looking for avisynth script for upscaling SD2SD

[turk690]

Wanting in the avisynth scripting department, I have nonetheless successfully used dan Isaac's hd2sd and sd2hd scripts to export out of Premiere CS5 and circumvent its still-horrible scaling qualities (despite mercury, memory prioritization, and all the riffraff adobe claims). Nothing to do with HD, I now need to upscale an SD video, which is a letterboxed 16:9 720x480 clip with black bars top and bottom, to 720x480 widescreen now filling the whole screen sans the blackbars. It's simple to do this in CS5 clip motion effects controls by scaling up about 133% (easing out the black bars), but with the resulting jagged edges and rippling in the final video Premiere export wantonly gets away with. I'm trying to alter hd2sd script without success. I want exquisite lanczos. Maybe a kind avisynth god here has a sample script....

[jagabo]

Why don't you just use nnedi3_rpow2() directly?

Crop(0,60,-0,-60)
nnedi3_rpow2(2, fwidth=720, fheight=480, cshift="LanczosResize")

Lanczos may be too sharp if your source is already sharp. If your video is interlaced the script will be different.

[turk690]

thanks jagabo; will try this. What will be added for interlaced sources?

[poisondeathray]

If it's interlaced, you deinterlace before and re-interlace after if necessary . You cannot resize interlaced material vertically with a straight resize (there are no restrictions horizontally)

#whatever deinterlacer
Crop(0,60,-0,-60)
nnedi3_rpow2(2, fwidth=720, fheight=480, cshift="LanczosResize")

And that's the real problem with Adobe - interlaced scaling , less so the actual scaling algorithm or progressive scaling . It's the deinterlacing that is the real issue (because you need to deinterlace before scaling), less so scaling, and Adobe is horrendous at deinterlacing - it just uses a bicubic resize of fields or simple bob which is why you are left with jaggies. If you are using MRQ for the render, it uses Lanczos2 , yes it's softer, but there is less aliasing than Lanczos3 so it's a bit of a trade off. For interlaced DVD's , too sharp is a real problem with twittering - so they are often low passed in addition

My observation is that most people see to prefer sharper pictures and care less about oversharpened artifacts , so you may actually even add a sharpener , it really depends on what you are starting with

[manono]

Those scripts are for converting NTSC 4:3 to NTSC 16:9. The impression I got is that the source is already 16:9 (...which is a letterboxed 16:9 720x480 clip with black bars top and bottom...) from which he wants to remove the black bars. If true, besides being a really dumb idea in my opinion, the sides have to be cropped to maintain the aspect ratio, and the top and bottom crops will be different. The impression I got is that the source is 16:9 and maybe 2.35:1 and the intent is to convert it to 16:9 and 1.78:1 (losing about a quarter of the picture in the process).

But I could easily be wrong about all that.

[jagabo]

Yes, the script will have to be modified to crop the left and right edges if he has a 2.35:1 movie on a 16:9 DVD. And I agree, it shouldn't be done.

As for interlaced sources, if it's a film source it should be inverse telecined (TFM().TDecimare()). QTGMC() is usually the best deinterlacer but it's very slow (using the faster presets helps). Yadif(mode=1) is a faster alternative. If your end goal is DVD you'll have to reinterlace it.

[turk690]

This is a frame grab off the original clip:


This is what I want it to be:


The original clip is from a 1999 DVD, which, probably taking a cue from LaserDisc just before it still presents everything in 4:3 (letterboxing widescreen sources). I simply want to upscale the image by 133% (in a widescreen NTSC DV AVI Premiere project setting), which eases the black bars off, and encode to anamorphic widescreen DV AVI or MPEG elementary stream. Note that it's true-blue 4:3 and the sides do not have black bars. I have a number of pre-2000 DVDs like this which have never been re-issued commercially. Anamorphic 16:9 wasn't in vogue then and I can and do remove the black bars with the method I have used in Premiere I mentioned above. Premiere mangles the upscaling and I lived with that, until I came upon and used the hd2sd and sd2hd avisynth scripts on unrelated HD projects and saw how clean and sharp up and downscaling can be if avisynth is the one that does it. I want the same for the clips from these DVDs, which is SD, and that is how I titled this thread.

