A guide for conversion of OLD NOISY tapes to XVCD/XSVCD

[hitechjunkie]

i know this is an older thread, but didn't see any sense in starting a new one for the same topic.

i captured the movie "The Emperor's New Groove" from satellite last night, coax into ATI TV Wonder, vdub, 352x480, 29.97fps, picvideo mjpeg quality 17, two fields. now, when loading the avi into vdub for frameserving into tmpgenc, i enabled smart deinterlacer filter and tried cleaning up some of the "noise" with other filters.

i don't remember seeing "smart smoother" in vdub, but the filter that seemed to cleanup the noise best was the "3x3 average" filter and i then added the "sharpen", "resize" and frameserved to TMPGEnc, started encoding and walked away.

after some time, i checked back and checked the preview frames, enlarged it and noticed i still had some noise, picture was blurry and i was not happy at all with what i was seeing, so i stopped the encode and frameserving. i removed the "3x3 average" and "sharpen" filters in vdub, started up the frameserving and started playing around with the settings and filters in TMPGEnc. that was when i discovered what a terrific job the "noise filter" seemed to be able to do to my relatively noisy video. with the settings at 100,1,20 (top to bottom), it appeared to clean up the noise almost entirely on a frame by frame basis. i am currently re-encoding the entire film now this way.

i've noticed that most of the posters here tend to use some filter before TMPGEnc (VCR, vdub) to clean up the noise.

is there some sort of problem with the "noise filter" in TMGEnc that i am not aware of?

[hitechjunkie]

just read up on "smart smoother" which sounds like an incredible filter. i have downloaded it and will try it out tonight with vdub, instead of using TMPGEnc's noise filter, and maybe save me some encoding time...

[WMike]

I use the smart smoother and dynamic noise reduction filters on old videos with great results. The smart smoother does significantly increase processing time however.

Mike

[mazinz]

i wrote up an article on tmpg and filters since i get asked that question a lot. Hope this helps some of you out. Their still is some typos in it but you will get the idea--thanks


FILTERS AND TMPG
OK, I have recieved a lot of email asking about this, so although i will try to keep this as brief and to the point as possible, in the end it will still be up to you as to what to set the filters to.
The main filter i use in Tmpg is the noise filter, as this can virtually wipe out any video noise you may encounter, making your clip look that much better. Although be warned using the filter on too high a setting can cause your picture to get blurry and may add noise to the picture instead.
Here is the settings i generally use, as i have done quite a bit of testing clips over and over with filters. My main PC was destroyed so i have not made anything in a while. The last version of Tmpg i had, had the noise filter broken into 3 small sections (still, range, and time axis). I am assuming they are still going by these names, if not then the "still" was the top setting, "range" was the middle setting, and "time-axis" was the bottom setting. Whatever number i made the "still" setting, i kept the "time axis" setting the same, with the range being the variable. ALSO their is a "high quality" box just under the 3 settings-- make sure you check this off to give it that extra boost for your picture. AND make sure the "enable filter" box is checked as well
OK, Breaking this down a little more--
1: if your clip is extremely good quality(aka dvd rip or somewhere in that area--NO filters are needed
2: if your clip looks pretty good-very good, i would set the filters to the following: STILL-between 1-8, RANGE-1, TIME AXIS-between 1-8
3: if your clip looks half way good-decent, i would set the filters to the following: STILL- between 1-8, RANGE-2, TIME AXIS- 1-8
4: if your clip looks ok-poor: STILL 1-4, RANGE-3, TIME AXIS -1-4
5: if your clip looks fair-below: STILL 1-3, RANGE 3-4, TIME AXIS -1-3

Again that is pretty much how i set the filters in a nutshell. What i noticed happens when you make the filters too high(lets say for still/time and making them 20 or higher) It caused more noise in my picture and it can "soften" then pic too much that it will make it look worse. Also in darker lit scenes when the filter is sometimes too high it will show up highly in the background and this is something you do not want. the RANGE pretty much is the main setting. If you use that high, you will not need to use a high number for the other filters as the "range" will now cover more of the area using a stronger filter.

THE TMPG MACRO BRICK NOISE SETTING(aka soften block noise setting)
This setting on the TMPG(and it is found under the "quantize matrix" tab of tmpg) will and can reduce the "block noise" commonly associated with video cds(mainly at normal rate, but not all the time).
Again i have found with a lot of testing that if you have this feature on, i keep the intra and non intra blocks the same number. Older versions of TMPG kept the setting at 35 for both. This is a good rate to use, actually 35-40 was ok. Going higher (at least from what i found) resulted in extra block noise that i did not want.
ALSO while under the "quantize matrix" tab, click on the "floating point dct" box, this will help produce a better picture for you.
FOR HIGRATES/XVCDS/SVCDS - i never really use the soften macro noise filter, as the bitrate is high enough to compensate for any brick noise that would have been made using the normal rate vcd setting.
ALSO i did not use this filter for anything with the quality of a dvd rip.

