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  #1  
07-31-2002, 07:44 AM
Graal_CPM Graal_CPM is offline
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Lately I have been doing VHS/KVCD conversion from my old VHS tapes collection, using Virtualdub (VD) and Huyff codec.

My first goal being to 1/ get at least the same quality I have on VHS tape, 2/ fit a tape on 2 CD maximum, I have been trying to use VD filters to compensate for picture degradation.

I have come up with the followings :

- capture in 352x576 @ 25fps (source is PAL)
then
- cropping to remove border noises (depends on the tape)
- Bicubic resize to 352x288 with VD internal resizer (playing with numbers to get a somewhat correct aspect ratio)
- levels filter (if needed, to get pure black and pure white)
- flaXen VHS Filter 1.0 (default parms)
- TemporalSmoother 2 (I mux sound afterwards)

Then frameserve to TMPGEnc using KVCD-Plus parms.

Quality is barely acceptable to me, so I have tried to improve it, playing with smoother, sharpen, cleaner, etc. in VD. All I got was even worse when taking a closer look .

Seeking information on the internet, I could not find anything suited to my needs.
You can have a look at the following sites, very interesting indeed :
http://faq.arstechnica.com/
http://www.lukesvideo.com/

Assuming that some of you have the same concern for quality, can you let me know your best VD filter-chain and parameters for VHS captures ?

Cheers.
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  #2  
07-31-2002, 12:31 PM
kwag kwag is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Graal_CPM
Lately I have been doing VHS/KVCD conversion from my old VHS tapes collection, using Virtualdub (VD) and Huyff codec.

My first goal being to 1/ get at least the same quality I have on VHS tape, 2/ fit a tape on 2 CD maximum, I have been trying to use VD filters to compensate for picture degradation.

I have come up with the followings :

- capture in 352x576 @ 25fps (source is PAL)
then
- cropping to remove border noises (depends on the tape)
- Bicubic resize to 352x288 with VD internal resizer (playing with numbers to get a somewhat correct aspect ratio)
- levels filter (if needed, to get pure black and pure white)
- flaXen VHS Filter 1.0 (default parms)
- TemporalSmoother 2 (I mux sound afterwards)

Then frameserve to TMPGEnc using KVCD-Plus parms.

Quality is barely acceptable to me, so I have tried to improve it, playing with smoother, sharpen, cleaner, etc. in VD. All I got was even worse when taking a closer look .

Seeking information on the internet, I could not find anything suited to my needs.
You can have a look at the following sites, very interesting indeed :
http://faq.arstechnica.com/
http://www.lukesvideo.com/

Assuming that some of you have the same concern for quality, can you let me know your best VD filter-chain and parameters for VHS captures ?

Cheers.
Hi Graal_CPM:

Try these steps:
After you capture your file, open your capture ( I assume AVI ) with FitCD, so that you get your correct resizong. Use "Bilinear" resize, not "BiCubic". BiCubic is used fur upscaling an image. Not for downscaling. For VHS's, use TemporalSmoother(2,2). Now save the .avs script, and open it with Vdub, and set your Flasken filters ( if needed ). Maybe you can play between the TemporalSmoother in the script and the Flasken in Vdub, untin you get a good result.

-kwag
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08-02-2002, 07:19 AM
Graal_CPM Graal_CPM is offline
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Thanx Kwag, you'r really da man!!
I shall work on it this week-end and post feed-back on this thread.

By the way : when I use KVCDPlus 352x288, I replace Source AR by 1:1(VGA) and Center instead of your default settings. All resizing being done by Avisynth, I assume that it decreases TMPGEnc overhead.
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08-02-2002, 07:07 PM
Graal_CPM Graal_CPM is offline
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Well, I have reencoded a VHS capture following your advice Kwag.
Result is perfect! Even better than original VHS tape.

