Smooth or Sharpen: When do you use each?

[perdomot]

I've been reading the guides for Avisynth about these two filters but I'm not sure when I should use each one. Can you use them both if, for example, the smoother is set to high and you want to sharpen lines? Somebody who speaks both English and Techie would be very appreciated if they can help with this. Thanks.

[DJRumpy]

Of course you can. The effect your going for will work. Just soften the video first, before applying the Sharpen filter (order them appropriately in your script). I would suggest you leave the Sharpen command at less than or equal to .5 (I usually don't go above .3). At higher settings, too many artifacts seem to be noticable. Be prepared for a huge imact on conversion time. Both of these filters are cpu intensive.

[perdomot]

DJ:
I use the MSharpen filter with these settings:
MSharpen(15,100,true,false,false)
What do you use to sharpen that uses a .3 or .5 setting?

[Truman]

DJ:
I use the MSharpen filter with these settings:
MSharpen(15,100,true,false,false)
What do you use to sharpen that uses a .3 or .5 setting?

the internal Avisynth Sharpen filter.

[DJRumpy]

Yep. Here's the syntax info:

Blur / Sharpen
Blur(clip,amount)
Sharpen(clip,amount)

These are simple 3x3-kernel blurring and sharpening filters. The largest allowable argument for Blur is about 1.58, which corresponds to an even 3x3-pixel blur. A value of 1.0 gets you a (1/4,1/2,1/4) kernel. If you want a large-radius Gaussian blur, I recommend chaining several copies of Blur(1.0) together. (Anybody remember Pascal's triangle?)

Negative arguments to Blur actually sharpen the image, and in fact Sharpen n is just an alias for Blur -n. The smallest allowable argument to Blur is -1.0, and the largest to Sharpen is 1.0.

[perdomot]

Is the internal filter better than the Don Graft one? I got the impression that his filters were superior to the built in ones. Any comments?

[DJRumpy]

I generally find his filters are better, but quality is a subjective thing. Alot of his filters are also just ports of the VirtualDub filters. Your source is also important. Each filter has a use, and not all uses will fit your video. Try them all, to see which one you like. I often use any combination, as long as I get the affect I'm looking for.