Artifacts in Anime/Toon Footage

[Anno-san]

After several months of ripping anime and cartoon footage from R1 DVD and attempting to encode them, I have noticed several recurring artifacts in the source VOB files:

1. Blocking/Blurring on Edges

Some backgroung threads HERE.

evident here


here on the redish edges


here


and here on the red areas


I tried using Deblock. It didn't help.

I tried using Dehalo_alpha. I recieved the error: "there is no function named expand".

I tried using Edgecleaner and awrpsharp. It gave the error: "there is no function named awarpsharp" for both commands, even though awarpsharp.dll WAS in my plugins folder.

I tried using LSFmod. That script ran but made little to no difference.


2. Heavy noise and grain

I used temporaldegrain() and that worked well in some cases. Other times it caused large patches of fuzzed discolorations on colors in the background.

Anyway, doom9 is comprehensive but for whatever reason, I guess they randomly ignore certain users for no adequately explored reason whenever they feel like it. So I haven't received much help at all there.

Some questions to conclude:

1. Why does footage from DVD look so horrible when viewing the .vob's on a computer? (the quality is clearly quite high when they are just watched on a DVD player connected to a TV set).
- Is this the case for all DVDs or does it depend on the quality of the release, thus making it the company's fault?
- Does the video quality appear so poor because HD video cards show artifacts in SD video more clearly than older graphics cards would, like how HD TVs show artifacts from DVDs?

2. Can anyone help/give advice on how to remove these artifacts and with which avisynth filters?

3. Do any fansub group staff visit this site? I'm sure fixing these issues are immensely simple to them.

[HalOfBorg]

If you use Sony Vegas for editing, there is a plugin called Smart Smoother. Might do it.

[Anno-san]

If you use Sony Vegas for editing, there is a plugin called Smart Smoother. Might do it.

I do not use Sony Vegas and I do not intend to. If you know any AviSynth plugins for smoothing however, that would be helpful.

[post-it]

@ Anno-san

. I see three issues with your pictures:
1) needs de-interlaced properly.
2) images looked "pulled" from a Divx/Xvid file.
3) an x/h264 process was not used.

. I don't see anything here which could not be corrected by simple de-interlacing.


. the 45° red mis-alignment and the double-imaging are both products of slop-artist alignment.
please de-interlace properly.
. as for the over-driven Red Boxes and blurriness, that's a problem sometimes called "shimmering."

please get with Quu -or- Scintilla on this issue for this is an issue with AVISynth.

[Kariudo]

uhh...post-it...
that's not interlacing, and you should've read the background thread on doom9.

Anno-san: You might just have to live with the blurring. It might be bad chroma upsampling, but that's not something I'm really knowledgeable in...so it may be best to wait for another member to confirm.

If I recall, expand is a function in masktools (the 1.x.x version). If something isn't autoloading, the next step is to try manually loading it (loadplugin() for dll files). warpsharp.dll can break autoloading if memory serves.

You didn't get ignored on doom9. They didn't see any artifacts on the edges, and I don't really see any either. Red on <dark color here> just naturally seems to stick out.

For your other questions:
1) Because there's differences between TVs and PC screens, and dvd players process the image before sending it to your tv.

Quality of the release can definitely be a factor (I'm looking at you Fumoffu R1), but you'll generally see a difference between watching it on a TV through a dvd player and watching it on your computer.

Graphics cards don't come in HD and SD flavors per se*, and to the best of my knowledge don't affect playback quality at all. The graphics card may be decoding the vob, but that's about it.

*newer graphics cards may include hardware for decoding blu-ray to take the stress off of the cpu, but an old Radeon x800 will put out 1920x1080 just as well as an HD5870...provided HDCP over HDMI isn't an issue

2) Like I, and others, have said before...it doesn't look like there are any artifacts (besides noise, which I think you know how to deal with)

3) only one I know of is mirkosp

[post-it]

uhh...post-it...
that's not interlacing, and you should've read the background thread on doom9.

When you let DGIndex "preview" this source, the Information window states "Video Type: Film" and the "Frame Type:" is constantly at "progressive".

On a clip with standard hard pulldown, the "Video Type" will typically show "Film xx%" (with xx usually a high 90-ish number), and "Frame Type" will very rapidly switch between "interlaced" and "progressive".

1) I'm looking at Anno's pic's and I'm looking at
my own stuff which was "encoded like this" and
I'm seeing the same things wrong with both!
2) (Doom9) "message #8" has the key to his error clearly displayed.

I'm not denying that it looks like "artifacts on the edges"
but I've only seen "that problem" with Divx 4.11 ( year 199x )

A: your right, I never read what the problem was, nor did I download
a mis-labeled 20 meg file which was just the show's opening and
did not find a very useful removegrain version. I answered it totally blind!

by the way, Eagle (Hung Cuong Nguyen, 2007 model) [ I prefer the one in front of the lamp ]

uhh...post-it...
that's not interlacing, and you should've read the background thread on doom9.

