Welcome to Doom9's Forum, THE in-place to be for everyone interested in DVD conversion.

Before you start posting please read the forum rules. By posting to this forum you agree to abide by the rules.

 

Go Back   Doom9's Forum > Video Encoding > MPEG-4 AVC / H.264

Reply
 
Thread Tools Search this Thread Display Modes
Old 6th February 2015, 03:44   #21  |  Link
flyvholm
Semper Tiro
 
flyvholm's Avatar
 
Join Date: Jan 2015
Location: Denmark
Posts: 29
Quote:
Originally Posted by foxyshadis View Post
If people see sparkly artifacts because they've got their sharpness maxed out, or some other picture processing, I guarantee that they're seeing the same artifacts across everything else they watch anyway, so they'd be used to it. It's not worth worrying about.
My film is mostly aurora footage, meaning high ISO, low light, subtle gradients across the sky. By it's nature it's unusually susceptible to artifacts, so I'm afraid it's quite possible that poorly adjusted TVs can show most content ok while pushing this footage over the edge. However, I can't shed the feeling that the issues my friend is seeing are not just down to poor TVs. I used to live same place he does and showed my aurora footage on misc HDTVs without issues. In any case, I do want to find out what's at fault and how widespread the problem is, reason being that I must try to make my digital download look acceptable to as many users as possible.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Stereodude View Post
MCTD doesn't blur motion. You should give it a shot. It's very powerful.
It does look promising, and I'm looking forward to seeing results. Unfortunately my first attempts resulted in VirtualDub crashing or running out of memory, but that will be a subject for another thread if I can't solve it.
flyvholm is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 6th February 2015, 10:32   #22  |  Link
foxyshadis
ангел смерти
 
foxyshadis's Avatar
 
Join Date: Nov 2004
Location: Lost
Posts: 9,558
One other thing I just thought of -- LCD overdrive naturally tends to sparkle, and if there's a little shimmer in the video, that'll probably lead to a lot of sparkle with overdrive. Most TVs don't give you any way to change overdrive, but a few nice units do. Overdrive basically creates a frame (or two) of ringing when a pixel changes, because the overdrive pushes it beyond where it needs to go to make it change faster.

It's not nearly as much of a problem now that response times are much faster across the board than in the 2000's, but it still crops up as a problem from time to time. That's something you can't do much about.
foxyshadis is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 7th February 2015, 05:29   #23  |  Link
huhn
Registered User
 
Join Date: Oct 2012
Posts: 7,903
the samples are very noise and I would say the quality is pretty poor. tested on my 3D LUT calibrated TV and that is not sharp or denoise at all.

do you have a lossless sample part? and this has nothing to do with how motion is handled on my TV is is easily visible on a still standing picture.
huhn is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 7th February 2015, 22:26   #24  |  Link
Taurus
Registered User
 
Taurus's Avatar
 
Join Date: Mar 2002
Location: Krautland
Posts: 903
Yeah, huhn is right.
Give us a sample lagarith lossless file to toy with.
I watched your "high bitrate" file
on two computer monitors and a standard flatscreen tv.
It looks like crap even on an old CRT monitor.
Noise all over the place.
Try more bitrate and/or different x264 settings.
Or try Stereodude' suggestion and calm the grain/dirt down
before encoding.
Taurus is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 8th February 2015, 04:57   #25  |  Link
flyvholm
Semper Tiro
 
flyvholm's Avatar
 
Join Date: Jan 2015
Location: Denmark
Posts: 29
Huhn, Taurus: Thank you very much for testing, it is much appreciated! Interestingly your opinions appear to be somewhat different from that of previous testers, so now the big question is if there's an actual difference or if you are just more critical.

Take a look at the following two screenshots:
VLC without sharpening
VLC with sharpening
This illustrates the difference between what I see on my end and what my friend sees on misc HDTVs. Both images have issues, but the question is: Does the noise you're seeing resemble the non-sharpened screenshot (softer, smoother) or the sharpened one (harsh w. artifacts)? And what make/model are your TVs?

Here's the Lagarith lossless AVI, which is the source of the MP4-clips:
Lossless AVI file (483MB)
Bear in mind that this is before noise reduction - purposely, I'm trying to establish why the noise looks so different depending on playback setup - and that shooting aurora footage is a compromise. Noise and softness simply cannot be avoided if you want fluid footage.

