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  1. Member
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    Hi,
    I am posting this topic to share an interesting shareware program I found that specifically increases video quality when upsizing video. Here is the link.

    http://www.infognition.com/VideoEnhancer/

    Download link(30 day trial)

    http://data.infognition.com/VideoEnhancer/VideoEnhancerSetup.exe

    Basically the highlight of this program is that it uses a feature called Super Resolution method which when increasing resolution/size of a video it can bring out more details/increase quality than one would normally get with a normal resizing
    program. Here is the link for the super resolution method/how it works.

    http://www.infognition.com/articles/what_is_super_resolution.html

    By the way, super resolution method is not really for removing pixellation from videos.

    http://www.infognition.com/articles/when_super_resolution_doesnt_work.html

    This program is unique in that it can also use most or all virtualdub filters to help enhance the quality of your video. It can take by default many types of video files like the ones windows media player 12 takes as default. It is faster than VirtualDub to because it can take advantage of multicore processors.

    Here is an article published by the company (who made Video Enhancer) that compares several different programs and there own and what happened when the programs were used to upsize to videos. It includes some sample videos to test and see for yourself how VideoEnhancer rates against other competitors.

    http://www.infognition.com/articles/video_resize_shootout.html

    Also nice is that the super resolution part of VideoEnhancer is now available as a virtualdub plugin (Trial-watermark)

    http://www.infognition.com/super_resolution_vdf/superres.zip

    I've tested the speed the program and I did notice that Video Enhancer is somewhat faster than Virtualdub when I compared them.

    Features that are nice:

    Batch converting, a wizard for helping to use the program, simple/advanced modes, fast, and allows for use of virtualdub plugins.

    Just thought I'd share this program for anybody who's interested in video quality.

    Also, check out there freeware virtualdub plugin pack, compatible with VirtualDub and Video Enhancer programs.

    http://www.infognition.com/VDFilterPack/

    Thanks for reading, feel free to post with any questions about the program, I will try to answer the best I can.
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  2. As a quick search would have told you, this filter is well known already.
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    I made a search at first, found nothing in tools and for the forums i didn't find too many opinions like the above.
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  4. Member Cornucopia's Avatar
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    I guess it depends on what you used as your search words, because I've been in on a thread (years back) that mentioned this very app specifically...

    Anyway, I have to call you out on this app. It DOES NOT INCREASE resolution. All it does, just like any other interpolator does, is use methods to MINIMIZE the loss of resolution. Having used a number of these apps on professional projects, I can say definitively that it does a good enough job in not being OBVIOUS that something lowrez was upsized, but there is *NO*WAY* that anybody who is a regular video worker could not tell the clear difference between an original FULL REZ image and a lowrez, but upsized, image.

    You can't get a free lunch, and you can't cheat the laws of physics/thermodynamics (entropy..).
    You can manually CREATE or CAPTURE high quality, and you can painstakingly try to maintain as close to that quality as possible (knowing there will be certain places where loss will occur), but you can't GAIN BACK quality once you've lost it (without manually RE-CREATING or RE-CAPTURING).

    As regards this app vs. others, it all depends on what your source is and what your intentions are.

    Scott
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    I'm not sure I mentioned that it increases resolution. Anyways, I've included links to official site that show how the app works and what it really does.
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  6. Member Cornucopia's Avatar
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    Let me correct myself - it does not Increase video quality, compared to an original. It only might be a higher quality conversion (and less lossy) than the next algorithm (also lossy). (You did mention it increasing quality in the subject & original post)

    Say the original source has "100% quality" (whatever that means), a downrezzed copy has 50% quality. You uprez with this algorithm and you have an uprezzed copy that has 47% quality, as opposed to another algorithm which might have 39% quality. But you've still only got 47%!!!

    This is exactly what the official site says, they just say it backhandedly. Even their bonus of Interframe-based interpolation is still just that -- Interpolation (aka "guessing").

