Beginning Scripter Here

[LivingFlame]

Ok, so I'm not new to video editing by any means, but I am 100% new to AviSynth. I've been reading the guide, scanning through posts in this forum, and tooling around in the Vdub script editor. But, a lot of it is still kinda foggy to me.

At any rate, I'm running Ah! My Goddess through AviSynth (which already looks pretty good to begin with, IMO), and I'd like any sort of opinions on the matter. Admittedly, everything before the BeforeAfterLine function that I'm using to see the difference came straight from the aforementioned guide, but here's what I have at the moment:

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MPEG2Source("F:\Stuff\DVD Rips\Ah! My Goddess\DGIndex Project Files\AMG 001.d2v")
deint=TDeint(mode=2,mtnmode=3,blim=100)
TFM(cthresh=4,slow=2,clip2=deint)
TDecimate(mode=1)
BeforeAfterLine(1,filters="""Deen("w2d",2,7,9).LimitedSharpenFaster().Toon(Strength=.05)""")

The Deen function is probably what I know the least about. I tinkered with it, and it doesn't seem to be taking away too much detail to me. Someone out there probably has a better idea of what the settings should be than I do though, lol. Anyway, it looks better than it did, I think, but does anyone else have any suggestions?

And here's some pics of what those filters are doing (hence the BeforeAfterLine):

(I think this shows what I was intending for Deen to do. You can see the difference on the ceiling especially.)


(This better shows the LimitedSharpenFaster and Toon functions.)


(This pic is just to show what Deen is doing to the background. I figured I needed something with more background detail. Think Deen needs to be toned down?)


Thanks for any comments/suggestions/encouragement! XD (Which I hope there are some comments/suggestions. )

[Kariudo]

eh, looks good to me.
the lines could be darkened a bit more (just personal taste)
may want to try a few more smoothers to get rid of more of the noise on the tennis court (I'd give removegrain a go)

deen isn't doing too much atm, the first number you have is the radius (2 in your case)
increasing the radius will make the smoothing more noticable.

if you're looking to increase compressability, I'd recommend getting/using removegrain (v1.0) and fluxsmoothST
removegrain(mode=5)
removegrain(mode=5)
fluxsmoothST()
deen("insert favorite mode here", other arguments)

^effectively gets rid of a lot of noise, especially the noise you can't see, while retaining fine details.

if I go back to windows in the next few days, I'll dig up the script that I used when I was using AMG for gateway

[LivingFlame]

Thanks a lot for the reply, Kariudo! I tried out the RemoveGrain and FluxSmooth effects you suggested, and you're quite right. That got rid of the vast majority of the grain on the court and other similar places. I also upped the ratio on Deen by 1 (which makes it 3). I saw 4 recommended somewhere, but originally, I figured I'd play conservative. I was afraid of losing too much detail in the background of various scenes (especially some outdoor scenes). As you can see, the net around the tennis court is steadily disappearing, lol. (Don't worry about that too much though, it's not actually a scene I plan on using. It just made a good example.)



I also darkened the lines a bit for you. If I darken them too much more, I think they start to look a little weird, though.



On a separate note, most of the arguments for Deen just feel over my head (though I understand how the radius works at this point, as well as "w2d" vs. "a2d"). That's why I've been so hesitant to alter it very much. I know there's some people around here, especially, who have extremely discerning eyes that can see over-filtering like it was a subtitle sitting in the frame, haha. Anyway, I think this Deen is light enough to not sacrifice too much detail in the backgrounds while still doing a decent job smoothing. What does anyone else think? Example:



Again, thanks for the advice. If you do happen to find the script you used, I'd be interested to see it just to see if it made your footage look much better than what I have.

Also, semi-random question asked out of curiosity: Would "w3d" provide any substantial difference from "w2d"? I know "w3d" adds temporal smoothers, but I don't actually know what that means.

(Sorry for all the pictures and questions. I'm just trying to learn the right way to do this stuff.) :3

Thanks again.

[LivingFlame]

Meant to put my script at the end of that.

Minus the BeforeAfterLine:

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MPEG2Source("F:\Stuff\DVD Rips\Ah! My Goddess\DGIndex Project Files\AMG 001.d2v")
deint=TDeint(mode=2,mtnmode=3,blim=100)
TFM(cthresh=4,slow=2,clip2=deint)
TDecimate(mode=1)
RemoveGrain(mode=5)
RemoveGrain(mode=5)
FluxSmoothST()
Deen("w2d",3,7,9)
LimitedSharpenFaster()
Toon(Strength=.2)

Sorry for double posting.

[Kariudo]

for modes w2d and w3d there are 3 arguments that can go along with it
radius, luma, chroma

upping the radius increases the smoothing

luma is the amount of smoothing applied to the luma (Y) plane. Since the eye sees luma in more detail than chroma, you'll notice more smoothing if you increase this value

likewise, chroma smooths the color (uv) planes. I don't know what would happen if you increase this too much...but it might look like the color is smudged.

deen usually removes too much detail for me, so when I use it I'll use it conservitavely
deen("a3d",2,4,4) (my version of deen has a2d and a3d instead of w2d and w3d)

from eadfag

If you want to smooth an image, there are basically two ways to approach the idea. The first one is the most obvious - spatial smoothing. Spatial smoothing is where you take one frame at a time and try to smooth out any problems in each individual frame. Temporal smoothing, however, is very different. Temporal smoothing looks at a pixel or group of pixels and compares to the same pixel/group in the frames before and after this one. By doing so, a temporal smoother looks for changes in these pixels. If an image isn't moving but there are very small changes in the pixels then this can be detected as noise and smoothed out.

Both of these have a visual impact on your footage but spatial smoothing is often the most visible. Temporal smoothing, however, is type that improves compressibility the most as distribution codecs all only encode the differences in the frames - so by reducing the differences by smoothing across frames you get more encoding bits to spend on the details in the image. Temporal smoothing is always recommended when doing internet distributions.

[LivingFlame]

Thanks again for the detailed response. I think I'm getting this now. One last question that I think should be easy to answer. What is the "eadfag" you have quoted?

[Kariudo]

Read <a href=http://www.a-m-v.org/guides/avtech31/>ErMaC & AbsoluteDestiny's Friendly AMV Guides</a> minus the read
thake the first letter of each word and you get eadfag

[LivingFlame]

Ah, I see. I've been reading the newer guide (that goes with the AMVapp 3.0 beta), so the acronym didn't fit. :x

[JaddziaDax]

dont forget to crop off those borders, and resize it to widescreen :O

[Kariudo]

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TFM(d2v="D:\Goddess\disk3.d2v",order=-1,mode=5,PP=7,field=-1,slow=2)
vaguedenoiser(threshold=2,method=1,nsteps=6,Wiener=true,chromaT=2.0)
removegrain(mode=5)
removegrain(mode=5)
deen("a3d",3,4,4)
fluxsmoothst()
limitedsharpenfaster(edgemode=1,wide=true,strength=250,smode=1)
vmtoon(sharpen=false,strength=25)
lanczos4resize(960,480)
crop(120,0,-120,0)

limitedsharpenfaster may be too strong, play around with it a bit.
I like limitedsharpen (as opposed to vmtoon for sharpening) because I can't control anything but the strength with vmtoon :/

this resizes the footage (preserving the correct PAR and DAR) and crops it to be 4:3