I have used the folowing avisynth script :

===
LoadPlugin("F:\VIDEO\AVSGEN\BIN\MPEG2DEC.dll")
LoadPlugin("F:\video\Avisynth\UnFilter.dll")
Import("f:\video\virtualdub\plugins\vdub_filters.a vs")
AVISource("D:\Capture\frank.00.avi")+AVISource("D: \Capture\frank.01.avi")+AVISource("D:\Capture\fran k.02.avi")+AVISource("D:\Capture\frank.03.avi")+AV ISource("D:\Capture\frank.04.avi")+AVISource("D:\C apture\frank.05.avi")+AVISource("D:\Capture\frank. 06.avi")+AVISource("D:\Capture\frank.07.avi")+AVIS ource("D:\Capture\frank.08.avi")+AVISource("D:\Cap ture\frank.09.avi")+AVISource("D:\Capture\frank.10 .avi")+AVISource("D:\Capture\frank.11.avi")+AVISou rce("D:\Capture\frank.12.avi")+AVISource("D:\Captu re\frank.13.avi")+AVISource("D:\Capture\frank.14.a vi")+AVISource("D:\Capture\frank.15.avi")+AVISourc e("D:\Capture\frank.16.avi")+AVISource("D:\Capture \frank.17.avi")+AVISource("D:\Capture\frank.18.avi ")
Crop(0,40,379,490)
BilinearResize(320,256)
UnFilter(50,50)
AddBorders(16,16,16,16)
ConvertToRGB()
VD_TemporalCleaner(10,4,16,8,30,false,true)
ConvertToYUY2()
TemporalSmoother(2,2)
===

Some comments :

- Source being B&W movie, I had to go throught Virtualdub and use Graysale filter to get ride of ugly red/yellow noises and leaking I could see on captured source (only discovered that an avisynth dll exists few hours ago).

- I have used Virtualdub to get cropping figures and AVSGEN to automatically generate the dreadfull AVISource(...) line and crop/resize commands.

- To my eyes, Unfilter adds enough sharpness to compensate for resize and MPEG smoothing.

- TemporalCleaner with default parameters was *wonderfull* to eliminate - without bluring - some nasty flickering I could see on the source with x4 zoom in virtualdub (no idea where it came from, any idea?).

- Again, all resizing being done in avisynth, I usally modified KVCDPlus default Source AR to "1:1 (VGA)" and Video AM to "Center" (am I right to do so?)

Voila.
Need I say that all of this would not have been possible without all the big brains behind the scene, and KVCD optimized settings to wrap everuthing up on a single CD!

I'm happy :P
Thanks again for your work Kwag.

Cheers.
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08-02-2002, 07:20 PM
kwag kwag is offline
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Cool Graal_CPM!, but did you have to enter all those +AviSource* segments manually or is there a way to do it automatically?

-kwag
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08-02-2002, 07:41 PM
rendalunit rendalunit is offline
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hey Graal_CPM,

Is your encoding process pretty fast with all those filters in Avisynth or is it lagged down quite a bit? I'm encoding a 352x240 movie with many vdub filters and it's going to take over 12 hours on a p4 1600

It seems weird to use sharpness and smoother at the same time but if that works good for you I'm going to try that too because I've been using smoother to clean up a very noisy video and the results have been terrible (very blurry).

thanks,
ren
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08-03-2002, 08:18 AM
Graal_CPM Graal_CPM is offline
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Hi guys!

Well Kwag, I have used AVSGEN to generate the big AVISource Line and crop/resize parameters. Very convenient, isn't it?

Rendalunit, I have just started using avisynth more seriously (since I discovered KVCD in fact). It's user-unfriendly, but it is sooo fast!!
My source is 352x576 Hyuff B&W, 90min : encoding time = 3h/4h.
I use VD frameserving only for greyscale filter, so I think I can go even faster if I filter everything in avisynth.

Another thing I like about avisynth, is that I can batch encode with TMPGEnc. This morning I woke up with 8 friends episodes, 1 KungFu movie and 20min bonus from "Saving Grace" . I have to encode sound separetly because of a bug in TMPGEnc (it craches when I load wav).

Unsharp is the best sharpener I could find so far. Here is an extract from its documentation :
"This filter implements a well-known contrast enhancement/sharpening
technique called unsharp masking. The basic idea is that a blurred version
of the original image is created and then subtracted from the original
image. The resulting image will have contrast boosts around features in
the image. The result is a very pleasing sharpening that is superior to
simple sharpening with a convolution kernel or high-pass boost."

My (poor) source was really improved by TemporalCleaner. I haven't tested it on other material. I will post further results.
To be honest, I am not sure about using both TemporalCleaner and Temporal Smoother together. I could't notice any difference with TemporalSmoother on or off : I've left it because I know it improves compression. Maybe I can do without it.

FYI : I have a P4 1.6 (OC1.7) + 256Mo RamBus + 2x80Go Seagate Barracuda on an Asus TH7-II-Raid Mobo.

Cheers.
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