Avisynth denoise filters comparison (WARNING 56K MODEM!!)

[charger2000]

I'd like to show and share my testings on Avisynth denoise filters. Yesterady I've tried many filters, below you can see all the screen caps made, everyone is the result of a different filter, I won't tell "this is the best", you can judge by yourself and try to use one.

For every filter there's the encoding speed in CCE Basic, this ratio means that for every X of video duration you'll have to divide for Y encoding time (for every pass...) so : 1 hour footage will encode in 1/1,90 = 31,2 mins x 2 pass = Total time of 1H 3mins approx, without filters added, so the higher this ratio will be, the lower time will take to encode the video.

The best way to compare the caps, is to save them all on a folder, and then switch from one to another with the Picture viewer of Win XP.

The original cap without any filter, encoded with CCE with 2 pass VBR, 4.450Kbs, encoding speed = 1,90 :



the same unfiltered cap, but encoded with HC Encoder 0.17 :



ok, let's start with the filtered caps

Convolution3d (0, 6, 10, 6, 8, 2.8, 0), encoding speed = 0,60 :



Convolution3d (0, 32, 128, 16, 64, 10, 0), encoding speed = 0,50 :



Removegrain (mode=17), encoding speed = 1,60 :



DeGrainMedian (limitY=5,limitUV=7,mode=0), encoding speed = 0,47 :



DeGrainMedian (limitY=5,limitUV=7,mode=1, norow=true) : I've used this to try to remove the scratches, with no luck...



FFT3DFilter (sigma=3, sharpen=0.3, interlaced=true), encoding speed = 0,25 :, some sharpen is added



DEEN ("a3d",4,10,12), encoding speed = 0,35 :



EDEEN (), encoding speed = 0,47 : the major problem with edeen are trails and doubled shapes/outlines, of the fast moving objects



VagueDenoiser(0,0,5,0,true,true,1,true,0.5,75), encoding speed = 0,21 :



DNR2 (), encoding speed = 1,47 :

[AngusMacGyver]

That's Mika Hakkinen, isn't it?
Do you capture old F1 races from VHS? Do you convert to DVD, one race per DVD, Full D1, etc...?
Thanks.

[charger2000]

yes, I'm putting all my old VHS on DVD, this cap comes from a season review, but very soon I'll have to transfer all races from 1995 to 2003...

Nik

[AngusMacGyver]

Great!
Good luck!

[guns1inger]

Noise removal is one of those things that stills cant really do justice to. Certainly the last three are showing signs of going plastic - too smooth and featureless on the face, for example. But to really understand what the filters are doing, you need to be able to see the clip in motion. This is when trails and other artifacts make themselves known.

Interesting start though.

[The_Doman]

Very intresting..

I personally use the older DNR2 avisynth filter a lot for my VHS conversions.
Quite fast and works nice.

Also my experience is the used (DV)codec can make quite a lot of difference.
Specially with noisy VHS sources.

[fritzi93]

Thanks for that, very nice. I particularly like FFT3DFilter and have been using exactly the same setting for light sharpen and denoise... Did you by chance keep track of the added encoding time required for each filter?

[swiego]

I've tried most of the filters listed above and by far preferred NeatVideo (www.neatvideo.com) to them; unfortunately NV isn't free (640x480, 3 minutes for the trial) but I've found that some slicing and dicing lets me get by with the trial version. (I'll be more than happy to get past the inconveniences and just purchase the Pro version once they give a discount for existing NeatImage owners!)

NV seems to remove noise aggressively w/o removing any detail. It's pretty amazing. It's also incredibly slow.

[FulciLives]

A most excellent thread however please edit the original post so that ALL of the pictures are visible. I assume that some of the IMG TAGS must be incorrect because every time I try loading this thread the same 3 images do not appear.

The 3 that do not appear are as follows:

1.) Convolution3d (0, 6, 10, 6, 8, 2.8, 0)
2.) Removegrain (mode=17)
3.) DeGrainMedian (limitY=5,limitUV=7,mode=1, norow=true)

Could be my computer somehow ??? but I am guessing the original post has some IMG TAG errors thus keeping these images from loading. Make sure the IMG TAGS are correct and use the correct file names etc. then try loading these 3 pictures again.

- John "FulciLives" Coleman

[AngusMacGyver]

All images are OK here.

[charger2000]

A most excellent thread however please edit the original post so that ALL of the pictures are visible. I assume that some of the IMG TAGS must be incorrect because every time I try loading this thread the same 3 images do not appear.

..

sorry but everything is ok, very often is Imageshack fault

[charger2000]

tomorrow I'll post the video_duration/encoding_time ratio for every filter

Nik

[whitejremiah]

to me, just from the stills, the removegrain one looks the best, however i'd have to actually see em all in motion to make an accurate comparison on it....a few of them hit the point where they start to blend the colors together too much and almost blur the picture to an extent.....seems to me that the removegrain one cleaned up some of the "junk" in the upper left section of the picture while it didn't butcher the clarity of the picture too much......

[Wile_E]

Noise removal is one of those things that stills cant really do justice to. Certainly the last three are showing signs of going plastic - too smooth and featureless on the face, for example. But to really understand what the filters are doing, you need to be able to see the clip in motion. This is when trails and other artifacts make themselves known.

Interesting start though.

I use Convolution3D with Low Quality or Bad Quality presets. Even the Bad Quality preset is not really that aggressive. It smooths out everything while retaining detail. Makes it look closer to real-life instead of all noisy. I would rather lose a little detail and have it smooth, then to see all that noise jump around on screen.

