Preparing low bitrate but crisp video for Youtube, possible?

[Bencuri]

I have a video here. The video image is crisp, sharp, but the bitrate is low. Is there any way to upconvert it to any size and bitrate that would look similarly crisp on Youtube as well? Or impossible? Sadly my source cannot produce these with higher bitrate. This is the one I can work with. File attached. (My screen is 1366x768, here the video is sharp, maybe it will be dull if you watch on FullHD screen, not sure).

[poisondeathray]

See jagabo's post in your other thread

The blurriness is from resizing, not compression. Your video is 1366x768. Youtube will resize to one of its standard sizes, 1280x720. Then when you watch the video full screen on your computer it is resized again to 1366x768. That's two resizing operations, each blurring the video.

It's not a bitrate issue. You can prove this by using lossless, or no compression without youtube. It's the scaling up and down. You need to use a web host that displays at 1366x768, that does not down and up scale

Or cap using another computer and display at 1920x1080

[Bencuri]

So no method to upscale even with near decent quality? I would not mind in case the edges were jagged, I just don't want it blurry. It makes me mad. But no matter what I try, I cannot help the blurriness when editing. The sharpening in Sony Vegas helps a bit, but the problem is that I cannot load this file there, though this one is from the better software. So I am stuck. Only the file from the poor software is "edible" for Vegas.

Unfortunately I cannot try recording on a larger display, I have no converter cable for DisplayPort :/

[jagabo]

You can add borders to make the video 1920x1080 or crop down to 1280x720. If course, it will still be blurry on your monitor because it will be downscaled to 1366x768. But anybody watching on a 1920x1080 display will see a sharp picture.


[Attachment 63406 - Click to enlarge]

[poisondeathray]

Any thin text, lines will be resampled when scaled up or down (down obviously worse than up, as data is discarded when going down), this will cause some blurriness. The exception is nearest neighbor algorithm on powers of 2, or another is vector graphics - those do no apply to you.

If you upscale to 1920x1080 and view at 1920x1080 it won't look too bad. But downscaling back down to 1366x768 will be blurry. You can reduce some of the blurriness if you control both the upscaling and downscaling, but if you're watching on Youtube, you cannot control the scaling algorithm in browser. Most use a fast low quality scaler optimized for speed.

But scaling to 1920x1080 (and watching the 1920x1080 version downscaled to your 1366x768 display) will be "less bad" than 1366x768 downscaled to 1280x720 by youtube, then upscaled to your display

[Bencuri]

Okay, I see that this is not possible to retain this quality on all screens. But then, I have the file from another screen recorder right in 1080p. That one is blurry too, but at least at an acceptable amount. If I render that from Vegas with sharpening in FullHD, it is not perfect, but okay. Is it possible to do the sharpening of this in Avisynth with a better result? Here are the files, the recorded and rendered.

[poisondeathray]

If you like that type or method of sharpening, it's basically "unsharpmask" or similar derivatives (there are many variations)

Similar to vegas' implementation is ex_unsharp by dogway .

ex_unsharp(str=1.5)

You need SharpenersPack.avsi, and ExTools.avsi from this package
https://github.com/Dogway/Avisynth-Scripts


When you sharpen something, it will cause more haloing and edge contrast - this will require higher bitrates. On youtube that will cause more compression artifacts with the low bitrates that it uses

[Bencuri]

If you like that type or method of sharpening, it's basically "unsharpmask" or similar derivatives (there are many variations)

Similar to vegas' implementation is ex_unsharp by dogway .

ex_unsharp(str=1.5)

You need SharpenersPack.avsi, and ExTools.avsi from this package
https://github.com/Dogway/Avisynth-Scripts


When you sharpen something, it will cause more haloing and edge contrast - this will require higher bitrates. On youtube that will cause more compression artifacts with the low bitrates that it uses

Thanks!

I know it will cause artifacts but still better readable this way than leaving it blurry. Just a touch of sharpening not much.