TMPG AND ANIMATED FEATURES
This is pretty interesting, for this section take everything i have mentioned above and throw it out of the window!!! For some odd reason on more bland drawn cartoons with not many details(ex GI.JOE, The Simpsons,
the older Transformers cartoons, etc) if you come close to blasting each of the noise filters, it actually made the picture look 100 times better then what i ran in!!! I could not believe it. I would set the STILL and TIME settings anywhere from 80-100, and the range 3-4. Macro blocknoise close to 100(but its still ok to leave this at 35, as i found out later the close to 100 setting isnt needed for it). My clips became very vibrant and rich in color, some minor detail was lost, but it made the picture look as if i just taped it from a high source and not taken from 14-16 year old Beta/ex rental tapes--to put it simply, it looked better thne the original!!! Again blasting the filters like this only seems to benefit older cartoons.
ANIMATED features with a lot of detail (ex Akira, ghost in the shell, heavy metal,etc) i would follow the settings i mentioned above that i use for movies, as blasting the filters with these types of animated cartoons will cause it to look like havoc.

Have fun!!! Hope this helps some of you out, remember despite it being a hassle, constant testing will let you know what settings are right for you. thanks again!!--Doug

[hitechjunkie]

<TABLE BORDER=0 ALIGN=CENTER WIDTH=85%><TR><TD><font size=-1>Quote:</font><HR size=1 color=black></TD></TR><TR><TD><FONT SIZE=-1><BLOCKQUOTE>
On 2001-07-24 19:04:45, WMike wrote:
I use the smart smoother and dynamic noise reduction filters on old videos with great results. The smart smoother does significantly increase processing time however.

Mike
</BLOCKQUOTE></FONT></TD></TR><TR><TD><HR size=1 color=black></TD></TR></TABLE>

on my 350mhz system, adding the "noise reduction" in tmpgenc, doubled my encoding times. is this the same case using "smart smoother" in vdub?

<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: hitechjunkie on 2001-07-25 08:33:17 ]</font>

[hitechjunkie]

just wanted to add that i set "noise reduction" in TMPGEnc to 100 for a Disney movie i had just captured from satellite->coax->ati tv wonder, picvideo mjpeg quality 16, 352x480, two-fields. i guess the quality setting of 16 introduced a lot of noise, but using "noise reduction" at max cleaned it up really, really well!!

i was so excited about how well "noise reduction" worked that i tried it on an avi i captured from DVcamcorder->composite->ati tv wonder, huffyuv, 352x480 two-fields, but i was surprised to see that it made absolutely no difference, even at its highest setting. after some thought, i realized that the quality of this avi clip was 1) from a much cleaner source, DV, and 2) compressed with a lossless codec, so there was no "noise" to clean up.

i just keep learning new stuff everyday!! i love this hobby!!

[WMike]

hitechjunkie,

All things being roughly equal, I notice somewhere from a 30-50% increase in processing time when I use the smart smoother. However, on movies I really care about, it's worth the time to me.

Mike

[PNPman]

MAZINZ, re: TMPG AND ANIMATED FEATURES you wrote.
I tried it on a couple of simple anime openings i had. Not to razz you but i found its effects to be more blur, darker, & considerable loss of detail. I don't think the colors are anymore vibrant but the darkening of the picture as a whole makes the colors appear more solid. The worse thing was that it required 11 hours to encode a 25min divx to SVCD.
I would suggest using the basic color correction filter and no motion search instead.

In general I use:
Basic Color correction:
Contrast: 20
Red: 25
Blue: 25

and on the Quantisize Matrix Tab enable No motion search ....

You can play around with the settings i find these to be the best without distorting the original color or detail. The only problem is that block noise in the original is brought out somewhat more by the contrast.

[Horrorking]

nsdn,

What sort of Lexoxx are you using - I have a 9000, and have not ventured into XVCD, but have had no luck at all with standard SVCD formats in this player.

(and Hi to another Aussie

David

[Tony Yip]

Concerning that Smart Smoother filter people have been talking about.

I'm already using the Dynamic Noise Reduction filter. Is the Smart Smoother
the same type of filter or can I use both filters?

