Using Virtualdub Noise Reduction Filter During Capture

[blade29]

Hello, just wondering if anyone has used the noise reduction filter during capture with Virtualdub and what you thought of the results? What settings did you use for this and type of compression for saving?

I'm looking to save some time by eliminating the need to filter out noise from my VHS captures (football games). I currently use Scenalyzer (from my VCR, through my Canopus ADVC-100, and finally through my firewire connection in my pc) to capture to AVI and CCE (version 2.67) to filter (I've used temporalsmoother, convolution3d, and dust) out noise and convert to DVD format, but this is very time consuming - 10 hours using VBR mulitipass 3X for each half (90 minutes).

I was also looking to play around with the Mainconcept MPEG Encoder program and use it's noise reduction filter and set the motion search to high to see what type of results I would get.

Anything to help reduce time, but maintain decent quality. Please let me know your suggestions and comments. Thanks.

blade29

[DVWannaB]

If you are going to use low cost tools as you mentioned, then you are going to have to use some patience. Although the ADVC 100 is as good a "low-cost" tool as there is out there. There really is no shortcut for getting the max quality out of your VHS ----> VCD/SVCD/DVD conversion.

It is recommended by the gurus not to use Virtualdub filters during capture. Vdub filters work best in a post-processing mode. If you want real-time capture and filtering then go for the $600 - $1000 Canopus, Pinnacle, etc., MPEG capture PCI hardware.

My method VHS --> VCD/SVCD/DVD:

VCR ----> ADVC 100 ----> Scenalyzer -----> HD.
Virtualdub for cutting commercials and playing with various filters, usually a combo of Dynamic Noise Reduction/Smart Smoother/Resize.
Frameserve to TMPG or Mainconcept or Ligos encoder.
Also use bitrate calculator to find out what correct encoding bitrate and leaving about 100-200 MB for menu creation.

BURN BABY!!!!!

[blade29]

Thanks for the suggestions DVWannaB. I've tried filtering with CCE to reduce noise, but it would take about 10 hours for 90 minutes of AVI video to DVD. Is filtering with Virtualdub time consuming? Would you happen to have a sample script to frameserve to the Mainconcept encoder?

blade29

[MrKGB]

blade29,
your encoding is so slow because you are using 3 pass encoding: for each pass you are running your film through the filter.
try mainconcept: it is very fast and single pass, or try tmpgenc in CQ mode, which is also single pass.
btw, i like your choice of filters, i also use conv3d and tempsmooth.
there is no way you can run filters as good as those in real time, so forget about filtering while capturing.
i never used the dust filter, is it good?

[blade29]

Thanks MrKGB. I'm going to try and frameserve with Mainconcept with the filters. Have you used Mainconcept for frameserving? If so, what settings did you use? How much of a difference does each pass for VBR make with filtering? The dust filter is nice, but is about 3 times slower than the convolution3d filter.

blade29

[MrKGB]

blade29,

i was suggesting mainconcept encoder for encoding, not for frameserving.
so you should try the following:
1. create avisynth script with your favourite filters
2. open the script using vdub
3. start vdub frameserver
4. open vdub frameserved file using mainconcept
5. encode using mainconcept

vdub is required here becasue mainconcept is not able to open avisytnth directly.

[blade29]

Thanks MrKGB. I've created my AVS script and opened it with MakeAVS, which creates a dummy AVI file which I opened with Mainconcept. Pretty handy. I'll check out Virtualdub.

blade29

[feenix]

Actually you can open Avisynth scripts in Mainconcept.

I had to add the 'convertToYV12' parameter to make it work though

[MrKGB]

feenix, thanks for suggestion!
actually i am using vdub as an extra layer also because it allows to edit video, so i can cut out commercials before sending video to encoder.

[fravel]

In the Video menu of the capture section of VirtualDub there is a noise reduction filter. You can't use it from the processing screen, so, it's for realtime noise reduction during capture. I've used it while capturing and works pretty good. But it depends on the power your computer. Make several tests with the default threshold or other settings in the slider.
Good Luck!