Encoding HDTV anime transport streams; need it to not look bad

[cloaknsmoke]

I have a good amount of experience encoding DVDs and BDs, but I never apply any kind of filtering to the video. My goal is to try to encode something that looks as close to the source as possible, and I feel like I accomplish this fairly well after having done many encodes.

Now I'm venturing into new territory. I want to encode some anime transport streams taken from Japanese television, but the streams I have found look terrible. For the most part, they look fine, but... well take a look.




I'll admit that I don't know much about tv capture or anything like that. I'm just getting these off the internet, so I have no control over the source. I have seen encodes of these episodes from fansub groups that look perfectly fine.

My question is would a different capture of the same program look different? Is that how fansub groups make their encodes look good? Do they just start off with a superior transport stream compared to what I can find randomly on the internet?

[jagabo]

Those are DCT ringing and blocking artifacts from too much compression. And probably a few generations of re-compression. Others are probably starting with cleaner sources.

[cloaknsmoke]

The transport stream is around 3.6 gb. I just assumed it was ripped directly from the tv and not encoded or anything. It's all I have anyway, so I'm looking into filters for deringing and deblocking. Although, when I loaded the stream in DGIndex, it didn't look anywhere near as bad as it did in MPC for some reason. There were still artifacts here and there, but much less. Maybe my player had more to do with the video quality than the video itself somehow.

[jagabo]

Although, when I loaded the stream in DGIndex, it didn't look anywhere near as bad as it did in MPC for some reason. There were still artifacts here and there, but much less. Maybe my player had more to do with the video quality than the video itself somehow.

Many player settings can effect the video. Sharpening or edge enhancement filters are likely to accentuate ringing and blocking artifacts. Choice of DirectShow output device can have an effect too -- the graphics card's renderer may have its own filters which can further exacerbate problems. I turn off all video processing features in the player and graphics card. All they do is screw up video.

It's all I have anyway, so I'm looking into filters for deringing and deblocking.

Are you familiar with AviSynth? That's were your best options are.

[cloaknsmoke]

To my knowledge, the only post processing I have on is for upscaling which I spent a while fine tuning. That shouldn't have been in effect since this was 1080 video. I tried disabling all kinds of stuff in madVR and LAV settings and nothing changed the level of ugly that was produced.

I'm very familiar with avisynth and vapoursynth. I'm looking into filters now. I was just hoping someone here knew which ones I should use.

[manono]

DGDecode itself has its own deblocking and deringing filters built in. If you decide to turn them on, though, be very careful as it's easy to overdo it and wipe out a lot of detail. Read the CPU section in the included DGDecodeManual.html.

Otherwise, you might check out Dehalo_Alpha, and Deblock_QED.