Removing budget DV-Camcorder noise w/ VDub and AviSynth

[Raga]

The subject line pretty much says it all. Video footage shot with budget camcorders (in my case, Samsung SC-D103) tends to get grainy under less than optimal lighting conditions, and in general indoors.

Tips on cleaning this up with VirtualDub and / or AviSynth? Also, tips on avoiding it to begin with?

[Safesurfer]

I found this guide pretty useful, but don't expect miracles.

http://arstechnica.com/guides/tweaks/cleaning.ars/1

[vhelp]

I would not filter it at all. But you didn't say what your target goal is.

Is it 352 x 480 or 720 x 480 resolution you want.

Home footage should never be buchered to 352 x 480 and filtered.
Instead, you should use 720 x 480 and use a high bitrate. At 60 minutes,
you should be able to get that 1 hour's worth onto a signle DVD-r disk
usinb a CBR of 9000 as your bitrate.
.
Using a multi-pass encoding process (IMO) is not enough. Specially since
you are stuck w/ some low-light scenes to begin with.

You don't want to take away the detail from your video. You want to keep it.

I don't know who or how or when it all got started that you *have* to filter
such videos. Just like VHS. They teach you that you *have* to filter it,
when in fact, you *don't* have to. You just have to use a higher
bitrate, and if it takes/requires to disks, then so be it.

But, FWIW.., can you upload a pic or two of those low-light scenes. I'd be
interested in seeing what different people call or consider low-light
footage.

I've encoded lots of (what I call) low-light footage, and w/ great results.
Bottom line.., is something like this.. you might need a video tune-up.
(ie, codecs; encoding methods, etc)

-vhelp

[lordsmurf]

His camera goes grainy in low light. Pretty self explanatory, and a very common problem with many cameras. The simple fix it use more light or get a better camera. But that won't help fix what has already been shot.

Simple: Noise reduction filters.

VirtualDub has several, some come with it. AVISynth does too. I use TMPGENC for noise reduction, works well.

I'd expand further... but I've got to go for now....

I'll try to help a bit more when I come back, if somebody hasn't beat me to it....

[Raga]

The target and goal: 720x480 deinterlaced video, XviD packed to 3000kbps or so, with as much of the noise removed as possible.

And for the solution from lordsmurf -- LOL yes, I figured that'd be the best solution in the long term. However, (1) in filming public events, people wouldn't probably much appreciate if I started pointing lights at them, and (2) buck$ on short supply atm.

I figured as much, noise filters, but was hoping people might have specific recommendations. There seem to be quite a few noise removal filters out there.

Two screenshots attached.

[tdan]

I have had good luck with PeachSmoother on some low-light noisy Video8 captures. You can find it easily with Google.

[lordsmurf]

That's a minor problem. Lucky you! Pretty much any noise reduction filter can get that little bit of noise.

[BSR]

For V-dub, try 2D Cleaner by jim Casaburi for spatial filtering and Temprol Smoother for temperal(time) filtering.

Play around with the settings and see what you like.

XVID at 3000Kbs, WOW that's high(I think).
I do most XVIDs at 950-1000kbs 2pass. This is video from a camcorder, so you probably would want to go higher, but 3K seems overkill. Try Target Quantizer of 3 or so. I think you'll get smaller files with just as good a quality.

Also when I convert to XVID, I use square pixels to keep the aspect ratio at 4:3 on the computer no matter what program I use to view it.
I.E. I would convert my 720x480 to 640x480 or 512x384(for smaller file).

Good Luck.

[Raga]

PeachSmoother didn't do much good there. I played around with a couple of filters, but the best I got was no noise and totally smeared edges. I couldn't find a solution, not yet anyway, that would just clean it up and leave the image somewhat pleasant to look at. PeachSmoother, they say, is good -- however it didn't seem to do much at all on this. Suggested settings?

Re 3000kbps, I like to keep high quality originals, yet I don't have the space to store them all as DV or some of those lossless codecs.

Going off topic for a second, someone please explain this Quantizer thing with XviD, I understand CBR totally, and Quality somewhat. That, however, has been a bit of a mystery I never bothered to look into.

[lordsmurf]

Try TMPGENC yet?

[Raga]

Wouldn't care to crunch the video through MPEG... Ideally I'd have a single AVS file with all the stuff in it that it takes.

However I seem to be running into some issues there. For example, DGBob for some weird reason makes the audio lag behind... Ended up deinterlacing with VDub filters instead.

[BSR]

Quantizer is like a Constant Quality setting used in TMPGenc. It's 1 pass and only allocates more bitrate to a scene if its needed. Hence fast motion=higher bitrate, slow motion=lowerbitrate.
Quantizer 1 is like 100% quality.

Try TMPGENC yet?

TMPGEnc has very good filters also and you can see the results right on the screen as you change the settings. I usually use a setting of 5,1,5 up to 10,1,10.(I like light filtering). But you can also try a setting of 20,2,20 for more filtering.
Don't check High quality checkbox unless you want to triple your encoding time. I havn't seen a difference in quality to warrant this being used.

[jimmalenko]

TMPGEnc's filters are good ..... at the price of (IMO) excessive times. Look in the guides section for a guide written by FulciLives that uses Convolution3D via AVISynth and can be fed into TMPGEnc. I swear by it for it's results, and the speed at which it does it is a handy bonus as well.

[gastorgrab]

TMPGEnc's filters are good ..... at the price of (IMO) excessive times. Look in the guides section for a guide written by FulciLives that uses Convolution3D via AVISynth and can be fed into TMPGEnc. I swear by it for it's results, and the speed at which it does it is a handy bonus as well.

I found it so easy to use turned that info into a VirtualDubMod *.AVST template.

#ASYNTHER DV to DVD
#
# LoadPlugin("ReInterpolate411.dll")
# LoadPlugin("Convolution3d.dll")
#
[AVISource("%f")]
# Put Trims Here
#
# ConvertToYUY2(interlaced=true)
ReInterpolate411()# Colorspace is YUY2
#
SeparateFields()
odd=SelectOdd.Convolution3D(1,6,10,6,8,2.8,0)
evn=SelectEven.Convolution3D(1,6,10,6,8,2.8,0)
Interleave(evn,odd)
Weave()# Bottom Field First (all even lines)
#
# DoubleWeave.SelectOdd()# Top Field First (all odd lines)
#
ConvertToRGB24(interlaced=true)# For TMPGEnc