    Scott
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  7. Video Restorer lordsmurf's Avatar
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    It crashes a lot in Vista 64.
    Same for some other versions of Windows, but that Vista 64 stands out in memory.

    VirtualDub is far more stable.
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  8. Cornucopia,

    you're correct in that video upsized with this software is not as good as originally shot in high definition. But comparing different kinds of upscalers, this one is the best, as can be clearly seen in the comparison (shootout).

    When you talk about 100 and 50 "percent" of quality that's virtually what was done in the comparison. 10 videos of high resolution were downsized and then upsized back using different methods and different software. The quality was measured in terms of PSNR (video similarity metric) which is measured in dB. The higher PSNR the closer two videos are to each other. Two exact copies of one video when measured PSNR will show 100 dB (technically it must be infinity, but the tools usually limit it to 100). Of course, none of the methods showed 100 dB. Which means none of the methods can fully reconstruct original hi-res video from a low-res. But this super-resolution implementation did the best job and got highest PSNR values and also reconstructed some details which plain interpolation methods simply can't show. You can see the sample frames there, look at bjorn.avi and avatar1.avi sequences, for example.

    lordsmuff,
    Up until version 1.9.4 (September 2010) Video Enhancer was indeed crashing on nVidia cards and Aero turned on in Win7 and Vista. That was just a known bug of nVidia drivers. It was fixed in version 1.9.4 where multithreading code was changed. (the nVidia drivers bug is still there, but it doesn't make Video Enhancer crash anymore)
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  9. Member Cornucopia's Avatar
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    calmkeeper, I think we're close to agreement.

    Of "those clips that the Video Enhancer chose to use", the PNSR is a little higher.

    This tells me:
    1. They chose the clips, and even though there is somewhat of a variety, those clips could very well have been chosen to showcase the app's abilities. Real-world varieties of clips could quite possibly show other apps that had higher PSNR on that particular clip.
    2. PSNR is all well and good as a benchmark, but good videographers/editors still ultimately judge by how it looks to the eye. In this way, another app could very well be preferred for a particular clip.

    However, I'm all for ANY software that puts good algorithms to good use in terms of restoration/enhancement (and my priority is usually quality over speed). In fact, I'd probably have a few good suggestions to the coders of this app on how to improve it. (I've been involved in Audio/Video restoration & enhancement and forensic work for ~20 years now, and have a number of my own trade-secret processes).

    I also do think that for LOTS of situations, this app could be the preferred choice.

    Scott
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  10. Originally Posted by Cornucopia View Post
    This tells me:
    1. They chose the clips, and even though there is somewhat of a variety, those clips could very well have been chosen to showcase the app's abilities.
    That is, of course, what they did.
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  11. Well, if anyone manages to find a clip where another upscaling method will give higher quality, please feel free to show it.
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  12. Originally Posted by calmkeeper View Post
    Well, if anyone manages to find a clip where another upscaling method will give higher quality, please feel free to show it.
    What's your interest in all this? Are you employed at Infognition? I think any conflict of interest should be detailed up front. What about the original poster, Milardo? Forgive me for being suspicious, but this thread just smacks to me of spam.

    Of course the game is fixed. Just the fact that it was downsized before then being upsized already stacks the game in favor of VideoEnhancer's abilities. Better real-world examples would be to take a retail VCD and upscale it to DVD. Or take a retail DVD and upscale it to 1080p, something like that.

    And the AviSynth solution is done only part way. If using, for example, NNEDI3 to upsize, you then follow that with some good AviSynth sharpening, perhaps done in a couple of stages. And I'm one of those that doesn't like PSNR alone to judge the results.
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  13. Originally Posted by manono View Post
    this thread just smacks to me of spam.
    That was my first thought. But the OP joined three years ago and has posted on many other subjects. I'd be inclined to give him the benefit of the doubt.

    Calmkeeper on the other hand apparently joined just to comment in this thread and hasn't posted on anything else.
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  14. Originally Posted by manono View Post
    What's your interest in all this?
    And what's yours?
    I don't see any conflict of interests unless you're somehow interested in fighting with obvious.
    Yes, I've registered to join this discussion, 'cause I saw some misunderstanding and thought I can help explaining. I hope to be of some benefit later to other topics too.

