VHS captures and Noise Reduction

[perdomot]

Thanks to everybody who responded to my noise reduction in TMPEG but something confuses me. Several people mentioned using Avisynth and VDub but I thought most artifacts occurred when you compressed the video into mpeg1 format. I capture from my vcr at 352 X 480 using the Huffyuv codec and I don't notice much in the way of blocks or artifacts before I convert to mpeg1 with TMPEG. I use Avisynth to inverse telecine the video but that's about it for processing. Can the folks using Avisynth and Vdub put down the filters and settings they're using when they do their encoding? Thanks again.

[txpharoah]

MPEG1 is lossy. Why not use CVD, SVCD or true DVD with MPEG2?

[perdomot]

My current dvd player only plays vcd or xvcd which is what I'm usually making since I can raise the bitrate to improve the image. I'm not familiar with CVD and I can't make DVDs since I only have a CDRW burner.

[txpharoah]

My concerns are that you may be confusing artifacts with noise.

Noise can somewhat be removed, but the MPEG1 artifacts would normally cover-up the noise and actually could do more harm than good to remove noise, as it may blur the image so mch that the MPEG1 macroblocks become worse. Then again, maybe not. I'd have to see your source to give a truly fair assessment of the situation.

[snowmoon]

I use a combo of filters that eats CPU cycles, but kills noise dead. It's also been tuned to prevent visible smearing.

This assumes you have AVIsynth 2.08 or 2.5.2 with loadpluginex.dll and that all plugins have already been loaded.

Plugins I use:
- GuavaComb ( needs loadpluginex.dll under 2.5 )
- PeachSmoother ( "" )
- FluxSmooth
- Decomb - you already have
- Dup - optional

First things first I do a...

GuavaComb(mode="NTSC")

or on cartoons

GuavaComb(cartoon,mode="NTSC",activation=100,recal l=1)

Then I do a ...

Fluxsmooth(spatial_threshold=-1)

or for cartoons

Fluxsmooth(spatial_threshold=4)

Then I run it through telecide/decimate

Telecide(order=1,guide=1,post=4,vthresh=45,hints=t rue) # note 2.5 syntax yours may be different
Decimate()

Then finally

PeachSmoother(NoiseReduction = 20, Stability = 22, Spatial = 100)

or for cartoons

PeachSmoother(NoiseReduction = 20, Stability = 25, Spatial = 100)

Optionally you can also run a very low threshold dup with blend to finish off cartoons.

Overall this produces excellent results with a minimal of problems. It will require tweaking to your level of noise and quality thresholds, but when I use them for SVCD I have amazing results.

Good luck

[perdomot]

Well, I do have the Peach smoother and tried it on a movie. Seems to be a bit better but I was using a 2125 bitrate for my XVCD. Thanks for the input.