How do I improve quality of video supplied on a Memory Stick Pro?

[VHHDT]

Hello

I have been given a wedding video which has been taken on a Sony digital camera, and is quite blurry/boxes through the video. The video of the groom walking down the aisle shows the outline of his black suit with jagged edges.

I have run it through TMPGenc Express 4 to try and improve the quiality by reencoding but cannot see any difference.

Can someone point me to a guide (yes I have searched extensively) to improve the quality? I have it set on interlaced, and the play back is awful...

It is an MPEG 2 720 x 575 25fps, 9100kb/s dolby digital 48000Hz, 2 ch

Cheers

J

[Baldrick]

Can you post a short sample? Cut with mpg2cut2.

Virtualdub or avisynth with some filters might help a bit.

[jagabo]

Deblocking filters will reduce the blockiness. But the blocks will become blurs. MSU Smart Deblocking in VirtualDub, before, after:

[VHHDT]

thanks guys... am trying to upload a short clip (27mb) but it is waiting on the site to upload.

I have also noticed that the resolution is quite low, and if I play back in say windows media player at full screen size you cannot make out facial detail at all, and there is a fair bit of noise.

Have downloaded avisynth, and am awaiting virtualdub. What do you suggest for sharpening without increasing the jaggies?

Cheers

J

[jagabo]

Deblock first, then use an Unsharpen Mask to sharpen. You can't go very far with sharpening before you start getting ringing artifacts. And sharpening will accentuate any blocks left in the image after deblocking. So you probably still won't be able recognize the people in the video.

[AlanHK]

I have run it through TMPGenc Express 4 to try and improve the quiality by reencoding but cannot see any difference.

Reencoding by itself can only reduce quality.

Have downloaded avisynth, and am awaiting virtualdub. What do you suggest for sharpening without increasing the jaggies?

LSFmod is a pretty good sharpener.
That page will tell you all the other stuff you need to install to make it work (Avisynth comes with many built in filters and functions, but there are plenty of other plugins that you download and install separately).

Get AvsPmod to edit your scripts.

See Scintilla's guide which is a bit out of date and oriented towards anime; but is still a good introduction to filtering in Avisynth.

[VHHDT]

Ok, will try all ...

virtualdub won't open any of the files

ERROR MPEG Import Filter:invalid pack at position 3:marker bit not set;possibly MPEG_2 stream

[Baldrick]

You need the mpeg2 plugin, http://home.comcast.net/~fcchandler/Plugins/MPEG2/index.html (read the readme.txt how to install).

[VHHDT]

Ok, I can see the interlacing, and having investigated the suggested programs I don't know anything about script writing so that's a no-go.

Above are some screen shots... the first showing the interlacing and the second showing the lack of detail/resolution in the facial features...

[jagabo]

That's not bad. If you are going to DVD you don't want to deinterlace. If you're making a web video you will want to deinterlace. Some deinterlacers give better results than others. Quality ranges from simple discard field and resize (poor) to TempGaussMC_Beta1mod() in AviSynth (very good).

If you sharpen you have to use techniques that work with interlaced video. As mentioned, LSFMod() will probably do fairly well with that video (it attempts to sharpen edges without sharpening, and hence enhancing, noise).