Last edited by flyvholm; 8th February 2015 at 06:18.
flyvholm is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 8th February 2015, 11:05   #26  |  Link
Taurus
Registered User
 
Taurus's Avatar
 
Join Date: Mar 2002
Location: Krautland
Posts: 903
Downloading your clip right now.
Tomorrow I have access to a calibrated 27" monitor.
Will report later on.
And yes, it looks more like the sharpened image on the TV flatscreen.
It's a Phillips 6000 series 32" (I think). Specs unknown.
All settings on factory defaults for the test.
Way too much oversharpening this way.
Without color enhancement/sharpening much better,
but still not pro level.
Will report on tuesday if you are still interested.
Taurus is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 9th February 2015, 04:26   #27  |  Link
Stereodude
Registered User
 
Join Date: Dec 2002
Location: Region 0
Posts: 1,436
Quote:
Originally Posted by flyvholm View Post
Here's the Lagarith lossless AVI, which is the source of the MP4-clips:
Lossless AVI file (483MB)
So I made two attempts at compressing your clip. The first basically compressing it as is, the second with some MCTD NR. Here's a zip of both.

http://stereodude.net/title_x264.zip
Stereodude is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 9th February 2015, 06:19   #28  |  Link
flyvholm
Semper Tiro
 
flyvholm's Avatar
 
Join Date: Jan 2015
Location: Denmark
Posts: 29
@Taurus: Thanks a lot for the detailed feedback, and I'm quite interested in what else you find. On the other monitors you tried and when disabling color enhancement/sharpening on the TV, do you get an image similar to my screenshot without sharpening? Or is it still looking worse, one way or another?

The source is soft/noisy, but it doesn't actually bother most people as long as the noise looks "natural". However, the sharpened noise is highly disturbing, so all the HDTVs with default, excessive sharpening make a real problem. The noise reduction I've done isn't sufficient to deal with that, so I have a lot of work ahead of me trying to minimize noise while also avoiding too obvious artifacts.

@Stereodude: Thanks a lot. You've used higher bitrate, and as should be the case it looks better - when displayed properly. Unfortunately, the much more detailed noise goes all nuts on those TVs with excessive sharpening. My friend suggests that in terms of the noise the poor HDTVs look like VLC w. sharpening cranked up to the second bar. That's just torture, but it's what I'll have to deal with, because it seems like that is what a lot of people are going to see. You'll see that your MTCD-treated version doesn't even cut it. I made a version that seems to have the noise sufficiently controlled via MCTD("high") and high compression on top:
Denoised with MCTD (high)
I prefer the look of your sensibly denoised/compressed version, but I'm afraid I'll have to go harder with noise suppression. Still experimenting...
flyvholm is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 9th February 2015, 14:30   #29  |  Link
Stereodude
Registered User
 
Join Date: Dec 2002
Location: Region 0
Posts: 1,436
Quote:
Originally Posted by flyvholm View Post
@Stereodude: Thanks a lot. You've used higher bitrate, and as should be the case it looks better - when displayed properly. Unfortunately, the much more detailed noise goes all nuts on those TVs with excessive sharpening. My friend suggests that in terms of the noise the poor HDTVs look like VLC w. sharpening cranked up to the second bar. That's just torture, but it's what I'll have to deal with, because it seems like that is what a lot of people are going to see. You'll see that your MTCD-treated version doesn't even cut it. I made a version that seems to have the noise sufficiently controlled via MCTD("high") and high compression on top:
Denoised with MCTD (high)
I prefer the look of your sensibly denoised/compressed version, but I'm afraid I'll have to go harder with noise suppression. Still experimenting...
So I tried all the clips on both of my HDTVs (1 LCD / 1 Plasma) with the Sharpness set to the default of 50 (should be 0). I agree the noise / grain is accentuated by the increased sharpness, but it isn't as bad as your VLC screenshot.

I also played all the clips back with the sharpness properly set. When set correctly I liked the title_crf18_nr.mkv the best. The noise is significantly reduced, but not completely wiped. title_crf18_nr.mkv looked acceptable with the sharpness at 50. There are plenty of commercial blu-ray discs with more noise / grain than it that will have similar problems with noise / grain accentuation by the cranked sharpness. Those sorts of people probably just think there's lots of "detail" in their HD.

I should probably also mention that I sit closer to my TVs than most people. My head is 8.5' from the 64.5" plasma.
Stereodude is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 10th February 2015, 21:29   #30  |  Link
Taurus
Registered User
 
