SloMo - Velocity Envelope vs Twixtor vs AVISynth

Massimo Rossi schrieb am 13.10.2011 um 23:54 Uhr

Yes, in your test AVISynth/MVTools2 look actually better than the other ones.

In my experience Twixtor does a great job, too. I recently used it in a wedding video and the result looked really great.

Bye.

Ehemaliger User schrieb am 14.10.2011 um 01:31 Uhr

To be fair, I didn't really have Twixtor configured right (I don't think - I don't really know the settings for interlaced video because I've only actually ever worked with progressive HD...yes, I'm a spoiled brat).

That said, Vegas does do a nice job, but I slowed twixtor down to 20%. I could probably stretch it even further. :-)

I just uploaded (to the same dropbox folder) a render with the kick at 5%. It's not perfect, but it's just the default settings. Considering all the players are moving (and blurred), it actually is quite remarkable what Twixtor did with it.

EDIT: The second 5% speed version is uploaded and is better than the first. You can see them here:

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/19142827/soccer%2Bbike_5%251.mpg
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/19142827/soccer%2Bbike_5%252.mpg

This version is Vegas at 5% - remarkably good, but compared to Twixtor...meh.

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/19142827/soccer_bike_vegas%2B5%25.mpg

amendegw schrieb am 14.10.2011 um 01:53 Uhr

anatavism,

Whatever you did in version two fixed the biggest "issue" I saw with the very first version. That is, "flares" eminating from the soccer ball as it passes the goal.

...Jerry

btw: I like the really slow motion.

amendegw schrieb am 14.10.2011 um 01:58 Uhr

Is it just me, or is the 3rd take a step backward? I see stutter that doesn't appear in the other two versions.

...Jerry

Edit: It's a lot easier to download & access your clips if you make them a clickable link.

Type this: [link=http://dl.dropbox.com/u/19142827/soccer_bike_vegas%2B5%25.mpg]
Yields this: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/19142827/soccer_bike_vegas%2B5%25.mpg

johnmeyer schrieb am 14.10.2011 um 02:40 Uhr

Maybe it's just my YouTube connection (I've been having problems with them the past 48 hours), but somehow my AVISynth slo-mo looks really, really bad, showing strobing and jerks rather than smooth motion. You'll see it clearly if you watch the player in blue who shows up in the foreground as the camera pans from right to left, following the ball. On the Twixtor footage, he looks smooth; on the AVISynth footage, he appears to be juddering, as if the frame rate has been reduced. This part looked fine on my original slo-mo that I linked to above.

If I get time, perhaps I'll upload the two and see if I can get a better YouTube result (as long as I don't have to re-read that 200+ thread from a few months ago) ...

amendegw schrieb am 14.10.2011 um 02:54 Uhr

"You'll see it clearly if you watch the player in blue who shows up in the foreground as the camera pans from right to left, following the ball. On the Twixtor footage, he looks smooth; on the AVISynth footage, he appears to be juddering, as if the frame rate has been reduced"Hmmm... I don't see that. However, I will go back and double check my project & source footage settings (probably tomorrow).

I must confess I made a couple of "minor" changes to your footage. You had grabbed my first upload of the source that did not include some minor cropping and noise reduction. So, I applied the cropping and noise reduction to your footage in my final Vegas Project. I think I'll try to remove the "fixes" and re-render.

My workflow was to render to a DNxHD intermediate & use HandBrake to deinterlace.

...Jerry

Edit: Of course the YouTube upload was progressive, 29.97 fields per second, where as the original footage was interlaced, 59.94 fields per second, which would explain some judder.

johnmeyer schrieb am 14.10.2011 um 03:11 Uhr

Speaking of noise reduction, the AVI file you uploaded sure looked to me as though noise reduction had already been applied. As you know, that is another thing I have spent a lot of time trying to perfect (see the fish denoising thread with Nick Hope a few months back).

I would be happy, if you have the original, unaltered DV clip of the exact same sequence (corner kick, bicycle kick, goal) to take a shot at denoising it.

