The best way to remove grain?

[FatalX]

I have a VOB file here, which is MPEG2 at the core, and it is ridiculously grainy and it looks really dirty, and I was wondering what the best method was to remove the grain?

I know that I'm most likely going to have to re-encode the video, so I'd like the option that gives the smallest amount of quality loss, preferably unnoticable.

[poisondeathray]

There is no "best" way , removing grain is destructive and how much to remove is purely subjective

You can try various filters e.g. neat video , avisynth has dozens of noise removal plugins, vdub also...

If you post a sample clip, maybe some people can offer specific suggestions

[FatalX]

There is no "best" way , removing grain is destructive and how much to remove is purely subjective

You can try various filters e.g. neat video , avisynth has dozens of noise removal plugins, vdub also...

Well, if it's destructive to convert the file, are there any filters I could use on media player classic to remove the grain while the video is being played?

[poisondeathray]

Well any re-encoding is destructive in the truest sense of the word, it's a deviation from the original

But often you can improve the subjective quality with filters . Have a look at the restoration forum for some examples. If you want specific suggestions, you will need to post a sample clip (there are different kinds of noise, and different filters for them)

You won't get realtime playback with high quality grain removal tools - they are very cpu intensive analyzing temporal motion . But you could try some low quality ones in ffdshow , or even playback an .avs script

[manono]

Grain removal is 'destructive' no matter if you reencode or use the filter while playing the video. "Destructive' in this context means you'll lose some detail, how much depending on the filter you use and how strongly you apply it. The best ones are quite slow and can't be used for real-time playback. There are plenty of fast ones, though, that can applied during playback. But then the quality of their grain removal isn't as good as compared to the slower ones.

As suggested, post a sample.

Oops, too late.

[jagabo]

Many graphics cards have noise filters you can apply to any video during playback. See the advanced settings for your graphics card.

You're largely screwed if your video is already MPEG encoded. Ideally, any noise reduction should be done before MPEG compression.

[budwzr]

Grain from low light can be improved by adjusting gamma, VirtDub has that.

What I do with crappy video that has otherwise good content is pick out the very best parts, make a sequence of them, and then make a "goof" of it, like a cartoon or something.