For the love of pixels: Denoising/degraining in AviSynth+. Please.

[VonHagenstein]

Looking for help getting ANY decent denoising/degraining working in AviSynth+.
And please excuse that this is 50% rant (not at anyone here) and 50% plea for help.

Soooo, I'm not really a newb when it comes to working with video/audio. Used Adobe stuff for a LONG time (until they finally p'd me off so much that I refuse to sub them any longer). And many other video and photography tools over the years. I work in tech and am comfortable with the fiddly, tweakable nature of many "tech" and software things. But I *am* fairly new to AviSynth+. Despite that I've picked up AviSynth+ scripting quickly and I'm able to do a lot with it. Helps that I have experience with other "scripting" and coding things.

I've went down every rabbit-hole I can find, followed every tutorial I could find, and nothing but nothing but nothing has enabled me to use ANY of the commonly referred-to and recommended denoising functions/scripts out there on interwebs. Put all the files/plugins into the folders I'm told they go in. Accounted for x86 vs. 64bit (it's 2026, of course I'm using 64 bit AviSynth+). Downloaded every dependency I think I need when I get errors related to those. Basically done "all the things" that I can find/read that I'm to do. Only to get things like "Ok great, now you have that but you STILL need THIS." "Ok thanks for adding THIS but now you need THAT.", to paraphrase. To say this has been frustrating is an understatement. It shouldn't be this hard.

I'm told such-and-such functions should already be included with certain installs of AviSynth+. Yet I get errors. Errors related to dependencies. Parameter errors with claims that such-and-such parameter doesn't exist, even when said parameters show up in AvsPmod's context bubbles when entering the values for a known plugin. (I think I know why that happens *sometimes* but not all the time.) So I don't know what I might be doing wrong, if anything. Maybe it's something stupid, but I've been pretty thorough in my R&D and troubleshooting. To no avail. Don't get me started on the state of Wiki's and documentation for some of this stuff. Despite a general knack for figuring things out this has stumped me.

So my long-winded plea is simple: Can anyone help me out with procuring what ever it is I need to use any decent denoising and degraining solutions in AviSynth+ specifically? All the files that I need in whatever folder(s) I need to put them in? Anything like that?

Because I'm either still missing something despite my best efforts or something's not working correctly. The de-noiser(s)/de-grainers don't have to work miracles, have CUDA acceleration or be best-in-class, although any of those things are welcome (RTX 3090 in the box). They just need to be adequate for my tasks at hand.

May the Laser Horn Katana of Destoroyah in his final form spare the kind soul that can help me.

"In the time you spent writing this you could have figured it out." I wish. Been at it for days now.

[Alwyn]

Ouch!

What plugin are you trying to use and what is the error message?

[jagabo]

AviSynth's error messages are usually pretty good at explaining what's wrong. Some things to keep in mind:

There are 32bit and 64 bit versions of AviSynth+. I recommend you stick with the 64 bit version unless there's a particular old plugin you need that's only available in 32 bits.

Though both 32 bit and 64 bit AviSynth+ can be installed on the same computer, 32 bit AviSynth requires 32 bit plugins and a 32 bit editor/encoder. 64 bit AviSynth requires 64 bit plugins and a 64 bit editor/encoder. Each system cannot see the other's plugins.

If you invoke AviSynth+ with a 32 bit editor/encoder you will be using 32 bit AviSynth+.

If you invoke AviSynth+ with a 64 bit editor/encoder you will be using 64 bit AviSynth+.

64 bit AviSynth's plugins go in the c:\Program Files (x86)\AviSynth+\plugins64+ folder.

Try using AviInfo to check you AviSynth installation(s). It will show you which is installed and point out many errors.

[VonHagenstein]

Ouch!

What plugin are you trying to use and what is the error message?