If I use both filters, is there an order I should use them?

Also, are the default parameters (5, 25) sufficient for the Smart Smoother filter?

[WMike]

The filters are different.

I use both DNR and SS together, with the DNR first. I adjust the settings according to the quality of the source. Experiment around with it and find what looks best to you.

[nsdn]

Sorry not read this thread for some time, been busy encoding

To the question about the Lennox player, yup I have found it plays anything...XVCD, XSVCD up to about 3500M/sec. Bought it at target for 420 bucks...(AUD=about 230 USD)

The smart smoother filter is done by donald graff ( I think thats how u spell his name) and yep its a great filter...and i really did not find it slowed the encoding process much at all......however using noise reduction in tmpge doubled the encode time.

However interestingly I have ended up dumping all of my filters entirely because i found they always took away that bit of sharpness from the picture...and I really wanted to conserve the original as much as possible. One filter I did find that I would like to have more time to play with can be found at http://flaxen.dynip.com/vdf/ this one is designed specifically for filtering VHS tapes however I did find it slowed the encoding process considerably and it takes up heaps of memory. It has a noise reduction, chroma and luminance stabilisers and a sharpener. The limited trial I did with it found that again the noise reduction made the picture softer....then the sharpener negated the benifits.....but it does look like a good filter and warrants a better look.

What I ended up finding was the best configuration.....was using AVI_IO (I paid for it) and using the main concept DV codec....u can capture analogue in DV using this codec in AVI_IO I am not sure if u can make this work with virtual dub or not...i think not.....cuz the codec won't come up on the list. The disadvantage of using this codec is it uses tons of disk space...because it captures in full DV resolution, 720*576 for PAL.....I have a dedicated 20gig drive and I barely get 1 hr and 30 minutes...which is actually ok because most video 8 tapes are that long.....VHS yeah I had to do two captures....U do however need a pretty quick machine to do this....I am not sure where the limitation is..capture card or Machine....but my machine is a 1.2gig athlon with 256Meg ram....and I have to make sure i have everything closed and have done a fresh restart, have preview OFF....or i get the odd line (not frame) drop out of the capture...weird....looks like tape dropout on the output...but its not.

NB I am using the trial version of the DV codec and it does put a mainconcept logo in the top left hand side of the picture, but once u have encoded it and play it back on the TV, because all TV's underscan so much, u can only just see the very tip of it....and its simply not worth paying for it to get rid of it. Also for some reason when i do a DV (firewire) capture it is not there.....don't know why but its good

What is also very important is to set your chroma (colour), brightness and contrasts conservatively on your capture card....I found this had a huge bearing on the quality of the capture....and hence ability to encode a successful MPEG...the default levels on my analogue capture card were way too high...and introduced a lot of noise.

Then I frameserver directly into TMPGE using virtual dub...no filters at all....make sure that the input is is set at interlace.....output is set to 352*288 for PAL NON INTERLACED....I did not find any advantage in using higher resolutions for the MPEG encode, or using interlaced output...in fact I tryed several variations.....352*576 etc....did not make any difference......in fact it looked worse...(went through the field swapping bit da da da), got a fairly good result at standard SVCD 480*576 interlaced output but then....because i was encoding higher res the blocks came back with noisy segments...and 352*288 non interlaced looked much the same resolution wise but no blocks (can't invent resolution anyway).

I am still sticking with 2500 M/sec although with the current configuration i think i could go to 2000 without much visible degredation...i see no blocks at all @2500 even in very noisy parts of the tape (CCD noise)..... its home video and disks are cheap...plus....i like keeping the menu page to a single page and i can only get 8 chapters using nero before it flips to a second menu page....i am now encoding MPEG2, The only thing i use in TMPGE is clip and use the source range to make my individual chapter files...and with the addition of the scandata.dat file....my picture searches work fine on the lennox dvd. I do not even have to deinterlace, it seems to do it automatically when u select non-interlace for encode mode....and the result clearly includes both fields....I did try deinterlacing first with virtual dub prior to frameserving to Tmpge but found the result was better if i didn't...I must admit i did not try tmpge's deinterlace....mmmjust for completness I tryed tmpge's deinterlace last night...and it made no differance..so I assume when u select non-interlace out it does do a deinterlace automaticly...

I am nearly 1/2 done now with my archiving (after writing about 15 disks) and am finally happy with the results....when DVD writables become cheap enough I can reduce this collection considerably...

Hope all of this is helpfull...

<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: nsdn on 2001-08-14 21:08:35 ]</font>

<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: nsdn on 2001-08-15 21:02:15 ]</font>