Correcting saturation, contrast, brightness, etc...

[takearushfan]

Does anyone have advice on how to correct the issues listed in the title line? I'll expand on the subject:
20th Century Fox released a double-set DVD of Tales From The Crypt and The Vault Of Horror. Both films look and sound excellent. However, the latter is horrifically edited to a PG rating. Now, there's a region-2 print I own that is unedited but looks like hell. You'd think it was a VHS rip, and a poor one at that. I'd like to know if there's a way to make the region-2 version look at least somewhat better and closer to the great Fox version. The region-2 version is far too saturated, much too dark, far too grainy and appears to have a yellow hue. I have no idea how ALL of those things were so badly altered. What would be the best approach to restoring the video to a more Fox-like state? The grain isn't really my main concern. The hue, saturation and contrast/brightness are what I'd like to "fix". If I had to pick a primary aspect, I'd start with how overly-saturated it is. That's a very noticeable one. As for the yellow hue, that's rather annoying too.
Wow... talk about being long-winded! Sorry about that.
Thanks in advance for your advice

[manono]

The hue, saturation and contrast/brightness are what I'd like to "fix".

AviSynth's Tweak filter or the third party SmoothAdjust:

http://avisynth.org/mediawiki/Tweak

http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?t=154971

VDub has a version also. The grain can be lessened or entirely done away with using any one of a number of AviSynth filters:

http://avisynth.org/mediawiki/External_filters#Temporal_Denoisers

I believe VDub has a few also.

[jagabo]

Just about every editor has brightness, contrast, saturation, and hue controls. Most have at least some rudimentary noise reduction filters. It's easy to over-do noise redution. Be careful, you may make all your actors look like mannequins.

There's an AviSynth filter call ColourLike() which tries to make levels/colors in one clip match another.

[takearushfan]

Hm. Okay. I'll look into these things. Thanks guys

[sanlyn]

sorry, readers. I managed to post a blank entry. My bad. See below.

[sanlyn]

There's an AviSynth filter call ColourLike() which tries to make levels/colors in one clip match another.

I recently made some good corrections with ColorLike(). It also nearly destroyed a few things. The trick with trying to match two seriously dissimilar shots of the same scene (a common problem with VHS) is to use other filters to get two or more scenes looking "somewhat" similar before asking ColorLike to perform miracles and make two scenes with entirely different histograms look alike.

[takearushfan]

Okay... it's been a while since I used Avisynth so I need help with various things, but for starters I'd like to convert the PAL AR to NTSC, as well as correct the frame rate. I don't want to wind up with an AVI. I want MPEG-2. I forgot the script, syntax, parameters, etc. needed to do this.

[manono]

If it's progressive, you just resize from 720x576 to 720x480. If it's interlaced you have to do it slightly differently.

Then you either slow it to 23.976fps with an AssumeFPS(23.976) and slow the audio to match and encode for progressive 23.976 with 3:2 pulldown, or you encode it for 25fps and run it through DGPulldown afterwards set for 25->29.97. That way you can use the original and untouched audio. Me, I always slow the audio and video, assuming it's from a film source (and not some 25fps source).

[takearushfan]

Sorry for doing this to you, but it actually might be helpful. Here's some of the Mediainfo involved:

General
Complete name                    : C:\BACKUP\DVDs\PAL\The Vault Of Horror (1973)\VAULT_OF_HORROR\VIDEO_TS\VTS_01_1.VOB
Format                           : MPEG-PS
File size                        : 11.4 MiB
Duration                         : 21s 88ms
Overall bit rate                 : 4 544 Kbps

Video
ID                               : 224 (0xE0)
Format                           : MPEG Video
Format version                   : Version 2
Format profile                   : Main@Main
Format settings, BVOP            : Yes
Format settings, Matrix          : Custom
Format settings, GOP             : M=3, N=12
Duration                         : 21s 80ms
Bit rate mode                    : Variable
Bit rate                         : 4 261 Kbps
Maximum bit rate                 : 6 500 Kbps
Width                            : 720 pixels
Height                           : 576 pixels
Display aspect ratio             : 4:3
Frame rate                       : 25.000 fps
Standard                         : PAL
Color space                      : YUV
Chroma subsampling               : 4:2:0
Bit depth                        : 8 bits
Scan type                        : Interlaced
Scan order                       : Bottom Field First
Compression mode                 : Lossy
Bits/(Pixel*Frame)               : 0.411
Stream size                      : 10.7 MiB (94%)

Audio
ID                               : 189 (0xBD)-128 (0x80)
Format                           : AC-3
Format/Info                      : Audio Coding 3
Mode extension                   : CM (complete main)
Muxing mode                      : DVD-Video
Duration                         : 21s 88ms
Bit rate mode                    : Constant
Bit rate                         : 192 Kbps
Channel(s)                       : 2 channels
Channel positions                : Front: L R
Sampling rate                    : 48.0 KHz
Bit depth                        : 16 bits
Compression mode                 : Lossy
Stream size                      : 494 KiB (4%)

Menu

I'm looking for the best way to convert from PAL to NTSC with as little loss as possible. I mentioned looking for a MPEG-2 rather than an AVI. The only reason I'm showing you this Mediainfo is because I'm not sure if your advice might change now that you see all the specs.
Ah... I see that it IS interlaced, and you mentioned having to do things a bit differently in that case. What needs to be done differently/best approach?

