What are the best VDub plugins?

[smokin*1]

I am looking for people's opinion as to the best smoothing plugins for VDub. I am encoding captured VHS to VCD and DVD formats. Encoding time is not an issue as quality is most important to me. I have tryed smart smoother and like teh results. I am still playing with its configuration. Anyone have any favorites they have had good results with. Any thoughts on this would be appreciated

Cheers!

[Roginator]

Temporal Smoother... er at least the Avisynth version. You can use that when frameserving to TMPGEnc. If you try to use the VirtualDub version of Temporal Smoother, it would introduce an audio delay if I remember correctly.

Depending on the noise, I set it for 2, 4 or even 6 for animations.

[smokin*1]

Thanks for the input. Your suggestion interests me however I am unfamiliar with how to use Avisynth, that is, except for the Adobe plugin version. Is there a stand alone version of Avisynth or one that is used with VDub?? I am framserving to TMPG so if you could send along some additional details as well as the plugin itself that would be great. Thanks and sorry for being such a dum-dum

[Roginator]

Avisynth is more of a programming language than anything. Once it's installed, you write short programs in its language to manipulate multimedia files. You probably already have it installed if you are using the plugin <?>

I'm currently using it to convert huge MPEG-2 files into a format which VirtualDub can open. DVD2AVI creates the .d2v file. Here's a sample "program":

LoadPlugin("C:\MPEG2DEC.dll")
LoadPlugIn("C:InverseTelecine.dll")
mpeg2source("C:\filename.d2v")
converttoYUY2
InverseTelecine(40,10,15)
temporalsmoother(4)

You can find Avisynth, MPEG2DEC.dll and InverseTelecine.dll online. Try: http://www.videotools.net/

InverseTelecine seems to do a good job of converting 29.97fps filmed material to 23.976fps progressive output by dropping redundant frames. Compression is improved.

Name the program file something like script.avs

DVD2AVI also creates an .mpa audio file. I convert this to .wav with MPA2WAV

Now you can just open script.avs as if it was an .avi file in VirtualDub. Then add the .wav file and presto! There are other small details, but that's the gist.

I apply various filters, sync audio and video, then frameserve to TMPGEnc.

[smokin*1]

Thanks Roginator! Looks like I have some homework to do, and I thought I was on break Your help is much appreciated!

[kinneera]

Just a couple thoughts on this script...

<TABLE BORDER=0 ALIGN=CENTER WIDTH=85%><TR><TD><font size=-1>Quote:</font><HR size=1 color=black></TD></TR><TR><TD><FONT SIZE=-1><BLOCKQUOTE>
converttoYUY2
</BLOCKQUOTE></FONT></TD></TR><TR><TD><HR size=1 color=black></TD></TR></TABLE>

If you set the output colorspace in DVD2AVI to YUY2, you shouldn't need this line (improves speed).

<TABLE BORDER=0 ALIGN=CENTER WIDTH=85%><TR><TD><font size=-1>Quote:</font><HR size=1 color=black></TD></TR><TR><TD><FONT SIZE=-1><BLOCKQUOTE>
LoadPlugIn("C:InverseTelecine.dll&quot
InverseTelecine(40,10,15)
</BLOCKQUOTE></FONT></TD></TR><TR><TD><HR size=1 color=black></TD></TR></TABLE>

Enabling forcefilm in DVD2AVI can save you these steps. Preview the VOBs first (F5) and if it shows FILM, FILM 97% or above, or NTSC 3% or below, you should be fine. Otherwise manually IVTC it like you are currently doing. Again, saves time.

[Roginator]

Thanks for the script comments.

The latest IVTC I used seems to work better than forced film in DVD2AVI. I just ran a short test on the latest project I'm working on. IVTC resulted in smooth motion at 23.976fps, forced film gave me a weird 24.000fps output that wasn't in all cases smooth. (I like the computer generated animation of moving space ships to look smooth. That's the best test I have.)

Not converting to YUY2 in the script was a good idea though. For some reason I had put that in there when using another filter.

I could not see any difference in final encoding time with TMPGEnc, but I didn't run the test the entire 6+\- hours.

[kinneera]

TMPGEnc operates in the RGB colorspace anyway, so its going to convert the input no matter what. At least that was the way it worked last I heard. In that case, you won't see any noticeable gain in speed. In fact, you might try having Avisynth do the RGB conversion.