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midwinter · Nov 20, 2002, 06:47 PM

Hiya.

I've remarked a couple of times here that one of my never-ending problems with video capture and whatnot is that my broadcast signal is a bit noisy.

I hadn't realized just how noisy it was until I downloaded a VCD from Kazaa (actually, an avi) and the video clarity was STUNNING. Even when exported out to VCD from avi, it still looks as good as a DVD (and this was a television show!). I've been asking myself since then how the hell these people get a signal this clean??

I've uploaded some stills that give a sense of my broadcast signal here and here (NB: these are bitmaps, so they're about a meg apiece). The first clip has been color corrected in Cleaner (gamma, brightness, contrast, etc); the second hasn't.

I have QT Pro and Cleaner 6 (as well as ffmpeg and all the usual free tools). The VCDs I produce are watchable, but they look NOWHERE near as good as the ones I've downloaded. Can anyone give me any pointers about how to clean up this signal a little?

Thanks in advance.

Cheers
Scott

dtriska · Nov 20, 2002, 07:25 PM

I can't actually give you any advice as to how to work the video mojo, but I do suggest you get a Usenet client, and go to alt.binaries.multimedia.buffy-v-slayer to post a message to Muffle. This guy is quite amazing with video and I'm sure he can at least point you in the right direction. And, while you're there, grab some of the (X)(S)VCDs already made; for most TV shows, there's no need to worry about capping and encoding as someone has most likely done it already.

midwinter · Nov 20, 2002, 08:44 PM

You wouldn't happen to know of a free USENET server that has that group, do you? My ISP doesn't offer it, and I can't seem to find a free one.

Cheers
Scott

lucylawless · Nov 20, 2002, 09:24 PM

I don't get what those pictures are supposed to show, since they're too dark to see any noise (and graphic converter can compress those bmp's to jpg for free, and then they'll display in browsers like IE). With video noise, you generally want to use an algorithm that separates the signal (things that persist from frame to frame, or from macroblock to macroblock) from noise (random data). Cleaner's adaptive noise reducer is not bad at this, and if you're the type that likes to experiment, it is totally adjustable. But frankly I've had better results from the free MediaPipe and it's Noise Filter and Temporal Denoiser.

That said, any noise reducing software is going to soften up the actual image a little bit, too. And it's never going to get as clean as a clean source file, like from digital cable. so if you can find it online, you might as well get it from there.

midwinter · Nov 20, 2002, 09:58 PM

Originally posted by lucylawless:
I don't get what those pictures are supposed to show, since they're too dark to see any noise (and graphic converter can compress those bmp's to jpg for free, and then they'll display in browsers like IE). With video noise, you generally want to use an algorithm that separates the signal (things that persist from frame to frame, or from macroblock to macroblock) from noise (random data). Cleaner's adaptive noise reducer is not bad at this, and if you're the type that likes to experiment, it is totally adjustable. But frankly I've had better results from the free MediaPipe and it's Noise Filter and Temporal Denoiser.

That said, any noise reducing software is going to soften up the actual image a little bit, too. And it's never going to get as clean as a clean source file, like from digital cable. so if you can find it online, you might as well get it from there.

LL,

Thanks! 27 test exports of a 4.5 sec clip, and I think I've found something I can live with. As for mediapipe, I've got it, but for some reason it coughs up an error on my machine (I've installed the dev tools, so I have no idea what's going on). Once they've got a tutorial for it, I'll give it a serious look. Everyone seems to give it high marks.

Thanks again.

Cheers
Scott

dtriska · Nov 21, 2002, 08:26 PM

Originally posted by midwinter:
You wouldn't happen to know of a free USENET server that has that group, do you? My ISP doesn't offer it, and I can't seem to find a free one.

You can try this list although it will change.

The best option would be to sign up for the free trial at EasyNews to see if you like what the group offers. Either download some episodes from the main group, or the repost group. The free trial has a 3 day/1 GB limit.

If you just want to contact Muffle, his email address is, if I remember correctly, either muffle@muffle.tv or steve@muffle.tv.