BTW, just for grins, I slowed down the kick to 5% so I could A/B with the Twixtor footage. For some reason the Twixtor footage has lost its detail -- that could have been during the encoding, or from some other factor. What I found is that, after I tweaked MVTools2 a little, I was able to get almost the identical motion artifacts (or lack thereof) as Twixtor. I went frame-by-frame and did a back-and-forth A/B comparison and, other than the change in the amount of detail, I couldn't see much difference, except at the moment just after the kick, where Twixtor definitely does a better job of retaining the shape of the ball.

Here's the result, in MPG format:

5% Slow Motion (MPEG-2 format) using AVISynth

I changed the analysis lines in the code previously posted to these two lines:

backward_vec = MAnalyse(super,blksize=8, overlap=0, isb = true,  search=3 )

forward_vec =  MAnalyse(super,blksize=8, overlap=0, isb = false, search=3 )

amendegw schrieb am 14.10.2011 um 03:46 Uhr

"I would be happy, if you have the original, unaltered DV clip of the exact same sequence (corner kick, bicycle kick, goal) to take a shot at denoising it."I'm pretty sure the version you originally downloaded was the same as this, except it was as smart render without the audio. In any case, here's the orginal capture: Chris BicycleGoodCapture.zip. (the link that's in the other thread currently has a denoised and cropped version).

So, I think I'm going to head off to bed and re-evaluate the "state of SloMo" tomorrow morning.

...Jerry

Robert Johnston schrieb am 14.10.2011 um 04:41 Uhr

Have you tried using Video Supersampling in Vegas 10 on slo-mo. You need to view the Video Bus Track to get access to the Video SuperSampling envelope where you can change the value from 1 to 8.

It's suppose to be for smoothing out animation, but it might work on video slow motion. I dabbled with it for a little while, and it does do something.

Ehemaliger User schrieb am 14.10.2011 um 05:38 Uhr

I had exactly ZERO knowledge of supersampling in Vegas. I did a project in April that would have benefited from that. Now I'll have to load it up and see what the results are like. Thanks for the tip Robert.

As for the second version of the Twixtor at 5% version...I actually just changed the blend to "Motion Weighted," and the Warping option to "Forward." It was a bit of a blind tweak, but it definitely dealt with the residual image which is probably a result of both blur and interlacing.

I have to say, I find Twixtor pretty amazing. I've only used it in projects a few times (one of which paid for Twixtor itself), but man, you get dramatic results with little effort. The time mapping takes a little to get your head around, but it really creates startling results.

As always though, less is more. :-)

EDIT: ps: linking to an actual link is noted. I know what a pain indirect linking is...apologies for that.

johnmeyer schrieb am 14.10.2011 um 06:04 Uhr

You're welcome to try supersampling on slo-mo, but I'm pretty sure that it does absolutely nothing for video, unless something has changed in recent releases. It used to be that supersampling was only useful for things that Vegas itself generated, like masks, titles, generated media, etc.

From the Vegas 10 help file:

Video supersampling can improve the appearance of computer-generated animation by calculating intermediate frames between the project's frame rate, allowing you to create smoother motion blurring or motion from sources such as track motion, event pan/crop, transitions, or keyframable effects. (emphasis added by me).

Jerry,

Here's a link to a denoised version of your soccer video:

Denoised Video

I am definitely of the "less-is-more" school when it comes to denoising, so you may at first not find this sufficiently denoised. However, it gets rid of most of the dot noise, and also the subtle yellow chroma blotches in the grass. The place where I found your denoising too strong -- and where my initial attempts were also too much -- is in the grass. Because this is 8mm analog, there isn't the same sort of crisp edges to the grass, but there is a lot of noise. Because of the noise, it is tempting just to crank up the dial and kill everything, but then you end up with them playing on a green plastic sheet. The same thing is true of a lot of the dark detail in the background.

Anyway, this is very subjective stuff, and if you don't like what I did, my feelings won't be hurt at all.

NickHope schrieb am 14.10.2011 um 06:39 Uhr

Sometimes Vegas can give surpisingly nice slomo results. I asked the author how he did this slomo (at 4:17). I was expecting it to be something fancy, but he said it was simply the CTRL key+drag in Vegas. I guess the movement isn't particularly challenging.

