Sliders.tv → Sliders Bboard → Sliders DVD Releases (Universal, Mill Creek, SD blu-ray, Restoration)
Two questions for pneumatic:
Why don't the Turbine files have the aliasing? The jagged edges? The comb lines?
Also, regarding your current work on SLIDERS 1.02 - 1.09: do you think your future scripts can make the video sharper and clearer? Or have we reached the upper limit of what is possible with these analog videotape files?
Why don't the Turbine files have the aliasing? The jagged edges? The comb lines?
I'm not really seeing that in the screenshots I recently posted - is there a particular episode which is problematic?
Combing should not be an issue if you have TFM's post processing enabled and an MI value of around 80 to 100. Unless it's 1:1 cadence stuff like the Mindgame sequences in Eggheads - that's what I'm currently working on to solve using a latching system where once 2 or 3 combed frames start coming out of TFM, the rest of the scene gets deinterlaced regardless. And then after n latched scenes, declare the content type as video and start every scene deint latched until the latch is broken the other way, and vice versa for film based scenes.
do you think your future scripts can make the video sharper and clearer?
Avisynth's built in Sharpen() is poor imo, but there are other third party sharpeners here. Although many are 10 years old and don't support the latest 64-bit version of Avisynth.
I haven't played with any of them as I do all my sharpening in the video renderer (MadVR) which runs much faster on the GPU and has good customisation like "thin edges" and "enhance detail" etc. which I personally like. Here are some comparisons...
1. Original , sharpened
2. Original , sharpened
3. Original , sharpened
4. Original , sharpened
edit: the above are all from Eggheads but none seem to be visibly affected by the field alignment issue. Here is a shot from the same episode where I think the field misalignment just happens to be occurring where his eyes are positioned: https://lensdump.com/i/ES6w8K
Since RussianCabbie made remote use of my gaming computer to make a 1080p AI-upscale of the Pilot (which he inverse telecined with pneumatic's script), I'd like to know what he thought of it.
**
My Turbine question for pneumatic was meant to be this: as far as I can tell, the Turbine files for SLIDERS 1.02 - 1.09 have a lot less aliasing and combing than the Universal files. The problem scenes ("Prince of Wails" with the humvee, "Fever" in the pharmacy, "Last Days" streets, "Eggheads" with the houses) have a little but significantly less than the Universal versions of those same scenes.
Why is Turbine better in that respect? Why is the aliasing so bad with Universal and mostly okay with Turbine? And did whatever process that led to less aliasing also make the video blurrier?
And my Universal question for pneumatic was really: the videotape files are fuzzy and blurry. You've been able to clear up the distortions significantly and add a bit more detail. Do you think that the files can become sharper via your scripts or other third party sharpeners? Or are we pretty much at the limit of how much these files can be improved?
I am looking forward to giving it an initial review tonight 
So, it's very clear to me, Topaz bring something to the table with the pilot. I'd put it as the clear No. 1 over non-topaz editions. Now, with regard to pure topaz vs. topaz + pneumatic, I find the two clearly different, and I am still trying to grasp which is my favorite, because they are both so different and have clear strengths. That said, the pneumatic + topaz sample is playing a little choppy for me right now, I'll need to run through a a different computer, as the laptop I have for this (and my vlc settings) is on the old side and not the best memory/cpu.
I feel like straight topaz has a little bit more speculy grain, film noise, where the other (neuomatic + topaz) may have less of that texture. But the latter is twice the file size, so I don't know what role that is playing.
The flaws on the straight topaz one is clearer up close. The pneumatic + topaz holds up better up a bit better in close range.
I feel more of a cinema quality (90s type 35mm) from the topaz and more of a modern tv style from pneumatic + topaz.
In anycase, i think pneumatic + topaz is another step up for this content. I wouldn't abandon the straight topaz version because it has a charm / feel / quality to it. I just think this other one is more classically/techniqually pristine. Now sometimes imperfections build characteristics so the straight just topaz version may have a little more of that.
Didn't we switch you to Media Player Classic via the Kazaa Codec Pack years ago? VLC has a serious lack of hardware acceleration.
Didn't we switch you to Media Player Classic via the Kazaa Codec Pack years ago? VLC has a serious lack of hardware acceleration.
I only vaguely recall that (I think when the older files were encoded in h265 vs. 264), but I don't think other players truly worked out for me. I can try to see if the computer still has that program though, this is the same one.
Looking at the screenshots, I think you once called it the "teeth chattering effect"?
