Anime Advice

[stormy]

Hi all -

I have tried to do a fair bit of research on my own prior to posting a topic on this subject but I would like some opinions on how best to improve my source DVDs if possible. I have been using Hybrid to get familiar with vapoursynth.

I am working with the Funimation release of Initial D. So far my focus is on the first two stages/seasons because they are pretty rough to my eyes.

The samples I provided hopefully illustrate what I want to fix. There appears to be a decent amount of noise in the image (sky and solid colors) and a somewhat blurred image overall. I am hoping to apply a sensible amount of sharpening and noise reduction so that it looks better on a modern display. In addition, I was hoping to correct some of the aliasing on the CG images without negatively affecting the traditional animation portion.

I ran QTGMC with bob enabled and the 59.94 output looked smooth but I am wondering if maybe I am not seeing a telecine pattern and would be better served with IVTC? DGIndex shows Interlaced and NTSC, which I read could be indicative of a hard telecine. Then again anime is weird with various frame rates and other unusual considerations, so I was hoping someone could let me know what I should be doing with the source frame rate for sure.

Thank you for coming to my TED talk.

https://www.dropbox.com/sh/zyqpuzhv76wnln7/AABN6-o0TSAgKX_qzCld4oxGa?dl=0

[rrats]

You can't do much with 30fps progressive 3d animation of cars. IVTC would awlays delete certain frames of that short segment in order to convert it to 24fps. I am more concerned about the blending. I've seen similar on my evangelion broadcast archives source and Kodomo no Omocha

[krykmoon]

The source material of the first seasons of Initial D is really terrible and I don't think you can do too much (except for the colours and the grain, maybe.. but the source is really HORRIBLE).

From the "motion" sample you provide it seems to me a strange hybrid of "progressive" sequences (all the scenes where some 3D elements are present, such as the cars, even when mixed with drawn backgrounds, like in the sample.. but there are a lot of sequence in the anime that are full 3D only ) and telecined sequences (the 100% 2D anime parts), so I think it's really a mess to work with (it's already a mess when you have to inverse telecine alone.. )

[stormy]

Well that is kinda disheartening to hear. From my understanding, all source material from the first couple of stages is not very good including the Japanese BD. Not sure if it exhibits the same issues with motion/framerate but I had read it was a blurry upscaled mess as well and didn't really address any of the problems with the DVDs.

[rrats]

https://forum.videohelp.com/threads/405837-Restoring-Kodomo-no-Omocha thread might help

[stormy]

Ok cool, thanks. Will take a look at that thread to see if I can get some ideas on how I might try to improve upon the source. Even if I can't get the motion sorted out that well I would like to try to clean up some of the noise and the generally blurry image.

[krykmoon]

Well that is kinda disheartening to hear. From my understanding, all source material from the first couple of stages is not very good including the Japanese BD. Not sure if it exhibits the same issues with motion/framerate but I had read it was a blurry upscaled mess as well and didn't really address any of the problems with the DVDs.

Yes, I can confirm that the BD edition is really shitty: the image is more blurry than your DVD source, probably.. and no improvements at all on any other aspect.. Simply like they merely changed the resolution and anything else. Sad.

[jagabo]

You can remove a lot of the blending with SRestore() in AviSynth. Then a little more with Dup1(). And reduce the frame bounce with Stab().

[rrats]

There's significantly less blending visible now but it's still there.

[Attachment 66147 - Click to enlarge]

[jagabo]

I said "You can remove a lot of the blending", not all of it.

[stormy]

That is a good improvement to be sure. Jagabo, could I look at the script you used to produce your video sample? I must be doing something wrong because when I try those filters, the output becomes 25fps. I am currently using the default settings for all the filters you mentioned.

Thanks for all the input so far.

EDIT: Looks like I needed to add frate = 23.976 for srestore.

[jagabo]

I need a long smooth panning shot to determine if the frame rate should be 23.976 or 25.

I was playing with the scrip a bit after uploading the file. So this might be a little different than the one I used.

Mpeg2Source("noise.demuxed.d2v", Info=3) 
QTGMC(preset="fast")
Stab()
Crop(10,2,-10,-2)
SRestore(frate=23.976)
Dup1(threshold=3.0, maxcopies=2, blend=false)

The last line removes some light ghosting that was caused by a temporal noise reduction filter. It may also lose some small motions -- like when a character is talking and the only thing moving is their lips. You can adjust the threshold value to reduce those losses but you will also reduce the effectiveness of the ghost removal.

[stormy]

Thanks! Will try the script out and see what sort of trouble I can cause.

I uploaded a couple of panning shots, to same dropbox link, first one is short but it is one that seems to be problematic sometimes. Hopefully one of those two samples show what you need to see.

[jagabo]

If you QTGMC().SRestore() those panning shots to 23.976 fps and 25 fps you'll see that the 23.976 fps versions are smoother.

[stormy]

Yes indeed you are correct, 23.976 is the smoother choice. The 3D animation scenes can be a little jerky at times but overall it's really not too bad given the source. Thanks for the help with it.

This is when I miss having a 4:3 CRT TV, life was a little simpler back then.

[jagabo]

You could make your life simpler by converting everything to 60p with QTGMC(). That will look a little better (less flicker, better vertical resolution) than what you would have seen on an interlaced CRT TV.

[stormy]

Yeah, I made a comparison this morning between the 60fps version and the 23.976 version, overall I think the 60fps video wins for the smoothness despite some ghosting that is visible. Correcting the color to remove the green tint and removing some excess noise has helped make it far more watchable on a large display.

Thank you for spending the time to look at it.