Fixing some videos

[Broka]

Hi
i have some videos i made with my camera that have a few problems i want to fix, the biggest one is that i shoot them in a closed place with not much light so they are very dark and have noise etc so first i need to make them much brighter and then i will try to deal with the rest. so if anyone could please suggest a good way to raise brightness that would be appreciated


thx

[Broka]

Too much for you eh?

[Marvingj]

Try Vegas or Premiere, or Colormill

[powerpc123]

Youve not given much info regarding the file format your working with.
Depending on your source material you might try VirtualDubMod
Video>Filters>Add>Brightness/Contrast>OK

[redwudz]

You will likely find out also that when you brighten them, you will have a very 'muddy' looking video. You may be able to improve it a bit, but if there is a lack of video data in the dark areas, you won't get it back.

I would also recommend the Color Mill filter in VDub or VDM : colormill2.1.1.zip

[Broka]

Ok question then
why do i get a muddy pic with programs that are spoused to brighten things and with a basic thing like windows media player i get a clear pic?

oh and the files are .mpg

[redwudz]

WMP may be doing some filtering on the fly. I don't use the program, so I'm not sure. There are several players that can adjust the brightness,contrast, etc., manually.

To adjust the brightness, etc., permanently, you will have to re-encode the video. Since it's MPEG, you could use a encoder like TMPGEnc that has some adjustments for that.

Or you could try the video in VD Mod along with the mentioned filters. But VD only outputs AVI type formats. Of course you could also frameserve the video from VD Mod to a MPEG encoder like TMPGEnc or similar directly. Then you would be able to use most all the VD filters.

VD frameserving: https://www.videohelp.com/oldguides/virtualdubframeserve

But others may have some better ideas.

[Soopafresh]

Use the Avisynth filter HDRagc

http://strony.aster.pl/paviko/hdragc.htm

[Broka]

Thx Soopafresh
but i don't understand how to work this thing i copied it into the plugin directory of AviSynth but there is no exe or anything how do i use the program?

[Soopafresh]

Save this as a file named Test.AVS . Change "yourfile.avi" to the name and location of your problematic file. Open the test.avs file with VirtualDub

DirectShowSource("yourfile.avi")

Converttoyv12()

Hdragc()

Read the hdragc documentation to find out how to tune the settings.

[Broka]

It didn't work...
i give up i have uploaded a sample(untouched), maybe someone could do something.
http://rapidshare.com/files/77420183/MOV00571.rar.html

[Soopafresh]

I looked. It is much too dark to restore. The only thing you can do is to grab some of the frames when the flash goes off and save as PNG or JPG files (like if you brought a still camera)

example:

flash.png

[Broka]

Ok so how do i do that?

and are you sure i can't keep the effects by WMP?

[2Bdecided]

and are you sure i can't keep the effects by WMP?

I was going to ask "What do you mean?" because in the file you have posted, there appears to be nothing.

But then I looked again, and found that, "below black" there's actually quite a lot.

In 8-bit video, black is typically 16, white is typically 235, and the numbers above and below that (down to 0, and up to 255) are unused. Therefore many PC programs expand that range, pushing 16-235 out to 0-255, and removing anything that was originally below 16 or above 235.

Well, it turns out, in your file, almost all the video information is below 16! Some players will never even show it, but a simple AVIsynth script like...

mpeg2source("Copy of MOV00571.d2v")
levels(0,1.0,20,16,235,coring=false)

...will bring it all out. Try it - there's plenty of (very noisy!) picture in there to recover.

You need to tweak the levels numbers (especially the 20) to decide what parts of the range to keep. The 1.0 is the gamma - probably change that (carefully).

Btw, you need to run the source through DGIndex first to allow MPEG2source to load it into avisynth.

I would then try something like NeatVideo to zap the noise.


btw, is this the raw camcorder output? It's 640x480 30fps progressive - is that from a digital still camera? If this isn't the original, go back to the original!

Good luck!

Cheers,
David.

P.S. you will have to process the occasional good frames (when the flash goes off) separately and paste them back in.

P.P.S. here is frame 471 (almost pure black in the original)

[Broka]

David you are the man you rule
but what you did is a bit hard for me to do on the first try(i think this is the hardest part the rest looks easier) so here goes:
tried the script, first it said there is no mpeg2source function then i did some searching and got the .dll in the plugin directory but it said the same then i tried to load the .dll manually and it said thats it's not an avisynth 2.5 plugin whats up with that?.
oh and yes i made a Copy of MOV00571.d2v first and yes it is the raw camcorder output...

one more thing your idea to separate the frames is excellent but i don't know how is that done , what Soopafresh did with the frames also looks good so making a few pics and getting them back in the video would be great.

p.s i tried to save you all the trouble by finding info about how myself so if you are busy you can just refer me to places to read and look.
this restoring info is cool and great to know after i figure this out maybe i will write some plugins(i have knowledge in programming) myself

[Soopafresh]

To grab the flash frames

Open the MPG file in VirtualdubMOD

[powerpc123]

Broka, here is a rough idea of what you might expect. Naturally you might want to fine tune the clean-up etc...

http://rapidshare.com/files/77802348/NEW-Copy_of_MOV00571.rar.html

David, Great tips, thanks for sharing that

[Broka]

Soopafresh Thanks any chance you know how to extract and add frames too?

powerpc123 well it's better than black but i does seems rougher than david's did you use the same method or do you have another one?

[2Bdecided]

http://neuron2.net/dgmpgdec/dgmpgdec.html
Don't miss the DGindex manual link on that page.

Make sure the DGindex program and the dll in the AVIsynth plugin folder are from the same version! (1.4.9 is what I have). Plug-ins in the plugin folder autoload - no need to manually load them.

I think I would use VirtualDub for manual cut/paste editing of single frames. You could also do it in AVIsynth with lots of trim statements, but that's painful.

Cheers,
David.

[Broka]

Ok i finally got it load and work played around with the numbers and added a few tweaks but i'm still having trouble with the noise, tried neat video it does help but it's annoying that it's a demo etc so any other suggestions about noise plugins?

[powerpc123]

Pick up the VirtualDub Filter Pack - it has several noise reducing filters you
might try out
http://thedeemon.com/VDFilterPack/

I liked the results of the spacial smoother filter
http://thedeemon.com/VirtualDubFilters/detailed.html#36

[Broka]

Thanks powerpc123 i got some nice results
i'l try to play with it for a while if anyone got anymore ideas go ahead and suggest.

meanwhile i just want to thank everyone (again)
stay tuned this isn't over yet

[lordsmurf]

Buy NeatVideo, it's cheap.
Shoot with better lighting in the future.