There seemed to be a lot of interest in AviSynth previously, but haven't heard much activity about it. Is there something else, perhaps within Vegas that users have found to be effective in cleaning mosquito noise out of video?

I have been very happy with FluxSmooth and Convolution 3D in AviSynth, but I have to open the files in VirtualDub, render them out to something Vegas can read, then render them again when I am done in Vegas. Requires a lot of extra and hard drive space. I would really like it if I could clean up video noise either in Vegas, or at least open the AviSynth (frame served) video files within Vegas.

Don't know what if any work arounds can be found to use one of the frame servers, but think this might be more of an issue with windows & direct show etc. then Sonic. I know for example that the v/dub frameserver throws an error right off the bat when I just tried it in xp pro sp1 -- may be different in 98se or 2k. There used to be a few boards, newsgroups etc that were really into avisynth and they might be able to help you. Also might check into the recent V/Dub forums to see if anyone's still working on the V/Dub frame server drivers to overcome direct show limitations.

As far as the popularity of avisynth, don't think it's lagged that much, but it is a bit more complicated to use then some are comfortable with. (think I said that politely enough).

Regarding video noise, I personally don't know of a great solution. V/Dub has the best noise filters, but as you said, you take an additional render hit & this extra generation does impact on the quality of the final render. Vegas does offer a noise reduction under it's median filter FX. However it's slowwwwwwww comparred to V/dub & even Prem. The resize routines in V/dub are much faster as well, & I think the deinterlace looks nicer, crisper depending on the filter and setting.

In practical use however, I've experienced problems with filtering through V/Dub, then opening the render in Vegas for editing & then rendering a final avi stream for winmedia 9 or mpeg2 compression. The extra generation with the filtering, even with not re-compressing 99% of the video in Vegas, adds enough of a quality hit that I've had better results in *most* cases using the noise reduction & often the deinterlace in the encoding software. I don't know what your final destination is, but maybe that'll help.

A final catch 22 - I have found that if you're rendering to a lower bitrate, something less then say 1.8 meg, some of that noise can actually be beneficial. The encoders generally work by tracking motion and/or changes in the video picture - they are much more prone to define an area as static if the video's been filtered heavily, leading to both blocky artifacts & backgrounds that tend to jump every 5 - 10 frames or so. Leaving some or even all of the video noise in can actually result in a video that looks better to the average viewer. [I use the word average, since I know I have a habit of being over critical of noise, ignoring the fact that to everyone else the price of getting rid of that noise looks far worse]

mike

Thanks for the info. I have only been moderately impressed with many of the filters available within VirtualDub. They all seemed to suffer from some sort of pixel-locking that was simply not acceptible for me. My target is typically a CVD (352x480 DVD Compliant SVCD) so there is enough bitrate that solid color blocks don't get a noticable macroblock.

My two favorite filters right now are Convolution3D and FluxSmooth, both of which do pleasant filtering without looking filtered. I use fairly low settings just to get rid of the majority of mosquito noise from older VHS sources. I find color correction to be a much better "noise" reducer in making old material look impressive.

I always do my trans-render in HuffYUV format, so hopefully I don't get too much degredation from multiple lossy generations. Of course, this really eats up the hard drive since I am too cautious to delete the original capture until done.

P.S. I think the way you phrased it was very polite :-)

I had emailed SF about adding support for AviSynth files, and recieved a response. Though the person responding to my email explained he had not tried it himself, he was under the impression that it had been checked and just opening a *.avs file as an *.avi file had not worked and would require a little more effort than just adding the extension in order to support it.

Oh well, it was worth checking into. From the response here it doesn't look like there is a huge demand for the support at this time, though it would help me. Not critical though, just a nice time saver for my work. I didn't realize the Median filters were a noise reducer, the thumbnail of it just looks like a blurred image but I will test it out. Does it do temporal filtering that anyone knows of, or just spacial?

Thanks for Vegas 4 :-)

Ritchie,

I mentioned this in another post, but VFAPI 1.04 will wrap the AVS script and provide a pseudo AVI that VV will take. When avisynth is coupled with mpeg2dec, even large Mpg files can be served. Works well for me and does not require any intermediate files except separate WAV audio for some work. Perhaps I have missed something in the thread? If so, please forgive me.

DDogg

Ritchie:

Median is great at noise removal. It's just spatial, though, not temporal.

///d@

I don't understand, if it requires so little effort, why on earth was is it not supported in VV4?

Please don't give up so easily solely based on the responses you've received here. The AVISynth community is very active (www.doom9.net), and Sonic Foundry "could" be taking a lead by not only supporting .avs scripts but by promoting the great work that the AVISynth community is contributing.

To me, VV has a gaping whole when it comes to video processing which in many respects undermines all the other great features VV is known for. AVISynth fills this need perfectly. Yes, it does require some knowledge about video processing in order to be used effectively, and that can only be a good thing.

I really really like VV, but this simple omission is enough to keep me from upgrading to version 4. :-( Sorry.

I remembered this thread from a few days past when I came across the missing details. Need to go to http://www.vcdhelp.com/forum/userguides/87270.php & download
tmpgenc-readavs.zip (instructions are included).

On it's own VFAPI will not understand .avs files, and this .dll supplies the filter it needs. After install, do your avisynth script, feed it to VFAPI, convert the file, and feed Vegas the newly created VFAPI avi file (think of it more as a placeholder - it's not a complete avi).

For those interested, while avisynth might seem daunting, there are a couple of apps now that handle the more popular uses & write the scripts for you. Check out avisynth.org for downloads, docs, links to plugins as well as those programs to write scripts.

Ritchie, hope ya caught this

mike

I just tried your method here mikkie and I can't get it to work with Vegas 4. Are there any steps you left out?

I just tried your method here mikkie and I can't get it to work with Vegas 4. Are there any steps you left out?

I cannot answer your question directly, but the original thrust of this old thread was whether one could use some of the plugins for AVISynth or VirtualDub. You probably know this, but in case you don't, many of the VirtualDub plugins can be used directly from within Vegas by downloading and installing the free plugin called PluginPac (www.debugmode.com).