Enhancing some films in HD video

[carlmart]

In DVD days, when films started being captured, sometimes the job was not done with the proper copy.

In old films particularly, it was impossible to find the negative, which would be the best way to accomplish it.

Avisynth came to the help, with very effective and subtle filters, that gave new life to many films.

I wonder what programs or tools are now available to do the same with HD video.

As I use pro tools sometimes, particularly Avid Media Composer, I know that might be a way to do it.

But it takes much longer, takes a lot of space and the best tools to work, like After Effects, I'm not familiar with.

So I would like to know what could be tried and see if it is what I'm looking for. An "HD avisynth" I would call it.

[Cornucopia]

As a video processing frame server, AVISynth is still valuable.
However, it is not fully keeping up with changes in HD video (or more correctly, digital cinema) technology - it lacks straightforward support for >8bit/color channel encoding (10bit, 12bit, 16bit, 32bit/HDR/float), >color gamut (rec2020), >HD resolutions (UHD & 4k, 8k). It also isn't optimized for 64bit cross-platform use, nor is it designed as a more standardized, object-oriented script format (XML variant?). So there are areas in much need of improvement. AVISynth 3.0 and VaporSynth, etc were attempts to rectify this, but they seem to have stalled.
Hopefully somebody with great coding skills can take up the mantle and give us a true 21st Century processor.

IIWY, I'd start learning AE.

Scott

[KarMa]

it lacks straightforward support for.....>HD resolutions (UHD & 4k, 8k).

I don't know about 8k as I have never tried but avisynth certainly supports 4K. Don't see why it wouldn't do 8K.

[SameSelf]

As a video processing frame server, AVISynth is still valuable.
However, it is not fully keeping up with changes in HD video (or more correctly, digital cinema) technology - it lacks straightforward support for >8bit/color channel encoding (10bit, 12bit, 16bit, 32bit/HDR/float), >color gamut (rec2020), >HD resolutions (UHD & 4k, 8k). It also isn't optimized for 64bit cross-platform use, nor is it designed as a more standardized, object-oriented script format (XML variant?). So there are areas in much need of improvement. AVISynth 3.0 and VaporSynth, etc were attempts to rectify this, but they seem to have stalled.
Hopefully somebody with great coding skills can take up the mantle and give us a true 21st Century processor.

IIWY, I'd start learning AE.

Scott

egads! methinks you might have offended the Avisynth gods with that post. LOL!

I agree with everything you said with one small exception. Avisynth 3.0 and vapoursynth have "stalled" because the people with great coding skills are convinced Avisynth is 110% adequate and have sabotaged efforts to move forward. As I was recently reminded by one user here, "Avisynth is not responsible for your user errors." And if that doesn't work, useless answers like the one above abound. So I don't think we'll ever see a 21st century equivalent of Avisynth. Fortunately, it doesn't matter a whole lot. Avisynth is a quaint tool, nice to have around when dealing with legacy formats (e.g. interlaced content). But with the rise of non-commercial versions of tools like Nuke, Fusion, Resolve, etc., there is really no need to wait around anymore. Plus, all those features you listed demand sophisticated hardware. Do you really imagine a day when something like Avisynth will fully support a 10-bit+ color managed workflow to a 1:1 calibrated monitor?

[carlmart]

it lacks straightforward support for.....>HD resolutions (UHD & 4k, 8k).

I don't know about 8k as I have never tried but avisynth certainly supports 4K. Don't see why it wouldn't do 8K.

Three questions:

1) What program do you use to see the effect of each filter? In the past I used AvsP, but now I have forgotten everything about it.

2) What program do you load the script in for processing? For DVD I used HCenc.

3) Which are the forums that discuss Avisynth questions, besides Videohelp?

[davexnet]

I like Virtualdub for testing the script; you can press f2 while loaded to reflect any changes made to the script ...

Videohelp.com is probably the best for general purpose Q's about Avisynth, however, forum.doom9.org is where most of the real technical info and discussion is.
The program you use to load the script for processing is up to the user. HCenc is good for mpeg2 only.

[carlmart]

I haven't done much with Virtualdub, and the times that I did it was not as straightforward as AvsP.

Which would be the HD equivalent for the HCenc?

[jagabo]

Which would be the HD equivalent for the HCenc?

HcEnc can handle 1920x1080. But most people encoding HD video will be using an h.264 or h.265 encoder. I use the command line version of x264 (via a batch file) to encode my scripts. I just drag and drop the AVS file onto the batch file.