[poisondeathray]

No it doesn't help, because mediainfo only shows the method of encoding

The content is most likely progressive by it's encoded as interlaced . It's the content that matters most.

All 25p PAL DVD's are 25p in 50i stream, so all will show up as "interlaced" in mediainfo

[manono]

Right. So, have a look in something that doesn't deinterlace - VDubMod or perhaps a player with the deinterlacer turned off. I use either VDubMod or MediaPlayerClassic-HC for these things. Scroll to a place with motion and advance a frame at a time. If you don't see interlacing, it's not interlaced. Almost all PAL DVDs have been encoded as interlaced. But that's only how they're encoded and says nothing about the source. Like pdr, I suspect your source is progressive. If you don't know how to tell, upload a small 10 second piece of it for us to have a look.

The best way to be sure of interlace/progressive is with your eyes.

[takearushfan]

Okay. Here's the 10-second clip.

[manono]

Oh, I see. You have problems. It's phase shifted and does show interlacing. But realigning the fields makes even more obvious another problem - the chroma is messed up in a lot of it. You get 'color outside the lines'. Anyway, this fixes it pretty well:

TFM(Clip2=Nnedi3,Chroma=True)

Because the deinterlacer is used so much, this script uses NNEDI3 in place of TIVTC's built in deinterlacer for a better quality result. It also slows the encoding. If you're happy with the job the included deinterlacer does, then remove the 'Clip2=Nnedi3'.

In spite of all that, it was shot on film and then speeded up to 25fps for PAL. Do the TFM thing first, to make it progressive, before resizing it for NTSC.

[takearushfan]

Okay. That did make it look much better. Can you please tell me which plugin contains MPEG2Source? I had to use AviSource because it didn't detect the plugin that allows for MPEG2Source. Also, I don't know what caused this but I now am receiving an error that "MSVCP70.dll" is missing. So fun when an error pops up and you have no idea why.

[jagabo]

DgMpegDec

[takearushfan]

Arg. This is something that used to happen to me on my old computer and now it's happening again. Sometimes MPEG2Source will use the d2v fine. Other times it'll say that it can't open it. The times when it does/doesn't work both have the exact same line in the avs script. It almost seems like a fluke. "I'll open it this time" or "I'm not in the mood, error!".

[takearushfan]

I don't know why these are occurring:


[Attachment 8666 - Click to enlarge]


[Attachment 8665 - Click to enlarge]

Please help :/

[takearushfan]

UPDATE:
1. The error with opening the file has been resolved. It helps to specify the necessary parameters when scripting what I want to DO with the file.
2. So far I no longer receive the MSVCP.dll issue. It helps to download the dll and save it to my System32 directory. However, the key words are "So far". I might receive that error again. Though VDub and VDubMod seem fine for the time being.

[jagabo]

It's annoying that many programs don't ship with the Microsoft libraries that they require. I have a collection of old MS dll files archived for that reason. Yes, you just need to copy them to your C:\Windows\System32 folder. Or C:\Windows\SysWOW64 folder in the case of 32 bit programs on 64 bit Windows.

[takearushfan]

Well, "seem fine for the time being" has come back to bite me on the arse. I still don't have the missing dll error, which is great. But the problem with opening the d2v is back. I don't understand what the problem is. If (theoretically) I have a folder called "Test", with the avs script in there, along with "EXAMPLE.dv2" and the demuxed file. Why does the following error on me:

MPEG2Source("EXAMPLE.d2v", CPU=2, UpConv=1)

? ... I can't even get the file to open!

[jagabo]

Did you move any of the files from or to another folder? By default the D2V file references the original MPG/VOB file by its full path name. And remember the D2V file is just an index. The MPG/VOB file must still be available for the actual video stream to be retrieved.

[manono]

What's the error message? Did you move things after creating the D2V? Open the D2V in Notepad to see if the paths look OK. Did DGIndex from which you made the D2V come from the same DGMPGDec package as the DGDecode.dll? There's are lots of possible reasons. Do you have GKnot installed? If so, see if the D2V opens in that.

If that's the only line in the script, use a LoadPlugin line to also explicitly load the DGDecode.dll and also use the full path for the D2V (although I don't guess it should be necessary, but I always do it).

[sanlyn]

I have that "can't open file" with .d2v now and then myself. It's almost always a matter of something concerning the .d2v or the file itself having been "moved" (I have some d2v's on external drives. The drive will have a different drive letter assigned, depending on which PC I connect it to.). And sometimes the message is just "there", a year later, for no apparent reason. Just don't let paranoia set in.

[takearushfan]

Hi all. Yes, it was my mistake. I noticed after my frustration that I had moved the VIDEO_TS folder... duh.

[jagabo]

Hi all. Yes, it was my mistake. I noticed after my frustration that I had moved the VIDEO_TS folder... duh.

DgIndex has an option not to use the full pathname in the D2V file. That way you can move everything to a different folder and it will still work. Disable: Options -> Use Full Paths.

[takearushfan]

Cool. I haven't tried it yet but I unchecked the option the instant I read your post. Thanks for the heads-up

[takearushfan]

Okay. Here's something I've never done, so I apologize in advance if it's a stupid question but...
Rather than having the script open in VDub/VDubmod, which only lets me save AVIs, is there a way to use the script to create a new MPEG-2, after the script has altered it?

[jagabo]

HcEnc and HcGUI accept AVS scripts.

[takearushfan]

HcEnc and HcGUI accept AVS scripts.

Nice! This works like a charm; exactly what I needed. Thanks a ton