Conversion 4:3 to 16:9

[DB83]

Avidemux

[cholla]

@DB83,
It took me a while to check the blu ray on my PC.
I had a BD player but the registration expired.
So I set up VLC to play the blu ray.

It is noisy or grainy in the sky on both my PC & my TV.
So the noise is on the blu ray disc.

It's been a long time since I've used avidemux.
Looks like 2.7.4 is the latest version for Windows 32-bit

@ Alwyn,
The clip in my post #35 in this topic is from the original DVD rip.
I checked it on the DVD also & the noise or grain is on it also.

Here is a short clip from the DVD files created with BD Rebuilder from the BD rip.
It also has the grainy sky.

[DB83]

I have been re-reading the reviews for the 2011 BD release. The grain is mentioned but, generally, has not bothered the reviewers.

I have attempted some removal with little or no success. And, typically, removal will soften the image which was stated is already quite soft in places. Better to leave well alone in this respect since not all scenes are affected.

[davexnet]

I have been re-reading the reviews for the 2011 BD release. The grain is mentioned but, generally, has not bothered the reviewers.

I have attempted some removal with little or no success. And, typically, removal will soften the image which was stated is already quite soft in places. Better to leave well alone in this respect since not all scenes are affected.

Temporaldegrain2 in Avisynth works pretty well, but it's quite slow. Here's a short example at its default settings

[Alwyn]

@Cholla, The larger expanse of sky in your clip in post 259 (from your latest Bluray) hasn't been shown before; that's what piqued my interest. On that original VOB of post 35, there's noise in the sky with the bloke with the pipe but that didn't catch my eye. It's all in the eye of the beholder, of course. I certainly wouldn't class it as "grain".

Any 'noise' - some people call it grain - can be reduced in post. Not the point of the excercise right now.

I was attempting to establish whether Cholla had been dudded by his latest seller and whether he should send the latest bluray back. Surely, after 10 pages, the cropping/resizing has been done to death by now?

[cholla]

Temporaldegrain2 in Avisynth works pretty well, but it's quite slow. Here's a short example at its default settings

From early in this topic I said I was not experienced with Avisynth & I've been too busy with all the other programs to try to learn much more yet.
I did do a search & some quick reading on Temporaldegrain2 in Avisynth. It seems it is very slow.

there's noise in the sky with the bloke with the pipe

If you look closer I believe you will find the pipe is a cigar.
For the sky in the scene I agree wit Alwyn just some noise & not real grain.

I have been re-reading the reviews for the 2011 BD release. The grain is mentioned but, generally, has not bothered the reviewers.

It did not bother me either but since it was asked about I answered.

[DB83]

Sure that the avisynth filters are more effective than those included in avidemux. And it does look like that the HQ version has had some noise reduction done to it. The overall issue is if the time involved is worth the final result.

IMO live with the noise and grain and just concentrate on removing the sidebars which is a 'piece of cake'

[davexnet]

This old Virtualdub 32 bit plugin also helps with this, not sure if anybody tried it (denoise.vdf by tHE fISH)

[Alwyn]

Back at my computer...

There are noticeable differences between the 4:3 VOB and the 16:9 bluray:

-the bluray looks to be stretched laterally: the heads are wider;
-the bluray does have more noise (interestingly, the online version, otherwise the same as the bluray, sems to have less noise);
-the bluray brightness levels much darker with almost no detail in the darker areas (blue of coat) and the faces are too dark/well tanned ;
-the colours of the bluray are nicer/more saturated;
-the bluray is sharper (as one would expect at the higher resolution).
-the bluray is the same, structurally-speaking, as the file on m4uhdtv.


[Attachment 81166 - Click to enlarge]
I'd boost the middle level.

denoise.vdf by tHE fISH

Can't find it, Dave, do you have a link or can you attach?

[Sharc]

^^
... the blu-ray has more active picture content on all sides (left/top/right/bottom).

Added:
Taking your (Alwyn's) screenshot above (or inspecting the originals): additional picture content marked yellow in the blu-ray version.

[Alwyn]

And now you have the bluray, you can crop away the side bars. There would be no point in cropping to 1.85:1; you retain more of the picture cropping to 16:9.