[manono]

Note that it's true-blue 4:3...

Then why did you say it was 16:9 earlier? jagabo's and pdr's scripts are what you want. And for best results I'd also suggest using (the very slow) NNEDI3 resizing, followed by some sharpening. The real problem is that it's about impossible to get back detail removed in the original 4:3 encoding. It'll never look as good as a real 16:9 retail release of the film.

You certainly don't need Premiere for something like this.

[turk690]

Then why did you say it was 16:9 earlier? .......................... It'll never look as good as a real 16:9 retail release of the film.

Sorry about that but what do i call the top clip? Letterboxed 4:3? Letterboxed 16:9? 16:9 letterboxed presented in 4:3 dar?
These are mostly European and Asian art films. If they got re-released in anamorphic widescreen I'd be the first to buy them again and not be reduced to attempting to remove the letterboxing. But between about 1997 and now chances are remote that they will.

[jagabo]

It's a 16:9 (probably really 1.85:1) movie letterboxed in a 4:3 DVD.

You can't get back details that were lost but what you hope to do is upscale to anamorphic 16:9, keeping sharp edges, but without creating scaling artifacts (jaggy, buzzing edges).

[manono]

I'd call it a widescreen 4:3 DVD. In my opinion 4:3 and 16:9 should be used only as DAR and not to explain a movie's ratio of width to height. As jagabo noted, it's probably not even 16:9 (in the sense of it being 1.78:1), since only very recently have movies begun to be made at that ratio, but 1.85:1. Why are movies 2.35:1, 1.66:1, 1.33:1, but some people have decided that 1.78:1 and 1.85:1 should be called 16:9 whether encoded as 4:3 or 16:9?

[duhmez]

message deleted due to an error I made in my suggestion. It was 4 am and I was very tired.

[jagabo]

You need to know the original aspect ratio of the film to determine how much of the black bars to trim off.

No. He's going from 4:3 DVD to 16:9 DVD (those are the ONLY display aspect ratios supported by DVD). If he wants to maintain the proper aspect ratio it's always 120 lines (60 top, 60 bottom, or some other combination that adds up to 120 lines) then resize back to 480 lines. With PAL video it's 144 lines, then resize back to 576 lines.

[budwzr]

This whole thing is simple to understand.

16:9 is a sideways rectangle that can accomodate all three major AR's.

The unwanted side effect is that nobody wants bars on their program, so they use 16:9 to completely fill the screen, and stop the viewers from having to use Zoom, Stretch, or Crop as well.

[manono]

The unwanted side effect is that nobody wants bars on their program...

Nobody? Speak for yourself. I want to see the intended Original Aspect Ratio, bars or no bars, whether 1.20:1 (many silent films), or 2.76:1 (Ben Hur, among others). Whether you're watching on an old 1.33:1 CRT television or a newer 1.78:1 LCD, most movies played at their OAR will have bars of one kind or another. And should have bars.

[turk690]

I want to see the intended Original Aspect Ratio, bars or no bars, whether 1.20:1 (many silent films), or 2.76:1 (Ben Hur, among others). Whether you're watching on an old 1.33:1 CRT television or a newer 1.78:1 LCD, most movies played at their OAR will have bars of one kind or another. And should have bars.

I have no problems with the bars to a point, and I'm a stickler for correct DAR (hate skinny or fat images); I just want current typical 16:9 TV screen filled up as efficiently as possible that's why I'm doing this. If I did not, there are 2 options for playing the DVDs I mentioned above with correct DAR, all second-best: 4:3 (black borders all around) and zoom in (grotesque artifacts). Were it not for the excellent results I obtained from sd2hd & hd2sd, I would have accepted as given jagged edges, ringing, and stair-stepping on slanted lines. I recognize that an unzoomed 2.35:1 OAR clip will always have black bars on a 16:9 TV; it only bothered me once (Adele concert) so I processed & zoomed it to fill up the screen sans bars before re-authoring on BD.

[budwzr]

It's understandable that some people want to see a movie the way it was made to be seen by the director, but judging from the majority of crapola movies coming down the pike, that's becoming less germane.