Video Sharpening and...

[tommy2010]

Hi Guys,

I'm new to the forum so please bare with me.

Can someone recommend a good quality video sharpening tool? My goal here is to sharpen the demuxed m2v file from a backed up DVD and then mux it back up. I know how to do all that but am having trouble finding a tool where I could do the sharpening part of it.

Secondly, forgive me for trying to knock two birds with one stone here but can someone also recommend a good program for converting Ac3 files to other formats such as WAV or AIFF. I am having problems with the 5.1 audio from my Sony HD cam when importing into Premiere Pro CS4. It has clicks and pops all over the place even though the source file is clean. Besides the camera it also sounds clean when playing it using VLC but as soon as I import into Premiere clicks appear.

Thanks in advance,
Tom

[guns1inger]

AVI Demux or virtualdub or avisynth for sharpening. AVI Demux can encode back to mpeg-2, virtualdub or avisynth would require frameserving to an external encoder (HCEnc is good).

[lordsmurf]

Remember that sharpening adds aliasing an can increase inherent noise/artifact noise.
There are also varying types of enhancement, such as edge correction method.

This should be in the restoration forum.

[redwudz]

Moving to Restoration Forum.

[jagabo]

AviSynth allows for different amounts of sharpening on the horizontal and vertical axis. As noted, simple sharpening increases noise as well sharpening. Oversharpening results in overshoot halos. Also look into edge enhancement tools (sharpening of edges without increasing noise). Generally, you can only sharpen video a small amount before other problems arise. So don't expect miracles.

[tommy2010]

Thanks guys for the quick reply!

Indeed, I'm not expecting great miracles and understand completetly about the noise increase, etc. I'm looking to apply some subtle enhancement as some DVDs that I own just look awful especially on a big screen. HD maybe king but I noticed a significant quality decrease in releases ever since studios plunged into Blu-Ray. Come on studios some of us still get DVDs!

Maybe a subjective question but from your experiences which of the tools mentioned gives the best results in your opinion?


guns1inger, you've mentioned something about frameserving? I actually have Avisynth 2.5 installed as multiAVCHD requires it but haven't used it yet as a standalone. In order for it to encode into m2v do I simply install the HCEnc or put it into the AVIsynth folder, how does that work?


jagabo, could you recommend some edge enhancement tools that you would use?


Again guys thank you for helping the noob out with your quick replies.


Cheers,
Tom