[mirkosp]

Some questions to conclude:

1. Why does footage from DVD look so horrible when viewing the .vob's on a computer? (the quality is clearly quite high when they are just watched on a DVD player connected to a TV set).
- Is this the case for all DVDs or does it depend on the quality of the release, thus making it the company's fault?
- Does the video quality appear so poor because HD video cards show artifacts in SD video more clearly than older graphics cards would, like how HD TVs show artifacts from DVDs?

It's just that normal TVs and CRT monitors don't show quite the same range of colours that an LCD monitor can. So on a PC you can notice artifacts easier and also because of the closer viewing distance, which does "help" noticing more issues.

2. Can anyone help/give advice on how to remove these artifacts and with which avisynth filters?

Most of that red chroma issue is blocking, and you can deal with that with Deblock_QED or, failing that, some proper settings with FFT3DFilter. Mister Hatt is better than me at filtering (and not just that) so it's better to wait him for some proper parameters, I think.
One of the screenshots, however (specifically the second image you posted, the Ed, Edd & Eddy one) is bad chroma upsampling. That is due to how the YUV -> RGB conversion is handled when you took the screenshot. You'll notice that if you try to add a converttorgb32() to your script and take the screenshot again, the chroma issue will likely go away (that is not how you solve the issue though, that's just to check if it really was a bad YUV->RGB conversion in the chance that I'm wrong about this). Anyway, simply you "deal" with this issue, by making sure you properly keep the colorspace as YV12 all the way through, and just set a better renderer when you playback the final encode (the Haali Renderer is quite good at this, imho).

3. Do any fansub group staff visit this site? I'm sure fixing these issues are immensely simple to them.

Well... not necessarily simple, because in the end the "GIGO" rule is true for everybody, fansubbers are no exception (and some fansubbers aren't all that good at encoding, e.g. think about all the 1080p and 720p upscales...). But either way, me and Mister Hatt do encode for fansub groups (I encode a lot but I'm just about average, he's good but too lazy to actually encode much ). I think that there are other users (I know that TheRyuu made an account), but they prolly aren't all that active.

@post-it: I'm positive that the Berserk footage comes from a DVD because of this thread: http://www.animemusicvideos.org/forum/v ... 5&t=101406

[Anno-san]

Anyway, simply you "deal" with this issue, by making sure you properly keep the colorspace as YV12 all the way through, and just set a better renderer when you playback the final encode (the Haali Renderer is quite good at this, imho).

I have the renderer set at madVR, which only outputs to YV12 IIRC. Does the Haali renderer need to be downloaded or does should it already be an option in MPC?

Deblock_QED
[codeDgdecode_mpeg2source("C:\Users\?\dvd rip\Ed, Edd n Eddy\Ed Edd n Eddy Episode 1.d2v", cpu=4,idct=7,info=3)
TemporalDegrain()
Deblock_QED()][/code]

result:



ConvertToRGB32

Code: Select all

Dgdecode_mpeg2source("C:\Users\?\dvd rip\Ed, Edd n Eddy\Ed Edd n Eddy Episode 1.d2v", info=3)
TemporalDegrain()
converttorgb32()

result


I think that did it.

BTW Is there any way I can configure the settings for PNG compression to make it lossless? When I export a screenshot to .png in MPC-HC, the compression apparently reduces the quality so that artifacts from the video are not accurately displayed. The only "accurate" enough format is BMP but the file size is ridiculous.

Would the ConvertToRGB32() work in the Berserk clips as well? And what about madVR? I have it selected in the MPC-HC settings, why doesn't that fix the chroma issue without me having to use ConvertToRGB32()? Do I have to set madVR as the renderer for all of windows and if so how?

[Mister Hatt]

BAWAWAH YOU'RE ALL WRONG.

Anno-san, what you're experiencing is usually called "lol MPEG-2". It's what happens when your MPEG-2 encoder doesn't lowpass enough but doesn't allocate enough bitrate either. It's especially common on R1 DVDs and MPEG2-TS footage. The other problem with the red jaggies/blocking on line edges is due to terrible chroma subsampling. The chroma issue can be fixed with EdgeCleaner I guess, although contrasharpening might be a better option. The blocking you need to find the golden settings of whatever your favourite deblocker is but I would consider dfttest masking or highly tweaked FFT3D as another option; I ended up using a dfttest mask on Cobra which had similar issues and it turned out pretty sugoi.

As far as fansubbers here go, from what I know of there are three as mirko said. TheRyuu and I encode around the place and mirko is in a bunch of Italian groups. You'll find that the better an encoder is though, the lazier they get.

[Anno-san]

What is the discoloration in the circled area?