Best way to remove dot crawl and rainbow?

[embis2003]

Below is a screenshot of a music video which I am trying to restore.


[Attachment 52421 - Click to enlarge]

As you can see, it has rain-bowing and dot crawl.

I have tried pretty much every plugin. Either they do nothing at all or they cause a significant loss of detail.

Does anyone has a script or plugin that can remove it while keeping as much detail as possible?

Sample attached below if you wish to do some experimenting.

[Sharc]

You should operate on the progressive frames. Ignore the 3-2 pulldown flags.

[embis2003]

You should operate on the progressive frames. Ignore the 3-2 pulldown flags.

Forgive me, I'm not sure I understand. The video is telecine so therefore wouldn't be progressive until IVTCd it, right? Or are you saying I should set it to ignore pulldown flags in DGIndex before I apply any filters?

[manono]

Forgive me, I'm not sure I understand.

You should IVTC it first (after creating the D2V project file using Field Operation->Honor Pulldown Flags), followed by trying out the dot crawl and rainbow removal filters. You can use 'Ignore Pulldown Flags' (or 'Forced Film')' if it's 100% progressive over the entire video. Maybe it is? With any lower percentage its risky. Did you IVTC it before trying out the filters you say either don't work or don't work well?

But those kinds of filters do lose detail. Plus, your video is widescreen 4:3 and will often look like crap anyway if you plan on removing the black bars and resizing it upwards.

[embis2003]

Forgive me, I'm not sure I understand.

You should IVTC it first (after creating the D2V project file using Field Operation->Honor Pulldown Flags), followed by trying out the dot crawl and rainbow removal filters. You can use 'Ignore Pulldown Flags' (or 'Forced Film')' if it's 100% progressive over the entire video. Maybe it is? With any lower percentage its risky. Did you IVTC it before trying out the filters you say either don't work or don't work well?

But those kinds of filters do lose detail. Plus, your video is widescreen 4:3 and will often look like crap anyway if you plan on removing the black bars and resizing it upwards.

When I make the d2v file it says film 85%, so I assume I keep it at "Honor Pulldown Flags" and IVTC in Avisynth.

Yes, I did IVTC before any filtering folowed by a vinverse to remove the left over combing. It leaves me with 23.976 progressive video to which then I apply the filters to.

But those kinds of filters do lose detail. Plus, your video is widescreen 4:3 and will often look like crap anyway if you plan on removing the black bars and resizing it upwards.

I am planning on de-letterboxing and up-scaling using Topaz Video Enhance AI which should solve this exact problem. It yields some pretty impressive results, however, it amplifys any artifact in the source which is why its important for me to remove it.

[johnmeyer]

1. Make sure all pulldown is removed, or not introduced (via setting the flag correctly).

2. Use a convolution filter to smooth the dot crawl.

The numbers provided in this post worked well for me:

https://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?p=1751654#post1751654

[Sharc]

@embis
You have probably seen and tried these classic filters already
http://www.aquilinestudios.org/avsfilters/dotcrawl.html
Interestingly it is recommended to apply the filters before IVTC or on interlaced sources only.

For dotcrawl removal you could try

chroma = clip.checkmate(thr=12,max=25,tthr2=25)
luma   = clip.checkmate(thr=12,max=25,tthr2=0)
fixed  = luma.MergeChroma(chroma)

It softens the picture though, but any dotcrawl filter will remove details.


For NTSC I made good experience with Steve Elliott's (aka 'tacosalad') .vdf filter for Vdub. It was available from here but seems to have gone by now. Didn't find it elsewhere.
http://home.earthlink.net/~tacosalad/video/dotcrawl.html

Edit:
You can grab the 32-bit 'dotcrawl.vdf' from here, but unfortunately the documentation is missing
http://www.infognition.com/VirtualDubFilters/mirror/?D=A
It seems to give reasonable results for your clip.

[Nilzzon]

@embis
You have probably seen and tried these classic filters already
http://www.aquilinestudios.org/avsfilters/dotcrawl.html
Interestingly it is recommended to apply the filters before IVTC or on interlaced sources only.

For dotcrawl removal you could try

chroma = clip.checkmate(thr=12,max=25,tthr2=25)
luma   = clip.checkmate(thr=12,max=25,tthr2=0)
fixed  = luma.MergeChroma(chroma)

It softens the picture though, but any dotcrawl filter will remove details.


