So, now that you’re good and intimidated, let’s apply our filtering.
I recommend doing this in stages, especially until you are used to it. Uncomment a few lines, save the results, comment them back in and uncomment the next set of lines, etc. I recommend the following breakdown:
This will give you a much clearer picture of what additional cleanup you’ll need to perform.
This will take several hours all by itself, and if you make it work with other filters at the same time it will go even slower – in fact, it will be slower than NOT breaking it down in phases.
Here’s a step-by-step breakdown of what to do:
First, uncomment the AnimeIVTC line of your AVISynth script by removing the “#” sign. Leave the other lines commented.
Open Virtualdub. Select the “File” dropdown and “Open Video File.” Open the .avs script.
Assuming all went well, the video file should open in Virtualdub. If you play the video, you’ll see the filtering in effect – but it won’t play smoothly. Still, its a nice preview. At this point you can use the preview and see if you like what the filter is doing. You can make parameter adjustments in the .avs file and open a second instance of Virtualdub – the first instance will remain open with the original parameters, the second instance will have your adjusted parameters, and you can compare the two to see which you like better.
For now, let’s assume that you like what you see by default. We want to save the results.
How you proceed from here depends on how much hard drive space you want to burn. We can either save the results as a raw uncompressed stream, or we can keep it in Lagarith. I prefer to go raw, but be aware that we are talking about 1GB of space per minute of footage PER PHASE – so triple that amount, plus add on a few more hundred MB for the final encoding. Continuing to use Lagarith takes up around half that much space, and it is a lossless codec, but it will require more CPU power to decode, and your CPU will be pinned at 100% usage throughout most of this process already. Its up to you!
For now, let’s assume that you will raw-dog it like I prefer to do.
Go to the “Video” dropdown and select “Direct Stream Copy.” Then save your video (“File” dropdown, “Save as AVI”). Now go make a sandwich or something, this will take a little while.
PLEASE NOTE: If you close Virtualdub and re-open it, make sure to re-select Direct Stream Copy!
That’s your first phase of filtering, all done! Now for phase two.
Have a look at your newly-created video before you proceed. Make sure it looks okay. It probably will.
Now go back to your .avs script. You’ll want to change the AVISource line to point to your new video file. Comment the AnimeIVTC line out again, and un-comment the SharpAAMCmod line.
Some people prefer to maintain separate .avs files for each phase, and maybe you will too. Personally, I prefer as little clutter as possible, so I just comment lines in and out on an as-needed basis.
Now, load up your .avs file in Virtualdub again. You’ll probably notice that Virtualdub will slow to an absolute crawl. This is a SLOW filter! Take a peek at a few random frames to see if you like what its doing by default, but be aware there will be a significant delay every time you do so.
If you like what you see, save another version of the .avi. I recommend doing this phase before you go to bed at night – I’ve had this filter take as long as 14 hours to complete on longer movies!
In phase three you’ll have to play around with cropping, per my explanation back in Part II.
Go back to your .avs script, point the AVISource to your phase two file. Comment out SharpAAMCmod – you’ve probably had more than enough of that by now! You can then un-comment autocrop and load the script in Virtualdub, and see what numbers it shows you, or you can manually play with the numbers in crop, which is what I prefer to do.
Once you are satisfied with your cropping, uncomment spline64resize and FFT3DFilter. Fire it up in Virtualdub, have a peek at a few frames. If you like it, save it! This will also take a little while.
You may be thinking of deleting your previous phases once you are done with them – I’ve done it in the past. And I’ve often regretted doing it when I have, so I don’t anymore. Sometimes one layer of filtering can help you notice issues you hadn’t noticed before. You may find you need to step back to a previous phase and adjust your script, and if you’ve deleted that previous phase, you’ll have to repeat that as well.
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