    If we don't downsize something but just upscale VCD to DVD or HD, then we will not be able to measure objective quality (because we need some hi-res original to compare with).

    If you think AviSynth can do better (I'm sure it can), you can try and show your results, I'd really like to see the best solution. The test files from the comparison are available for download (or you can offer your own).
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    No this is not spam, I've posted with a short review/opinion about it that is what it is.
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  16. Originally Posted by calmkeeper View Post
    And what's yours?
    I'm not in the 'biz', if that's what you're asking. I'm just an interested user that spends far too much time upscaling VCDs to DVD for various projects of mine. Using AviSynth. And I'll take it from your silence that you really are associated with Infognition. I'll even go out on a limb and speculate that you're Dee Mon/Dmitry. Again, I think this sort of thing should be revealed up front. You'll be a welcome addition to this forum, if you decide to stick around and help out.

    Since you freely admit that AviSynth can do a comparable, if not better, job of it then that's good enough for me. I probably don't upscale using the absolute best methods (NNEDI3 followed by LimitedSharpenFaster is how I usually do it), but I don't want to take days doing it either.

    I believe that VideoEnhancer does a good job for a reasonable price and it's fine for people that don't want to learn how to do it on their own. It's good that the website supplies the source files and is clear about the methods used for all the tests. I also believe that the picture it paints of VideoEnhancer's abilities is a little too glowing, but I guess you have to show it in the best possible light. That's how you sell product.

    Here's CruNcher's thread on it and other upscaling methods over at Doom9, a thread with which you're familiar, I believe:

    http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?p=1393943
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  17. Ok, I don't want to fool anyone, your guess is right.
    I freely admit that with more sophisticated scripts AviSynth can do better than it did with pure nnedi/eedi, but I don't think it can do better than Video Enhancer.

    Thanks for that doom9 link. As someone correctly pointed out, only the first frame of the video is shown there, so the pictures do not reflect super-resolution results, the first frame is just upscaled using simple interpolation. Let's run those scripts and compare on frame number > 5, not the first one.

    I hope this entry can help understand the issue:
    http://www.infognition.com/blog/2010/how_many_frames_super_resolution_needs.html
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  18. Video Enhancer can do a good job. And you have to see it in motion to really appreciate it. But the web site leaves a bad taste in my mouth. The front page is full of disingenuous examples: showing nearest neighbor upscales as a comparison is ridiculous. I haven't seen any software or graphics card performa a nearest neighbor resize by default in 20 years. And the head shot of the woman at the top right of the page is obviously faked:

    Name:  lady96.jpg
Views: 9856
Size:  3.4 KB

    The right side of that image was not made by upscaling the low res image depicted on the left.

    Yes, I know there are some real examples in later pages but the first impression I always got from the site is bad. And having an employee come here and pretend to be a neutral observer shows how dishonest the company really is.
    Last edited by jagabo; 29th Dec 2010 at 09:43.
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  19. jagabo, this is just an application icon.
    All the other images you see on the site are real samples. Nearest neigbour is used just to make the main function (resolution increase) obvious, they are not for comparison. If some bilinear/bicubic/lanczos/whatever was on that place, people would think this is just a sharpening software which is not the case.
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  20. hole <-- deeper
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  21. Member
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    I've haven't found the video enhancer site deceiving at all. I've had plenty of time to read the articles and although I can't understand everything, I think the information is thorough/truthful.
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  22. Video Restorer lordsmurf's Avatar
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    I'm very anti-BS/anti-propaganda, and I don't see anything misleading on the site.

    I've seen SGI computers (some 10 years ago, now) do these same tasks. So it's nothing new.
    In the still photography world, Genuine Fractals Pro does the same thing. I use that plugin quite a bit.