Combing, mice teeth, interlacing ... these words are all referring to the same phenomenon where field 1 and field 2 have 2 different images in them (as they are supposed to have by design). This is definitely not the case in any of the screenshots, but there is field alignment issue and that will be made more visible by sharpening.
How I like the the image to look is not necessarily what anyone else will like. Some release groups add their own sharpening to their videos and imo that is a bad decision - better to let the user decide how much sharpness they want (unless it's artistic intent of the director/producer of the content).
The problem scenes...
"Prince of Wails" with the humvee
The PAL version is softer and doesn't have those high contrast 1px pattern on the Jeep grille to begin with - they've been smudged out by whatever equipment Universal used to create the PAL version. If the PAL version was sharper and resolved all the resolution in the grille, you would get the same issue with TFM detecting the grille as combing and switching to bwdif for those frames which causes the issue with moving parts of the image dropping to interpolated 240p with aliasing / twitching on moving pixels.
Perhaps you would prefer some stronger QTGMC repair smoothing:
# default
QTGMC(InputType=1, preset="slow", Sharpness=0.0, FPSDivisor=1, EdiThreads=CPUcores/2)
# medium smoothing
QTGMC(InputType=1, TR2=2, preset="slow", Sharpness=0.0, FPSDivisor=1, EdiThreads=CPUcores/2)
# high smoothing
QTGMC(InputType=1, TR2=3, preset="slow", Sharpness=0.0, FPSDivisor=1, EdiThreads=CPUcores/2)
# max smoothing
QTGMC(InputType=2, TR2=3, preset="slow", Sharpness=0.0, FPSDivisor=1, EdiThreads=CPUcores/2)Although the image will look pretty soft at max smoothing so you might need to set Sharpness to a nonzero value.
"Fever" in the pharmacy
If it's this scene then it's the same issue as the Jeep grille
"Eggheads" with the houses
Again same issue as the Jeep grille - TFM sees legitimate image data as combing.
"Last Days" streets
That section has a completely different issue - the studio deinterlaced that section to 30p using their own bob-weave filter similar to bwdif in Avisynth. Because the camera is wobbling ever so slightly it keeps creating small amounts of motion that keeps tripping their bwdif into bob (interpolation) mode for moving parts of the images - all the twitching / flickering lines are pixels dropping to 240p for a split second. QTGMC repair mode works wonders on that section - video here
And my Universal question for pneumatic was really: the videotape files are fuzzy and blurry. You've been able to clear up the distortions significantly and add a bit more detail. Do you think that the files can become sharper via your scripts or other third party sharpeners? Or are we pretty much at the limit of how much these files can be improved?
It's hard to say as it depends on the subjective quality of what you prefer in the image. If the PAL/Turbine version looks better to you then you'd want to investigate smoothing the image more with those QTGMC settings, and then if the image looks too soft, adding some sharpening.
Another option is to just QTGMC deinterlace instead of TFM+TDecimate but you'll get moire on high contrast 1px patterns.
This came out a month ago:
https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2023/03 … rome-edge/
I doubt it's algorithm (assuming you could port it to software and run on video files) would have a dramatic impact on SLIDERS but hey I think things are moving in the right direction in terms of guessing what an image should actually look like. I think SLIDERS s1 will be able to keep getting better and better as new solutions are developed.
When I look at the above screenshot of quinn in the pharamacy, I definitely imagine a future where it will be pretty clear.
In the meantime, s1 has never looked cleaner/clearer with the strides that have been made. It's definitely exciting to see.
Avisynth's built in Sharpen() is poor imo, but there are other third party sharpeners here. Although many are 10 years old and don't support the latest 64-bit version of Avisynth.
Contrast Adaptive Sharpening seems to be decent - ported from AMD FidelityFX.
Preview: https://drive.google.com/file/d/10HEOoD … share_link
Would recommend viewing at normal viewing distances.
Script:
# convert to HD colour
z_ConvertFormat(
\ colorspace_op="601:601:170m:full=>709:709:709:full",
\ resample_filter="spline36",
\ dither_type="ordered",
\ interlaced=true )
# 60fps IVTC
DoubleWeave().TFM(mode=0, scthresh=100, micmatching=1, ubsco=true, mmsco=true,
\ display=false, slow=2, PP=3, metric=0, cthresh=9, MI=80, hint=false,
\ clip2=propdelete("_FieldBased").bwdif(field=-2, thr=2, edeint=nnedi3(field=-2)))
# QTGMC repair - high strength, no sharpening
QTGMC(InputType=1, TR2=3, preset="slow", EdiThreads=2, Sharpness=0.0, Rep0=13)
# Contrast adaptive sharpening - 90% strength
CAS(sharpness=0.90, y=3, u=2, v=2, opt=-1)
# 4x AI upscale to 1920p
nnedi3_rpow2(rfactor=4, nns=1, nsize=0, cshift="Spline36Resize")
# Downscale to 1080p
Spline36Resize(1440, 1080)pneumatic wrote:Avisynth's built in Sharpen() is poor imo, but there are other third party sharpeners here. Although many are 10 years old and don't support the latest 64-bit version of Avisynth.