So, I'll try to keep this more succinct than my initial post.
I've at least tried to get both TemporalDegrain2 going (TemporalDegrain-v2.6.6.avsi), SMDegrain (v4.7.0d per the avsi) but I'd prefer to use temporal degraining/denoising tools and if I understand correctly SMDegrain is not that, but can be used in conjunction with other things. I'm confident I'll be able to sort out the actual use of whatever I get working. The problem is I can't get anything working.
Aside from the plugins/scripts themselves, my environment is:

• AviSynth+ 3.7.5 (r4289, 3.7) x64 and confirmed via the Version() function.
• AvsPmod v2.7.9.7 Windows x86-64, which I presume to indicate the 64bit ver.
• Windows 11 Pro 26H2 (normal channel not insider build etc.)

Errors: What a rabbit hole. The farthest I've gotten with TemporalDegrain2 are errors related to the mvtools2 dependency. The latest of these is "Platform returned code 126: The specified module could not be found." R&D indicated that this is usually related to the Visual Studio 2013 Runtime not being installed. It was in fact installed for other purposes. Nevertheless, I re-installed it. The error persists.

But that has been the nature of the entire experience thus far. I get an error message telling me I need this dependency or that. I install said dependency. I test both manually loading the dependencies in a script as oppossed to just trusting AviSynth+ to auto-load the contents of the "Plugins64" or "Plugins64+" folders (I've tried both, but currently the plugins reside in the "Plugins64+" folder).

I'll quote a script snippet below that fails. And I'll list out what I currently have in my Plugins64+ directory (I haven't gone crazy with plugins so there won't be too too many. But at the end of the day, all I want is to get ANY sort of temporal denoising/degraining solutions working. Doesn't have to be the ones I've listed. The bulk of footage I'm working with is progressive, not interlaced, so I was leaning away from QTGMC unless there is a compelling reason why I should use it.

I know that most of this is old software these days, and community-driven, so I don't expect the level of documentation that might exist for commercial tools, but it is mind-numbingly frustrating so far that I haven't been able to simply get a list of everything I need to get any solution working, what I might need to manually load in the script vs. what should auto-load if put in the right place etc. etc. I do understand matching x64 to x64 stuff and not trying to run x86 plugins under an x64 install and all that, as someone else indicated. It shouldn't be this hard. It might be that I'm missing something simple. Wouldn't be the first time. But daggone if I can figure out what it is. Any help is appreciated.

Script snippet (it may be that there's stuff I don't need in it):

vSrc = LWLibavVideoSource("Redacted")

# RgTools
loadPlugin("C:\Program Files (x86)\AviSynth+\plugins64+\RgTools.dll")

# MaskTools2
loadPlugin("C:\Program Files (x86)\AviSynth+\plugins64+\masktools2.dll")

# FFT3DFilter (Orig script is not "Neo" version
loadPlugin("C:\Program Files (x86)\AviSynth+\plugins64+\fft3dfilter.dll")

# FFTW
loadPlugin("C:\Program Files (x86)\AviSynth+\plugins64+\LoadDLL64.dll")
loadDll("C:\Program Files (x86)\AviSynth+\plugins64+\libfftw3f-3.dll")

# MVTools
loadPlugin("C:\Program Files (x86)\AviSynth+\plugins64+\mvtools2.dll")

# TemporalDegrain2
Import("C:\Program Files (x86)\AviSynth+\plugins64+\TemporalDegrain-v2.6.6.avsi")

Current stuff in my "Plugins64+" folder (C:\Program Files (x86)\AviSynth+\plugins64+\)
================================================== =====
Shaders (Directory)

• colors_rgb.avsi
• colors_rgb.txt
• ConvertStacked.dll
• DePan.dll
• DePanEstimate.dll
• DirectShowSource.dll
• fft3dfilter.dll
• FrameRateConverterMIX.avsi
• ImageSeq.dll
• libfftw3-3.dll
• libfftw3f-3.dll
• libfftw3l-3.dll
• LoadDLL64.dll
• LSMASHSource.dll
• LSMASHSource_indexing.exe
• masktools2.dll
• MCaWarpSharp4.avsi
• mvtools2.dll
• neo_fft3d.dll
• RgTools.dll
• SCDetectEOD.dll
• SharpenersPack.avsi
• Shibatch.dll
• SMDegrain.avsi
• TemporalDegrain-v2.6.6.avsi
• TimeStretch.dll
• VDubFilter.dll

[davexnet]

you can try running AvsInfoTool and see if it reports anything:
https://www.videohelp.com/software/Avisynth-Info-Tool

That error code may be due to missing or outdated MS VC Redist libraries, try installing the latest:
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/cpp/windows/latest-supported-vc-redist?view=msvc-170

[Alwyn]

@VonHagenstein, yes, the struggle is real!