    Detail is lost on upscale, but this sort of software prevents quality loss (no adding of noise).
    So for that, it has value.
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  23. The Old One SatStorm's Avatar
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    I'm a happy costumer of video Enhancer for about 2 years now (or even more). I use it with neatvideo, msu deblocking and a couple of other filters. For simply upscaling it does what you can do with virtualdub, only better and 4 times faster. I like the results, I'm happy.
    If that program could batch convert to mpeg 2 or H264 direct, filter preview and less crashes, it could be a cheap must have program to use. But even as it is, it has value and does a good job. Better any other solution I tested over the years for the so called upscaling.
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  24. I get great results from spline32resize + a slight bit of sharpening.


    Darryl
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  25. Banned
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    Originally Posted by manono View Post
    Originally Posted by calmkeeper View Post
    Well, if anyone manages to find a clip where another upscaling method will give higher quality, please feel free to show it.
    What's your interest in all this? Are you employed at Infognition? I think any conflict of interest should be detailed up front. What about the original poster, Milardo? Forgive me for being suspicious, but this thread just smacks to me of spam.
    i would say that you're right on the money, seeing how the exact same post, word for word, was made over at the doom9 forums.
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  26. Member
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    No, I added a few extra lines to that post. I like to post in multiple forums, nothing wrong with that.
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    Originally Posted by Milardo View Post
    No, I added a few extra lines to that post. I like to post in multiple forums, nothing wrong with that.
    you like to post the exact same, word for word, message in multiple forums, touting the merits of a commercial product and we're supposed to believe it's just a public service announcement?

    and for the record, video enhancer is nothing more than virtual dub with a reworked gui, i'm willing to bet money that they simply took the virtual dub source code, changed the gui a bit, violated the gpl by not releasing said changes as gpl'd code and called it a new product.

    basically they pirated an open source project.

    oh, and the "super resolution" plug-in they pander, is msu's plug-in.
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    No, for example my post on ati tv wonder pro pci x64 driver has been posted on several different forums with the same message, the same applies here. It isn't an announcement, it is just what I wanted to post to let people know about it. Video enhancer is like virtual dub in the sense that it can use virtualdub plugins but the interface is extremely different, the functions of the program are no where like virtualdub. No, I don't believe they violated anything. The super resolution is part of the video enhancer, but there is a virtualdub plugin as well.
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  29. Originally Posted by deadrats View Post
    and for the record, video enhancer is nothing more than virtual dub with a reworked gui, i'm willing to bet money that they simply took the virtual dub source code, changed the gui a bit, violated the gpl by not releasing said changes as gpl'd code and called it a new product.

    basically they pirated an open source project.

    oh, and the "super resolution" plug-in they pander, is msu's plug-in.
    deadrats,
    how much money do you bet on this? I'm gonna be rich!
    I hope you're ready to prove your words and when you lose the bet pay the money and publicly apologize for this offensive accusation.
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  30. The Old One SatStorm's Avatar
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    Video Enhancer is not a virtualdub with a different GUI. It can use the virtualdub filters, so you could say that it is a virtualdub emulator on this issue.
    And Super Resolution is not a plug in, it is a TERM. It sound silly today, or dated, but this is how they use to call this proccess back in the 1970s, AFAIK. There are many ways to archive Super Resolution, Video Enhancer is one of them. MSU is another way to do it. And if you search a bit, you gonna find that Video Enhancer is an alternative commercial product created by some of the ones that involved in the Moscow State University. In short terms, it was their project, and a couple members of the team make their own version, in a commercial way. In a gray way at first, but totally legal today.
    You can even find those infos posted on Video Enhancer's homepage.

    I don't understand why you are so negative about this software. But I can understand one reason: Is among the few things out there, that proves easily that avisynth is not the Holly Grail. And that probably piss off it's fans.

    I repeat: Video Enhancer is good for what it is. It offers that little bit some of us want to have. You can have great results using other filters / solutions. At the time being, IMO, no solution of those alternatives is equal or better Video Enhancer.
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