Taurus's Avatar
 
Join Date: Mar 2002
Location: Krautland
Posts: 903
Hi flyvholm,
yesterday evening i had access to a calibrated monitor.
The good thing is: Your files look better than expected.
Much less visible noise and distortions.
The bad thing is: I guess about 90 % of all TV's are misaligned.
Same to PC monitors.
The only thing you can do is, find your sweetspot between sharpness and blurring.
Your material is quite demanding.
I have tried some (avisynth) degrainers/denoisers on it.
Nothing really impressed me.
I saw your post in the avisynth thread about MCTD.
I dont think this will do the trick.
I'm not so familiar with MCTD.
The last time I used it is maybe 4-5 years ago.
It needs a high learning curve (Haha, I read about your crashes).
One suggestion:
Try the neatvideo plugin for virtualdub (payware).
Simple to use and in my opinion better than all avisynth plugins
that I have tested on your lagarith clip.
But maybe some of the avisynth gurus will drop by and give a helping hand.
I wish you good luck on your project.
If you have further questions: just go on
Taurus is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 11th February 2015, 08:19   #31  |  Link
flyvholm
Semper Tiro
 
flyvholm's Avatar
 
Join Date: Jan 2015
Location: Denmark
Posts: 29
@Stereodude: I'm getting the feeling HDTVs are highly variable in this respect. The Sony Bravia I have here is extremely well behaved with the footage looking ok even at max sharpness. I would guess what my friend has been seeing is on the other end of the spectrum, and he hardly cares about what looks best on good displays because all he sees are bad displays. So based on his experience he wants to denoise/compress as hard as needed for the footage to look acceptable on those because he believes that's what most people will see. And maybe he's right. I can offer two versions, of course, but the question is what I should go with as the default choice for John Doe.

@Taurus: Thanks a lot for your feedback, I pretty much agree with everything. Indeed, Neat Video looks like a very good proposition, especially because I can get it as an After Effects plugin so I can easily integrate it with the rest of my post processing - would save me a ton of work. The color space conversions required for the Avisynth filters aren't doing the footage any favors either. Even if Neat Video looks like a winner, I owe the good guys here at Doom 9 to investigate the Avisynth options too, crash as I may.
flyvholm is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 11th February 2015, 16:20   #32  |  Link
DarkSpace
Registered User
 
Join Date: Oct 2011
Posts: 204
Quote:
Originally Posted by flyvholm View Post
So based on his experience he wants to denoise/compress as hard as needed for the footage to look acceptable on those because he believes that's what most people will see. And maybe he's right. I can offer two versions, of course, but the question is what I should go with as the default choice for John Doe.
I'm not Stereodude (obviously), but if you're going to offer two versions (and getting the alt. version has no additional fee attached), then I'd say you should make the heavily compressed version the default:
John Doe has no idea about video compression, artefacts, or others (in fact, some people even once told me that they couldn't see a significant difference between the VHS recording and the BD version of a movie [I don't remember which], though I'd estimate that this was rather an extreme case as well), but you should then clearly make the higher-quality version noticeably available (perhaps with a caveat that it might look worse on badly set-up screens).
DarkSpace is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 12th February 2015, 04:01   #33  |  Link
huhn
Registered User
 
Join Date: Oct 2012
Posts: 7,903
Quote:
Originally Posted by flyvholm View Post
Huhn, Taurus: Thank you very much for testing, it is much appreciated! Interestingly your opinions appear to be somewhat different from that of previous testers, so now the big question is if there's an actual difference or if you are just more critical.

Take a look at the following two screenshots:
VLC without sharpening
VLC with sharpening
This illustrates the difference between what I see on my end and what my friend sees on misc HDTVs. Both images have issues, but the question is: Does the noise you're seeing resemble the non-sharpened screenshot (softer, smoother) or the sharpened one (harsh w. artifacts)? And what make/model are your TVs?

Here's the Lagarith lossless AVI, which is the source of the MP4-clips:
Lossless AVI file (483MB)
Bear in mind that this is before noise reduction - purposely, I'm trying to establish why the noise looks so different depending on playback setup - and that shooting aurora footage is a compromise. Noise and softness simply cannot be avoided if you want fluid footage.
it looks like the VLC without sharpening picture.
the problem is already in the source.

the source is pretty blocky and noise. the blocks are easy to see in the top right just go 1 by 1 frame looks like "noise" blocks.the picture is so noisy it looks like it is dithered to 5-6 bit. I guess this just a limitation of the used camera or even camera in general.

the title_crf18.mkv encode from Stereodude looks decent while the title_crf18_nr.mkv looks fake. the uneven noise is kind of weird.

not sure about the Title-MCTD-high.mp4 it looks really blocky.

I guess I prefer title_crf18.mkv. I wonder this is just a problem in these dark scenes.
huhn is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 12th February 2015, 08:57   #34  |  Link
flyvholm
Semper Tiro
 
flyvholm's Avatar
 
Join Date: Jan 2015
Location: Denmark
Posts: 29
@DarkSpace: That is likely what I'll end up doing. I'm just hoping that I can do well enough with noise reduction that I don't have to squish the content too much for poor HDTVs.