Some time, when I need slomo, I'm planning to work out an AviSynth script for [interlaced source > slomo progressive output], similar to John's but including QTGMC deinterlacing and re-using QTGMC's motion vectors in MflowFps in the same way we did for the PAL <=> NTSC scripts. The result should be very smooth.

johnmeyer schrieb am 14.10.2011 um 08:23 Uhr

Nick,

For interlaced to progressive slo-mo, I think you can just insert QTGMC in place of Bob in that script I posted today, and then skip the weave. As for using the QTGMC vectors, that may provide a little speed increase, but you may find the results are worse. The reason is -- as I found again today when I tweaked the slo-mo of that soccer kick -- is that much of the "tuning" needed to avoid the motion estimation artifacts (like "broken" legs, and weird motion on picket fences) is to change the MAnalyze settings. This is what is inside of QTGMC and is what you "steal" from QTGMC when you use its vectors. If those settings are not what you need in order to get good slo-mo, then youj'll have to bite the bullet and create your own.

BTW, sorry I didn't give you credit over in doom9 for the PAL->NTSC script. I think it was largely your work. However, since it was the wrong script, since the guy was staying HD all the way, perhaps it's just as well I didn't drag your name into it.

amendegw schrieb am 14.10.2011 um 12:17 Uhr

@johnmeyer

I re-rendered my Vegas Project, this time with the cropping & NewBlue Noise Reduction removed from your AVISynth clip. Here are the results:

I still don't see any juddering in the YT video of your AVISynth footage, but (to eliminate the YT variable, here's the progressive video I uploaded: SloMoCompare.zip As I'm sure you're aware, one would expect to see smoother play in the Interlaced original as it is 60i, whereas the YouTube upload is 30p.

Thanks for the denoised footage - looks very good. You know, I bet I know why you observed noise reduction in the original footage. The capture was done from a Hi8 original, played on a Sony EVS7000 deck thru a Canopus ACEDVio card. The EVS7000 has DNR circuitry - I'll bet I had it turned on.

...Jerry

amendegw schrieb am 14.10.2011 um 12:38 Uhr

Nick Hope says, "Sometimes Vegas can give surpisingly nice slomo results."Yeah, that video looked very good. Although the Twixtor & AVISynth results in this thread's subject video were better, the Vegas only segment turned out better than I expected.

fwiw, If one has 60p source, musicvid has documented a very nice procedure for 50% SloMo here: OT: Playtouch 60p to 30p Slow Motion

...Jerry

johnmeyer schrieb am 14.10.2011 um 16:14 Uhr

I guess it was later than I thought when I posted last night about seeing stuttering in the AVISynth footage. It was definitely stuttering, but it was the Vegas slo-mo, not AVISynth. I don't know how I could have possibly mis-read the titles but, like I said, it was late.

amendegw schrieb am 14.10.2011 um 17:36 Uhr

anatavism says, "linking to an actual link is noted. I know what a pain indirect linking is...apologies for that."Didn't mean to sound like I was scolding you. The way my IE9 is configured, *.mpg files will attempt to open in a Quicktime Player. For some reason that was working properly. The only way I could figure out how to download your files was to create my own, temporary web page with an anchor tag & href pointing to your file. Then I would right click and "Save Target As", phew!!!

I do, very much, appreciate all the effort you've put in on this mini-project.

...Jerry

johnmeyer schrieb am 14.10.2011 um 18:52 Uhr

I originally tried to view those MPEG-2 files on the one computer that I've allowed Quicktime to be installed (I hate Quicktime and what it does to a Windows computer). I had the same problem of not being able to download the files. I then went up to the office, to my main computer, which does not have any QuickTime or any other Apple software installed, and all I had to do was right-click and download.

You might be able to disable the Quicktime plugin. On Firefox there is a plugin manager where you can choose to disable (without un-installing) any plugin, and I assume that IE9 has something similar.

amendegw schrieb am 14.10.2011 um 19:05 Uhr

Well, as long as the video file was posted as a Link, I had no problems - just right click and "save target as". Cutting and pasting the URL in a new tab gave my browser gas pains (or should I say, Quicktime pains [grin]).