16:9 on the left, 1.85:1 on the right:


[Attachment 81191 - Click to enlarge]

It also denoises nicely; I used Neat Video but I'm sure the freebies will do a good job too. The more you notice it, the noise is bad, obvious even on the coats.

PS: Not that I am suggesting you do any cropping!

[cholla]

These are what I've been working on.
I have not tried to denoise any of them.
The first one is the clip of the rip of the 2011 1.66:1 bluray.
I believe I have posted this previously but since it is the one that the following conversions are from I'm posting it here also. Horse.m2ts

The next 2 are the forced 1.85:1 from the 1.66:1 that I think DB83 wanted to see. One .m2ts & one to .MP4.
Horse_scale(01).m2ts & Horse_scale(01).mp4 (I just posted the .MP4 since they used the same codec in ffmpeg).
These have small bars top & bottom & no pillars.

The next 2 had the DAR set at 16/9 instead.Otherwise the same code.
They have no bars or pillars.One .m2ts & one to .MP4.
Horse_scale(169).m2ts & Horse_scale(169).mp4 (I just posted the .MP4 since they used the same codec in ffmpeg).
All above done with FFMPEG

The last one was done with avidemux to .MP4 with the crop done as autocrop suggested. Horse(AviD).mp4
On one of my computers it has no bars or pillars on the other computer is has pillars but no top & bottom bars.
I believe the difference is in the video card.
On my 55" Sharp TV playrd from my settop BD player it has no pillars or top & bottom bars but has severe green aftifacting.
Then it clears to normal & back to the green artifacting.(in the longer video but remains artifacted in this short video)

[DB83]

The Q. of cropping is down to personal taste. And it was mentioned several pages ago that if you want the 'authentic' feel of 1.85:1 you have no choice but to crop an additional 42 pixels in total compared with a 16:9 variant.

But is it just my poor eyes - I only looked at scale(01).mp4 - but the noise in the blue sky at the start appears less.


And is it just my one half-good ear that I hear no sound ?

[davexnet]

denoise.vdf by tHE fISH

Can't find it, Dave, do you have a link or can you attach?

Yes of course. Seems to work well reducing it a little from its default 10

[Alwyn]

Thanks Dave, I can't get it to do much, even on 10:


[Attachment 81226 - Click to enlarge]

@Cholla, I suggest you keep your samples down to ~20mb; you get more interested downloaders then.

And FYI, "MP4" and "MT2S" in this case are basically the same; the underlying video codec is H264/AVC (check with MediaInfo). There's no need to use both.

[Alwyn]

@Cholla, you're distorting the video. On the left is the Horse m2ts file you posted from the Bluray (ignore the "frame 1535"); on the right is your latest Horse_scale(169).mp4. Check out John Wayne's head.


[Attachment 81228 - Click to enlarge]

[jagabo]

@Cholla, you're distorting the video.

He knows that. He just doesn't care. He's obsessed with filling the TV screen, no matter the cost.

[davexnet]

Alwyn, I looked at it again, I agree, it's more subtle than I thought last time, the Vdub filter softens it slightly which
appears to lower the grain slightly. Whether it's worth the trouble is not up to me.
Using Temporaldegrain2 in Avisynth gets rid of all the grain at a default settings; it can be tweaked to
temper the effect but it's so slow (on my old PC anyway)

The other benefit of Avisynth is that it keeps it in the yuv(yv12) color space; no need for the RGB conversion from the vdub filter.

[Alwyn]

Cheers Dave. 15fps here for that TemporalDegrain2.

[davexnet]

Cheers Dave. 15fps here for that TemporalDegrain2.

Hey that's smoking. On my old AMD FX CPU I barely got 2 fps

[Sharc]

Will this horseshit never end ?!

[DB83]

^^If there's a horse there will always be shit left behind

[lollo]

Using Temporaldegrain2 in Avisynth gets rid of all the grain at a default settings; it can be tweaked to temper the effect

Be careful that the default main parameter (degrainTR, the remporal radius of degrain) changes across the different versions of TD2 (being 1 or 3), which makes a significant difference

[cholla]

But is it just my poor eyes - I only looked at scale(01).mp4 - but the noise in the blue sky at the start appears less.
And is it just my one half-good ear that I hear no sound ?