[Bencuri]

If you like that type or method of sharpening, it's basically "unsharpmask" or similar derivatives (there are many variations)

Similar to vegas' implementation is ex_unsharp by dogway .

ex_unsharp(str=1.5)

You need SharpenersPack.avsi, and ExTools.avsi from this package
https://github.com/Dogway/Avisynth-Scripts


When you sharpen something, it will cause more haloing and edge contrast - this will require higher bitrates. On youtube that will cause more compression artifacts with the low bitrates that it uses

I have the following problem after copying these files you mentioned to the avisynth folder. What can be the reason? Not using 64 bit one?


[Attachment 63492 - Click to enlarge]

[poisondeathray]

x86 works, but you need avs+ 3.7.2 .

Most recent is test 3
Avisynth+ 3.7.2 test 3 (20220208)

https://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?t=181351

[jagabo]

If you open it in Notepad I think you'll see an HTML page, not an AviSynth script.

From this page: https://github.com/Dogway/Avisynth-Scripts/blob/master/ExTools.avsi right click on the Raw button and Save As... Or Save Link As... or whatever phrase your browser uses.

[poisondeathray]

Another way to download from github is left click on the green code button , then "download zip" . This downloads the entire project in a zip file, then you can unarchive which .avsi's that you want and put them into the plugins folder or Import() them manually

[Bencuri]

Indeed, I downloaded it the wrong way. But even on the correct way I get an error message, it changed to this one:


[Attachment 63493 - Click to enlarge]

I have avisynth 2.6.0 If I upgrade to the version you suggest, will all my plugins work? And will it be compatibile with Debugmode Frameserver that I added to Vegas?

[poisondeathray]

Everything should work with newer avs+ versions ( except very old plugins might have problems)

Or you can try another unsharpmask implentation, such as from the warpsharp package , or unsharpHQ , or vdub has unsharpmask. They are slightly different and less resemble Vegas' type of sharpening

[Bencuri]

Okay, no problem I will try it with avisynth plus, at worst case on another machine. But would it be possible to install it next to my recent avisynth installation, or the two cannot go together, and softwares calling the frameserver will get confused?

2nd question: is there a way to have AVSProMod to fit the preview to FullScreen size? So in case of an 1920x1080 video, it fits that to 1366x768. It would be essential in the recent case to see the real outcome of the filters. I cannot set a proper value to Zoom, only percentage levels that are not accurate.

[poisondeathray]

Okay, no problem I will try it with avisynth plus, at worst case on another machine. But would it be possible to install it next to my recent avisynth installation, or the two cannot go together, and softwares calling the frameserver will get confused?

Not "simultaneously" ; unless one version is x64, and one is x86.

Some people use "portable" avisynth, but I'm not sure how that works...

2nd question: is there a way to have AVSProMod to fit the preview to FullScreen size? So in case of an 1920x1080 video, it fits that to 1366x768. It would be essential in the recent case to see the real outcome of the filters. I cannot set a proper value to Zoom, only percentage levels that are not accurate.

You can add a resize function to the end of the script, and comment it out before you encode

But there are significant differences in resizing(resampling) algorithms. If you control the resizing, that's one thing, if you encode at 1920x1080 and let some website or player perform the scaling....it can look very different

[poisondeathray]

Unsharp from VariableBlur is quite similar too . Strength ~ 1.5 to 2. It should work with your existing install . But it's about 5-10x slower for me

http://avisynth.nl/index.php/VariableBlur

[Bencuri]

Unsharp from VariableBlur is quite similar too . Strength ~ 1.5 to 2. It should work with your existing install . But it's about 5-10x slower for me

http://avisynth.nl/index.php/VariableBlur

What is the syntax to use this one? Enough to type something like: Unsharpen(1.5)? I see the manual but don't really understand what those variables are that it supports to add, I am not very familiar with that aspect of video data.

[poisondeathray]

Unsharp, not Unsharpen

Unsharp(1.5)

It's very slow; ex_unsharp is about 8-9x faster for single and multithreaded