For NTSC I made good experience with Steve Elliott's (aka 'tacosalad') .vdf filter for Vdub. It was available from here but seems to have gone by now. Didn't find it elsewhere.
http://home.earthlink.net/~tacosalad/video/dotcrawl.html

Edit:
You can grab the 32-bit 'dotcrawl.vdf' from here, but unfortunately the documentation is missing
http://www.infognition.com/VirtualDubFilters/mirror/?D=A
It seems to give reasonable results for your clip.

https://web.archive.org/web/20110623070014/http://home.earthlink.net/~tacosalad/video/dotcrawl.html

[embis2003]

@embis
You have probably seen and tried these classic filters already
http://www.aquilinestudios.org/avsfilters/dotcrawl.html
Interestingly it is recommended to apply the filters before IVTC or on interlaced sources only.

For dotcrawl removal you could try

chroma = clip.checkmate(thr=12,max=25,tthr2=25)
luma   = clip.checkmate(thr=12,max=25,tthr2=0)
fixed  = luma.MergeChroma(chroma)

It softens the picture though, but any dotcrawl filter will remove details.


For NTSC I made good experience with Steve Elliott's (aka 'tacosalad') .vdf filter for Vdub. It was available from here but seems to have gone by now. Didn't find it elsewhere.
http://home.earthlink.net/~tacosalad/video/dotcrawl.html

Edit:
You can grab the 32-bit 'dotcrawl.vdf' from here, but unfortunately the documentation is missing
http://www.infognition.com/VirtualDubFilters/mirror/?D=A
It seems to give reasonable results for your clip.

Is it compatiable with virtualdub 2? It just causes artifacts. What settings did you use?

Do i need to IVTC it before opening in vdub?

[embis2003]

I think I have a pretty acceptable result now. It seems every filter in this script effects the dot crawl to some degree lol. TemporalDegrain2 surprisingly does a number on it. For future viewers, here is my script:

MPEG2Source("1.d2v", Info=3)
ColorMatrix(hints=true, dest=0, interlaced=true)
checkmate()
DeDot(luma2d=20, lumaT=20, chromaT1=0, chromaT2=255)
tfm(mode=4)
tdecimate()
vinverse()
BicubicResize(720,540)
TemporalDegrain2()
sharpen(.2)

[Attachment 52432 - Click to enlarge]

The rainbow is still there but its not as distracting as the dot crawl.

[Sharc]

Is it compatiable with virtualdub 2? It just causes artifacts. What settings did you use?
Do i need to IVTC it before opening in vdub?

Yes, it works with VirtualDub2 32-bit. It also reduces the rainbows. Any settings seem to work here.
No, you should not IVTC before opening the dotcrawl.vdf in vdub.

You can also load the filter in avisynth and converttoRGB32() before the dotcrawl filter.

But anyway, you seem to have found a solution.

[embis2003]

Is it compatiable with virtualdub 2? It just causes artifacts. What settings did you use?
Do i need to IVTC it before opening in vdub?

Yes, it works with VirtualDub2 32-bit. It also reduces the rainbows. Any settings seem to work here.
No, you should not IVTC before opening the filter in vdub.

You can also load the filter in avisynth and converttoRGB32() before the dotcrawl filter.

But anyway, you seem to have found a solution.

The results look very good in the screenshots of the VDub filter but I can't seem to replicate that quality. Can you post a screenshot of the filter in action on my sample? maybe something is messed up on my end.

[Sharc]

The results look very good in the screenshots of the VDub filter but I can't seem to replicate that quality. Can you post a screenshot of the filter in action on my sample? maybe something is messed up on my end.

Hmm …, I am getting the artefacts in vdub with the dotcrawl.vdf filter as well for the part with high motion, but much less so with the temporal filter disabled. At the end one would have to pick what looks best in realtime playback scenarios.

[Attachment 52434 - Click to enlarge]

Or importing the dotcrawl.vdf in avisynth:

LoadVirtualdubPlugin("dotcrawl.vdf","taco_dotcrawl")
...your source filter… 
AssumeTFF()
converttoRGB32().taco_dotcrawl().converttoYV12()
tfm(mode=4).tdecimate()

[killerteengohan]

This was about the best I could come up with from that tiny clip.

checkmate(thr=9, max=9, tthr2=0) # Dot Crawl reduction
ColorMatrix(hints=true, interlaced=true, threads=0)
bifrost(scenelumathresh=15) # Rainbow Reduction
tfm(mode=4)

It cleaned fairly well. A little detail has to be sacrificed because of the dot crawl filter, but it's not a ton of it and will have more detail preserved than the default settings. The rainbows are going to be tough to get out 100% without going overkill on the filters. Even then, rainbows in motion might still be there. The reduction from this filter is much better to me though.

I hope that helps with ideas.