21 grams — Degraining challenge

[tormento]

This is really hard. The entire movie is a mess to degrain, with different films and so.

But this part is a real nightmare.

I went up to MDegrain9 and ThSAD 800 with really poor results.

I need your help.

Enjoy.

[lansing]

Neatvideo is your friend

[hello_hello]

I tried a few different scripts, resizing to 720p first to speed it up, but the scripts seemed to do better at 720p anyway. I don't know how you'd remove a lot of that noise without creating some degree of mush, but the best result was from QTGMC in progressive mode (I'm sure you'll be happy to hear that). I only played with QTGMC's presets, and for some reason slower NoisePreset settings than the default removed less noise. You might be able to improve on it if you mess around with QTGMC's noise removal options. I think this is the first time I've used a value greater than 4 for EzDenoise.

QTGMC(InputType=1, Preset="very slow", EzDenoise=12)

QTGMC InputType_1_ Preset_very slow_ EzDenoise_12 720p.mkv (1.7MB)

[manolito]

Extreme source - extreme filters...

Here is my result:
https://www.sendspace.com/file/4cosmg

My filters (all very retro):

RemoveGrain(mode=22)
degrainmedian(mode=2)
undot()
deen()
DenoiseSharpen(mode=22)
asharp(1,4)
RemoveGrain(mode=22)
degrainmedian(mode=2)
undot()
deen()
DenoiseSharpen(mode=22)
asharp(1,4)

Just 1 instance of the filter chain was not enough, so I repeated the whole chain. Doesn't look that bad to me...

[real.finder]

try STpresso/Spresso then denoise my help

[hello_hello]

Originally Posted by manolito

My filters (all very retro):


Just 1 instance of the filter chain was not enough, so I repeated the whole chain. Doesn't look that bad to me...

And I thought I was at risk of causing tormento's head to spin by downscaling my encode to 720p.

[tormento]

Resizing is extreme ratio. On thousand of sources, I did it only twice, if I recall well.

Come on, you can do better than that.

[tormento]

Originally Posted by manolito

Just 1 instance of the filter chain was not enough, so I repeated the whole chain. Doesn't look that bad to me...

Good try but too many details lost.

SMDegrain on extreme settings can do better but not the best.

[tormento]

Originally Posted by real.finder

try STpresso/Spresso then denoise my help

Come on... you can do better than this. At least try some script out of your hat.

[Sharc]

How about:

dfttest(sigma=400)   #try out different sigma, up to 800 …..
smdegrain(tr=9,thsad=1000)
MCDegrainSharp(frames=3)

[Boulder]

The grain is an artistic effect in this case, so I really wouldn't worry about downscaling to 720p if you already change the vision the director had

I challenge you to test if you can spot the difference between a properly downscaled (Bicubic parameters optimized by Zopti) and a non-downscaled version during playback on your TV. You'd be surprised how small or even negligible the difference is for many, many sources. The bitrate savings are quite big..

[ChaosKing]

Theoretically https://github.com/HomeOfVapourSynth...pourSynth-BM3D should give good results, but I don't get good results. Maybe it is only really good for noise but not for grain.

My try with MLDegrain+smdegrain
https://filehorst.de/d/deJciyII

[SlowDelivery]

I don't have much experience but recently I've tried a lot of different denoising filters and found MCTemporalDenoise to be good.
This is really slow but gave good results:

MCTemporalDenoise(settings="very high",thSAD=800,sharp=false,stabilize=false)
SMDegrain(tr=2,thSAD=800)
RemoveDirtMC(5,false)

Picture: https://ibb.co/rMCbMfS

If the above is too slow, perhaps you can try

MCTemporalDenoise(settings="high",thSAD=800,sharp=false,stabilize=false)
SMDegrain(tr=1,thSAD=800)
RemoveDirtMC(10,false)

Picture: https://ibb.co/K04YKYr

[real.finder]

Originally Posted by tormento

Come on... you can do better than this. At least try some script out of your hat.

maybe later, but IIRC Didée did Degraining source like this before (I remember the video sample was of a man drinking with glass) but I don't know where the link for the post now , anyway IIRC it's done by mdegrain with some strong prefilter

Originally Posted by ChaosKing

Theoretically https://github.com/HomeOfVapourSynth...pourSynth-BM3D should give good results, but I don't get good results. Maybe it is only really good for noise but not for grain.

My try with MLDegrain+smdegrain
https://filehorst.de/d/deJciyII

isn't Theoretically BM3D mean MC + 3D Denoiser?

[Boulder]

Originally Posted by real.finder

maybe later, but IIRC Didée did Degraining source like this before

This is something that might be interesting. I remembered that he did some tricks with Aliens -- lots of grain but not excessive like 21 grams.
https://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?t=161413

[tormento]

My last attempt:

PHP Code:

SMDegrain (tr=9, thSAD=1000, refinemotion=false, n16=true, mode=0, contrasharp=false, PreFilter=4, truemotion=true, plane=4, chroma=true) 


Results:

image

video

Originally Posted by real.finder

maybe later

I tried to use subpixel=3 option, that uses NNEDI3, but nothing happened. Can you check the SMDegrain script?

[real.finder]

Spresso(10,30).STpresso(10,30,4,22,8,49,1,mc=true) #last updates
SMDegrain (tr=6, thSAD=1000, refinemotion=false, mode=0, contrasharp=false, PreFilter=2, truemotion=true, plane=4, chroma=true)

[real.finder]

Originally Posted by tormento

I tried to use subpixel=3 option, that uses NNEDI3, but nothing happened. Can you check the SMDegrain script?

I don't think it's good to use it with your source, maybe that why it did nothing, anyway IIRC it's for better quality and less detail loss not for remove more grain, and it's seems do nothing for HD source since HD use pel=1 by default

[tormento]

Originally Posted by real.finder

I don't think it's good to use it with your source, maybe that why it did nothing, anyway IIRC it's for better quality and less detail loss not for remove more grain, and it's seems do nothing for HD source since it use pel=1

I did not mean it does visually nothing, I mean it doesn't change fps or file size even of a byte, as if it wouldn't be enabled.

[ChaosKing]

"subpixel=3" condition is

pelclip      = pel>1 && subpixel == 3

so pel needs to be > 1 to use nnedi. otherwise it does nothing, like you said.

see
https://github.com/realfinder/AVS-St...grain.avsi#L88
https://github.com/realfinder/AVS-St...rain.avsi#L212