The noise looks about the same to me.
I decided to not include any audio to make the clip a bit smaller.

@Cholla, I suggest you keep your samples down to ~20mb; you get more interested downloaders then.

And FYI, "MP4" and "MT2S" in this case are basically the same; the underlying video codec is H264/AVC (check with MediaInfo). There's no need to use both.

I can make smaller clips & I will do that but the duration will be much shorter.
For the "MP4" and "MT2S" they looked the same to me also & I checked the MediaInfo.
I thought that the "MT2S" might force a square pixel where the "MP4" may not.

@Cholla, you're distorting the video. On the left is the Horse m2ts file you posted from the Bluray (ignore the "frame 1535"); on the right is your latest Horse_scale(169).mp4. Check out John Wayne's head.

To me this is just larger frame equals larger image. So of course John Wayne's head is larger.
John Wayne's head is larger when I go to full screen in a media player.
John Wayne's head is larger when I play it on my TV than on my computer monitor played with a media player.
It would look funny if John Wayne's head stayed the smaller size on larger screens.

Using Temporaldegrain2 in Avisynth gets rid of all the grain at a default settings;

The grain does seem to be gone or a lot less.
I need to learn how to do this with Avisynth Right now I do not know how.

[cholla]

Will this horseshit never end ?!

Either wear tall enough boots to wade through the horseshit or avoid it & step around it.

[davexnet]

Using Temporaldegrain2 in Avisynth gets rid of all the grain at a default settings; it can be tweaked to temper the effect

Be careful that the default main parameter (degrainTR, the remporal radius of degrain) changes across the different versions of TD2 (being 1 or 3), which makes a significant difference

Thanks for the info. I checked the version I used, it's from 2/6/20, version 2.2.0

[Alwyn]

To me this is just larger frame equals larger image. So of course John Wayne's head is larger.

No, the heads are obviously FATTER/WIDER than they should be. It appears that what you/ffmpeg have done is simply cropped off the pillars then stretched the 1.66:1 video into the 1.77777 (16:9) frame.

I thought that the "MT2S" might force a square pixel where the "MP4" may not.

Nope, both are square (in this case). The file extension (M2TS or MP4) will not have any bearing on this. It's the video codec that determines the video details, which in this case is the same for both: AVC/H264.

If you are showing us a piece of video, we only need a few seconds covering the area of interest.

[lollo]

Thanks for the info. I checked the version I used, it's from 2/6/20, version 2.2.0

For that version the default for degranTR is 1, meaning that there is not much analysis of previous and next frames for grain removal (although still effective in denoising).

You may want to experiment degrainTR=2 or 3 for a stronger denoise, potentially to the detriment of more fine details preservation.

[cholla]

No, the heads are obviously FATTER/WIDER than they should be. It appears that what you/ffmpeg have done is simply cropped off the pillars then stretched the 1.66:1 video into the 1.77777 (16:9) frame.

I guess the fatter heads do no bother me.
To me that look larger because the video is larger.
Since I have NO plans to pirate & sell copies & only family & friends will ever see the video.
To myself & them I believe the video will be OK.

I am trying to figure out avisynth but so far I'm not making much progress.
If I do I will see if I can denoise or degrain this video.

@ DB83 ,
Are you able to see the artifacting in Horse(AviD01).mp4 ?
Like I posted I only see it when played with my BD settop player to my TV.
The TV will not play this video strait into it's USB port.
I'm not sure why.

[DB83]

^^ I did not view/download your original version of AviD01 so can not comment on how that looked compared with your edited version.

Except that your edited version makes no attempt at proper rescaling and just crops the sidebars.


For assistance you might wish to share your ffmpeg script since I would not do it this way and rely on cropping(horizontal) >> scaling >> cropping(vertical) all done in avidemux(or any tool that gives you real control) which should preserve the true aspect ratio of all. (whilst an autocrop to 1804 pixels may be accurate, it is not, in my book, the way to go. When I did my compare I took as my guide the frame from the HQ version which was 1200 pixels wide. That, itself, equates to 1800 pixels i.e. a crop of 60+60 to, potentially, avoid any additional and potential issue on any screen that can not accept 1804 pixels - which really should invoke sidebars already cropped)