You might notice that I always zip up my video files and post the link that way. In any browser I've used, a .zip file link is always treated as a download - no issues with attempts to use plugins.

...Jerry

musicvid10 schrieb am 14.10.2011 um 19:09 Uhr

"fwiw, If one has 60p source, musicvid has documented a very nice procedure for 50% SloMo"

Jerry pointed out farther down in that thread (as did someone in another forum) that it is just easier to set the clip playback properties at .500 first and then drag the event edge normally until it hits the notch. I had been calculating the exact double of frames and stretch-dragging to that exact point, which is a waste of precious brain cells.

NickHope schrieb am 14.10.2011 um 22:49 Uhr

>> For interlaced to progressive slo-mo, I think you can just insert QTGMC in place of Bob in that script I posted today, and then skip the weave <<

So building on that, here's a "general purpose" slo-mo script I've put together, minus the multi-threading code, for anyone starting with interlaced footage, and going down the AviSynth route for slo-mo. As this stands it is extremely slow. The vast majority of it consists of commented-out options and notes.

# General purpose script for slower-than-50% slo-mo from interlaced source



#Frameserve in RGB24 format (or RGB32 if AviSynth will not accept RGB24)

AviSource("d:\fs.avi")

AssumeTFF()

ConvertToYUY2(interlaced=true, matrix="Rec601") #Rec601 is correct for encoding Ut Video Codec or Lagarith in Vdub



QTGMC(SubPel=2) #SubPel must match pel in MSuper below

super = MSuper(levels=1, pel=2)



#Might need to create and tweak vectors if the QTGMC vectors produce artefacts

#See http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?p=1510203#post1510203

#backward_vec = MAnalyse(super,blksize=8, overlap=2, isb = true,  search=3 ) #JohnM

#forward_vec =  MAnalyse(super,blksize=8, overlap=2, isb = false, search=3 ) #JohnM



#"num" equals result of 30 fps, times 2, multiplied by slo-mo factor 

#So, 60000 equals normal speed; 120000 equals 50% normal speed, etc.

#For PAL, num=50, den=1 equals normal speed, so go from there

#MFlowFps(source,super,backward_vec, forward_vec, num=240000, den=1001, ml=500) #JohnM



#ml default is 100. Try 49 or 500 etc to reduce artefacts

#MFlowFps(super, QTGMC_bVec1, QTGMC_fVec1, num=96000, den=1001, ml=100) #25% speed @ 23.976p output

#MFlowFps(super, QTGMC_bVec1, QTGMC_fVec1, num=100, den=1, ml=100) #25% speed @ 25p output or 50% speed @ 50i

MFlowFps(super, QTGMC_bVec1, QTGMC_fVec1, num=120000, den=1001, ml=100) #25% speed @ 29.97p output or 50% @ 59.94i



#Spline36Resize(1280,720)



#Uncomment one of the following for progressive output

#AssumeFPS(23.976) #For 24p output

#AssumeFPS(25) #For 25p output

AssumeFPS(29.97) #For 30p output



#Uncomment the following 3 lines for interlaced output

#separatefields()

#SelectEvery(4,0,3)

#Weave()

But if 50% is slow enough and you want progressive output from interlaced source then this gives a fantastic result:

# Script for 50% speed progressive output slo-mo from interlaced source



#Frameserve in RGB24 format (or RGB32 if AviSynth will not accept RGB24)

AviSource("d:\fs.avi")

AssumeTFF()

ConvertToYUY2(interlaced=true, matrix="Rec601") #Rec601 is correct for encoding Ut Video Codec or Lagarith in Vdub



QTGMC("faster")



Spline36Resize(1280,720)



#Uncomment one of the following for progressive output

#AssumeFPS(23.976) #For 24p output

#AssumeFPS(25) #For 25p output

AssumeFPS(29.97) #For 30p output

Sorry to drown your thread in code, Jerry.