Excessive Banding and Noise After Compressing

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Re: Excessive Banding and Noise After Compressing

Postby Melichan923 » Sat Jun 20, 2009 1:53 pm

Lol, oops. I saw the two numbers were the same and assumed that is what Qyot was talking about without re-reading what he had actually said about the number. Yeah, two totally different things! Sorry about that. :oops:

Qyot, I had actually went to update XviD a few weeks ago but I stopped myself because of the horrors on my last computer. I updated XviD on it and all of sudden the codecs started going crazy and everything was showing up in rainbow colors, black and white, etc. Then again, I think I had installed K-lite on that one ages ago and there were many unnecessary codecs that were probably conflicting. Is there anything else I need to do in particular before installing the new version of XviD (besides uninstalling the old version) or will the installer if there is one do the job for me?

I understand the 1:1 thing now. I will give that a try after I figure out the XviD. :) Thanks for the suggestion.
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Re: Excessive Banding and Noise After Compressing

Postby Qyot27 » Sat Jun 20, 2009 11:47 pm

Melichan923 wrote:Is there anything else I need to do in particular before installing the new version of XviD (besides uninstalling the old version) or will the installer if there is one do the job for me?

No, uninstalling the old version and installing the new one should be enough. If you're paranoid about junk in your temp files and registry you could run a few scans with CCleaner, though.
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Re: Excessive Banding and Noise After Compressing

Postby Melichan923 » Sun Jun 21, 2009 12:27 am

Qyot27 wrote:
Melichan923 wrote:Is there anything else I need to do in particular before installing the new version of XviD (besides uninstalling the old version) or will the installer if there is one do the job for me?

No, uninstalling the old version and installing the new one should be enough. If you're paranoid about junk in your temp files and registry you could run a few scans with CCleaner, though.


Thanks a lot. :) I will do that tomorrow and try out a new encode with XviD. With any luck, my XviD encode will look a lot better once I update the codec.
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Re: Excessive Banding and Noise After Compressing

Postby Melichan923 » Sun Jun 21, 2009 9:03 pm

I installed the new version of XviD and I'm now about to get ready to load defaults and reset the XviD settings in VirtualDubMod like it's recommended to do in the guide and then *crosses fingers* maybe the encode will look better.

But speaking of the guides, I realized yesterday that there is an awesome new updated version of Technical Guides to All Things Audio and Video and instead of recommending VirtualDubMod like the old guide, it recommends VirtualDub. I use version 1.5.10.2 Build 2540 of VDubMod from the AMVApp I installed about two years ago. Anyone think I should upgrade to VirtualDub instead? It looks like the original is updated more often than the Mod. I'm going to try out my encode with the new codec with VDubMod regardless.
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Re: Excessive Banding and Noise After Compressing

Postby Melichan923 » Sun Jun 21, 2009 9:56 pm

From the looks of it, the results aren't too much better from the new version. :(

Updated XviD:
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From the MP4 below... A lot less detail is lost on the floor and of course the x264 looks better than XviD, but it does still have banding on the scenes from the first page:
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I'll try out anything anyone else has to offer! I didn't have this problem half as bad with my last AMV I uploaded and the quality was also from DVDs and converted the same way. Converting can be so frustrating! XD I'll post some of the mp4 screenshots tomorrow from using the deblock option Qyot suggested when I can convert and am not so tired. Thanks. :D
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Re: Excessive Banding and Noise After Compressing

Postby Scintilla » Mon Jun 22, 2009 6:13 am

Though it will hurt your compressibility, you might want to look into the Blockbuster plugin for help with losing the details in the floor. It's the only thing I can think of that's specifically meant to help with blocking up in dark areas (due to low detail).
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Re: Excessive Banding and Noise After Compressing

Postby Melichan923 » Mon Jun 22, 2009 12:38 pm

Scintilla wrote:Though it will hurt your compressibility, you might want to look into the Blockbuster plugin for help with losing the details in the floor. It's the only thing I can think of that's specifically meant to help with blocking up in dark areas (due to low detail).


Oh, thank you. I'd never heard of that filter. I just tried it out with help from this guide here and not much luck though. :(

Original Huffy:
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Converted to XviD with BlockBuster applied:
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^Loads of blocking on wall and floor, and noise on blankets
I tried out these separately:
Code: Select all
Blockbuster(method="noise",variance=0.3,seed=1)
BlockBuster(method="sharpen", detail_min=20, detail_max=90)


MP4:
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I'm actually at a point where I am giving WMV a shot. :( Saving it from Vegas now. I tried using the deblocking settings in Zarx264gui with a clip and it didn't noticeably help the problems. At least it's not as bad as the XviD. I suppose the problems aren't as noticeable in pictures that are not moving, so I'm considering making a clip to put up as an example.

I usually like to put up an XviD for the people who can't play MP4 but sadly, it looks like I'm going to have to skip the XviD for this video. :(
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Re: Excessive Banding and Noise After Compressing

Postby Melichan923 » Thu Jun 25, 2009 4:38 pm

Sorry to bump the thread after a few days, but I just wanted to say that I finally got it looking pretty good after trying for the last few days. :D

I basically took everything that Qyot recommended and tweaked things a bit here and there through various tests. The best results I got for the XviD regarding both quality and size were using the settings 1 for max consecutive BVOPs, 1.00 for quantizer ratio, 50 for I-frame interval, and using 2's for the quantization tab. I also had to do the second pass and use 4000kbps target bitrate like mentioned above and that helped out a lot. The target bitrate during the second pass was really the key to making it look better. I had to turn on the B-frames because the size was just too big, but it didn't hurt the quality too much using the setting of 1. With all the new settings, it took up about 8MB-10MB extra and the XviD totals to exactly 100MB, but for 10MB the quality boost is really worth it. There is still some banding and it's not perfect, but it seems to look better than before. :D

For the MP4, I used the preset of insane, mode was constant quality, audio bitrate was 320 and the quantizer was set all the way down to 15. I know 15 is a little excessive but 17 to 15 actually really made a noticeable difference (at least to someone who's been looking at the footage for months while editing). The final file size ended up being around 92MB compared to the first MP4 attempts of 75MB and 82MB, but the for such a quality boost, it's worth it.

I feel much better about the results and I don't think both copies could look any better under 100MB, so I can now upload. Thanks for everyone's help! :)
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