@huhn: I also prefer natural looking noise over footage that looks processed and artificial. Unfortunately I think a processed version with much lower noise is going to look better to the average user with a poorly calibrated display. The heavy noise is a result of using ISO 3200+ in night scenes (this clip is ISO 8000 IIRC). May not have been clear, but the film is timelapse produced from DSLR still images. Higher ISO -> shorter exposures -> better time resolution in timelapse -> much smoother aurora footage. Daytime footage with low ISO is no problem.
flyvholm is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 12th February 2015, 20:02   #35  |  Link
Stereodude
Registered User
 
Join Date: Dec 2002
Location: Region 0
Posts: 1,436
Quote:
Originally Posted by huhn View Post
the source is pretty blocky and noise. the blocks are easy to see in the top right just go 1 by 1 frame looks like "noise" blocks.the picture is so noisy it looks like it is dithered to 5-6 bit. I guess this just a limitation of the used camera or even camera in general.
IMHO you shouldn't look at lossy compressed video frame by frame. You need to watch it in motion played back at full speed.
Stereodude is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 12th February 2015, 23:10   #36  |  Link
huhn
Registered User
 
Join Date: Oct 2012
Posts: 7,903
Quote:
Originally Posted by Stereodude View Post
IMHO you shouldn't look at lossy compressed video frame by frame. You need to watch it in motion played back at full speed.
first of all the source is lossless and you can easily see it in motion.
huhn is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 13th February 2015, 01:51   #37  |  Link
Lyris
Registered User
 
Join Date: Sep 2007
Location: Europe
Posts: 602
Quote:
Are there any differences in specs between HDTVs in EU and US that could be relevant?
No. HDTV worldwide is defined in ITU Rec709 but manufacturers ignore it.

You're probably seeing image processing crap turned on in the TV. Is it in the Movie mode? You mentioned Sharpness is off, what about Noise Reduction (I think Samsung calls it Digital Clean View). All the stuff turned off?
Lyris is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 13th February 2015, 16:02   #38  |  Link
flyvholm
Semper Tiro
 
flyvholm's Avatar
 
Join Date: Jan 2015
Location: Denmark
Posts: 29
Quote:
Originally Posted by Lyris View Post
You're probably seeing image processing crap turned on in the TV. Is it in the Movie mode? You mentioned Sharpness is off, what about Noise Reduction (I think Samsung calls it Digital Clean View). All the stuff turned off?
Problem is, I don't see any noise artifacts on the TV I have available for testing. But by now I think it's clear that the problem is indeed poor internal processing in the TVs. My friend who tested a bunch of TVs couldn't even make the footage display properly if neutralizing all settings. It was a choice between ugly, sharpened noise or an image significantly softer than the source. I'm sure that for some TVs neutralizing settings will work. Regardless, the problem remains. Even if I sell the film with an advisory about TVs, I can't expect the average user to dig into the TV settings. So I must do what I can to make the footage look decent on common, default HDTV setups - bad as they are.
flyvholm is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 13th February 2015, 16:53   #39  |  Link
flyvholm
Semper Tiro
 
flyvholm's Avatar
 
Join Date: Jan 2015
Location: Denmark
Posts: 29
So I jumped in and bought the Neat Video plugin, which appears to be a good decision. I'm able to get rid of most of the noise and make the remainder static so it is less distracting. The downside with the sample I chose is that it looks completely "dead" now (could have been a still image). Can't have it both ways. Most importantly, I don't see objectionable processing artifacts, but some may disagree. You can see the noise-reduced sample here:

Sample processed with Neat Video
flyvholm is offline   Reply With Quote
Old 13th February 2015, 21:37   #40  |  Link
Stereodude
Registered User
 
Join Date: Dec 2002
Location: Region 0
Posts: 1,436
Quote:
Originally Posted by huhn View Post
first of all the source is lossless and you can easily see it in motion.
Yes, I know the source is lossless. Some of the artifacts you talked about in the the compressed versions I don't see in motion, only with slowly stepping through frames of them.

I agree that title_crf18.mkv isn't perfect. It could be better. Some of the noise / artifacts are static and don't change frame to frame so MCTD won't clean that up since that's not the type of noise it works on. However, in general my preference is to remove the fine dancing grain/noise that rides on top of video footage since it doesn't add anything to the content and hinders compressibility.
Stereodude is offline   Reply With Quote
Reply

Tags
artifacts, hdtv, noise

Thread Tools Search this Thread
Search this Thread:

Advanced Search
Display Modes

Posting Rules
You may not post new threads
You may not post replies
You may not post attachments
You may not edit your posts

BB code is On
Smilies are On
[IMG] code is On
HTML code is Off

Forum Jump


All times are GMT +1. The time now is 20:05.


Powered by vBulletin® Version 3.8.11
Copyright ©2000 - 2024, vBulletin Solutions Inc.