Let me ask something about the "plastic" look everyone talks about. Everyone always says that too smooth of image looks "plastic". Have you looked at people in real-life recently? Do they have all that "noise" on their face that is shown in the first picture? No. Color gradation in real life is smooth, not pixelated and noisy as in the first picture.

This is a problem with analog to digital transfers. Hardware digital capture devices have a long ways to go to be perfected. I think this is more of a hardware limitation then anything else. They just don't have enough sensitivity. This is similar to current digital cameras, and their noisy CCD chips. To overcome the noisy CCD chip, cameras have built-in software to smooth everything out. The Kodak "Science Chip" digital cameras are one example. Without the post-processing that these cameras do, your pictures would look grainy.

[charger2000]

first post updated with ratio speed of every filter and DNR2 filter

[whitejremiah]

Let me ask something about the "plastic" look everyone talks about. Everyone always says that too smooth of image looks "plastic". Have you looked at people in real-life recently? Do they have all that "noise" on their face that is shown in the first picture? No. Color gradation in real life is smooth, not pixelated and noisy as in the first picture.

this is true to an extent, on the other hand, you dont want to overkill it and have your movie look like a watercolored painting, either...if you apply the filter too agressively, it can blur the picture to the point where things that shouldnt be blending with each other start doing so, i dont really think it's at that point yet with these particular samples, but the pictures that were pointed out (the last 2) are starting to hit the point where if the filters were applied any more aggressively, that may start to happen.....people may not have "noise" on their faces, however, they aren't always perfectly smooth either...after a certain point, it starts bordering on looking unnatural.....the biggest challange is finding the point where the video starts losing actual picture detail, as opposed to loosing just artificial artifacting......

[cd090580]

I've tried to test it but it seems that only VagueDenoiser work without SSE.

With vaguedenoiser, I have a 50% transparent green surface on the video.

[ronnylov]

Most of them are oversmoothed in my taste.
But I like the FFT3D picture most here because some noise are removed but it's still not too softened.

When playing back on a TV at full speed you won't see much of the noise nor the encoding artifacts even on the unfiltered encodings but you'll notice that if they are to much filtered it won't look sharp anymore and maybe a little bit unnatural also. It is a common mistake to overfilter video. You should do the comparisons on the TV when playing it back in the standalone DVD player. When there is motion the filters often produce strange artifacts which are more annoying then a little bit of noise.

But mildly applied denoising filters can make things look a little bit better.

[fritzi93]

Most of them are oversmoothed in my taste.
But I like the FFT3D picture most here because some noise are removed but it's still not too softened.

When playing back on a TV at full speed you won't see much of the noise nor the encoding artifacts even on the unfiltered encodings but you'll notice that if they are to much filtered it won't look sharp anymore and maybe a little bit unnatural also. It is a common mistake to overfilter video. You should do the comparisons on the TV when playing it back in the standalone DVD player. When there is motion the filters often produce strange artifacts which are more annoying then a little bit of noise.

But mildly applied denoising filters can make things look a little bit better.

Very well put. I'm inclined to agree.

[SatStorm]

I'm old fashion. I use msu_denoiser on virtualdub.
Amazing results, the easy way. On the downside, this filter is really sloooowwwww

[themaster1]

I'm old fashion. I use msu_denoiser on virtualdub.
Amazing results, the easy way. On the downside, this filter is really sloooowwwww

i co-sign

see the page here

just be careful with the temporal filter because i noticed artifacts with it so i barely use it
and the spatial one... well put it to the max for vhs sources especially

[Virtual McCoy]

The GIFs attached (I borrowed the original clips from the Neat Video page) show the "before" and "after" denoising with an AviSynth script.
Believe it or not, Neat Video plugin can do even better.

[manono]

1. What scrip?
2. Why do all the pics have 'original' written on them? I see no 'after' or 'final'.
3. Why dig up a 7-year old thread to try and demonstrate something for which we have to take your word?

[jagabo]

2. Why do all the pics have 'original' written on them? I see no 'after' or 'final'.

He started with the sample before/after videos at Neat Video:
http://www.neatvideo.com/examples.html

[manono]

Thanks. I was expecting 'before' and 'after' or 'original' and 'final'. I've never looked at their examples (or had any desire to). I asked for the script to see which AviSynth denoiser he used, that he doesn't think does as good a job as NeatVideo. I'm not a believer in removing film grain. Although the examples aren't from films, I think it's often used to clean films.

[Virtual McCoy]

1. What scrip?
2. Why do all the pics have 'original' written on them? I see no 'after' or 'final'.
3. Why dig up a 7-year old thread to try and demonstrate something for which we have to take your word?

1-This script (I didn't write it):
(Your clip here)
(Requires mvtools2.dll in the Plugins folder of AviSynth)
super = MSuper(pel=2, sharp=1)
backward_vec3 = MAnalyse(super, isb = true, delta = 3, overlap=4)
backward_vec2 = MAnalyse(super, isb = true, delta = 2, overlap=4)
backward_vec1 = MAnalyse(super, isb = true, delta = 1, overlap=4)
forward_vec1 = MAnalyse(super, isb = false, delta = 1, overlap=4)
forward_vec2 = MAnalyse(super, isb = false, delta = 2, overlap=4)
forward_vec3 = MAnalyse(super, isb = false, delta = 3, overlap=4)
MDegrain3 (super,backward_vec1,forward_vec1,backward_vec2,fo rward_vec2,backward_vec3,forward_vec3,thSAD=1200)
2-I borrowed the clips and "original" was written on top of the "noised" one. I just denoised it and stacked it
on the right.
3-Because (pick one)......:
3a-Like most men, I don't pay attention to dates, so I didn't even notice the thread was "inoperative";
3b-I wanted to know if there was someone out there;
3c-There is always some nerd lurking in the darkness.