianFilter(8,15,4,7,8,15)
AddBorders(0, 1, 0, 1)
DctFilter(1,1,1,1,1,.5,.5,0)
LegalClip()

you can also move...
mergechroma(blur(1.58 ))
mergeluma(blur(0.05 ))
to the end before you addborders, but the filesize increases a bit...

so keep these together in this order... at least for me...

TemporalSmoother(radius=2, strength=2)
SpaceDust()
TemporalCleaner(ythresh=5, cthresh=10)
STMedianFilter(8,15,4,7,8,15)