I have all my plugins up on my website. Go here, download the plugins package zip file, unzip it and compare all my plugins with yours, particularly sizes. The plugins are in folders 4 and 5.

[jagabo]

I don't think it makes sense to both autoload all your filters and scripts (because they're in you plugins64+ folder) and then manually load them within your script. I would put all the libfft files in C:\Windows\System32 instead of manually loading them in your script.

[VonHagenstein]

I don't think it makes sense to both autoload all your filters and scripts (because they're in you plugins64+ folder) and then manually load them within your script. I would put all the libfft files in C:\Windows\System32 instead of manually loading them in your script.

I wasn't confident that they were auto-loading at the time, because when I used the AvsPmod menu to open what it thought was my defualt x64 plugin folder it wasn't opening the folder I had put them in - it was opening "plugins64" vs. "plugins64+".

Absolutely agree though that it wouldn't make sense to do both. I was just troubleshooting and trying determine what I was missing / why nothing was working.

[VonHagenstein]

@VonHagenstein, yes, the struggle is real!

I have all my plugins up on my website...

PHEW! I guess I can put away that old "head-banging-against-brick-wall" animated gif I was ready to dust off. This was of tremendous help. Thank you!
After comparing your plugins with mine, there weren't a ton of differences, but some. I don't think I had read anywhere that FFTW3 & libfftw3f-3 dll's needed to be in the System32 and SysWOW64 folders. I only had mine (or some variation of them) in my x64 plugins folder.

I also hadn't placed any plugins/dll's in the 32 bit "plugins" or "plugins+" folder. Whether that's necessary or not is still not 100% clear to me BUT I do at least have TemporalDegrain2 working now as a result (at a snail's pace, even a modern system but working nevertheless). And that hopefully gives me a decent foundation to explore getting other options working. Hopefully some GPU accelerated ones.

I won't do a full rant but yes the struggle is real. I have a decently broad technical background and experience scripting and coding in many environments, and have had my fingers in a lot of AV related pies over the years. But somehow not AviSynth(+), so this specific environment is new to me. Over those years I've noticed that many educational resources for, programming for example, often start from the perspective of "You've used this before right? Well in this you do that this way." It's often exceedingly difficult to find material that doesn't assume you already have certain knowledge or skill sets. So learning a environment that is primarily community-driven with broad quality range of "documentation" from scratch can be challenging. My accumulated technical knowledge on many topics usually helps me navigate and find solutions. But in this case no matter how far down the rabbit hole of dependencies and setup guides I went, I couldn't find a single cohesive up-to-date (whatever that means for this clearly aging software) guide or comprehensive list of everything I needed just to get a couple of plugins going. And A.I. searches often gave wildly inaccurate responses. They might be out there somewhere but they sure avoided me like the plague.

For those saying that AviSynth usually tells you what you need or what dependency you're missing for plugins... Well, I'll just agree to disagree lol. Many vague and non-specific messages about not being able to load a plugin with no explanation as to why etc. etc. But anyhow, I did say I wouldn't do a full rant, plus these are free tools of many many years now from generous coders from all over. To whom would I rant at?

fwiw, I'm doing a lot of work with old stereoscopic DV footage and photgraphy (of my own) and progressive footage from rendered computer animation frames and quite a few other interesting (to me) things. Got out my old firewire-based equipment and everything lol. It's a journey. Cheers!

[jagabo]

TemporalDegrain2 working now as a result (at a snail's pace, even a modern system but working nevertheless).

Add Prefetch(N) to the end of your script. Where N is the number of threads you want it to use. Typically the number of cores your processor has.