Contrast Adaptive Sharpening seems to be decent - ported from AMD FidelityFX.
Preview: https://drive.google.com/file/d/10HEOoD … share_link
Would recommend viewing at normal viewing distances.
Script:
# convert to HD colour z_ConvertFormat( \ colorspace_op="601:601:170m:full=>709:709:709:full", \ resample_filter="spline36", \ dither_type="ordered", \ interlaced=true ) # 60fps IVTC DoubleWeave().TFM(mode=0, scthresh=100, micmatching=1, ubsco=true, mmsco=true, \ display=false, slow=2, PP=3, metric=0, cthresh=9, MI=80, hint=false, \ clip2=propdelete("_FieldBased").bwdif(field=-2, thr=2, edeint=nnedi3(field=-2))) # QTGMC repair - high strength, no sharpening QTGMC(InputType=1, TR2=3, preset="slow", EdiThreads=2, Sharpness=0.0, Rep0=13) # Contrast adaptive sharpening - 90% strength CAS(sharpness=0.90, y=3, u=2, v=2, opt=-1) # 4x AI upscale to 1920p nnedi3_rpow2(rfactor=4, nns=1, nsize=0, cshift="Spline36Resize") # Downscale to 1080p Spline36Resize(1440, 1080)
Whenever I see some upgrade for the first time, as I haven't seen content before, it's like "wow!'. It's like seeing something completely fresh, in a good way. I might tone down the level of sharpness to 70-80 percent to better support closer distance viewing, but this looks like another great tool.
I'm curious about whether Pneumatic notices the dreary color tone to the content. And if there are algorithms that adjust for that.
Is it also possible that maybe we are better off not converting to HD color? If SD tvs had similar color palletes, maybe this was put together in post production adjusting the coloring based on what they saw on a tube tv. So even if this is closer to what was shot on film, it may have been adjusted in post anyway for an HD tv if those had existed back then?
I might tone down the level of sharpness to 70-80 percent to better support closer distance viewing, but this looks like another great tool.
Well, I set the sharpness for that one on my PC monitor and it looked "just right" there, but on the lounge TV it looks overly sharp.
I'm curious about whether Pneumatic notices the dreary color tone to the content. And if there are algorithms that adjust for that.
That particular episode looks ok to me. If you want to add some saturation, see ireaction's script for how to do it with the Tweak() function.
Is it also possible that maybe we are better off not converting to HD color?
The colour conversion doesn't actually change the colours that you end up seeing, it just ensures you get the same original colour when the media player decodes it with the HD colour matrix. Otherwise you would be getting SD colours decoded with HD colour matrix and the colours would be wrong.
Very interesting, pneumatic! I actually don't 'like' the smoothness of the Turbine files, it's just that it's consistent and I can accept that it's the visual level of the episode and sit back to enjoy the story. In contrast, Universal can be so variable that I'm jarred when a good closeup becomes a blurry wide. You've alleviated that considerably, but I'm not sure I would want more smoothness.
That said, your new script has QTGMC on "high strength" (smoothing?) and that with the contrast adaptive sharpening looks really good to me. I can see, however, how a TV's sharpness settings (as opposed to a monitor's neutral settings) could make it too much. The sample and the Avisynth+ scripts on the episodes makes them look a bit like DOCTOR WHO episodes that are upscaled videotape files (which these episode of SLIDERS are).
I'm also intrigued by how the contrast adaptive sharpener seems to pull my noise/grain out of the image. I wonder if Topaz AI could do more with the image if the sharpener is set to maximum and the file output is 540p.
Interestingly, the sharpener is so processor-demanding that I can't play the file by running the AVS script in Media Player Classic. I'll load the episodes into AVIDemux tonight and let the episodes re-encode while I sleep.
Interestingly, the sharpener is so processor-demanding that I can't play the file by running the AVS script in Media Player Classic.
Hmm that's weird, CAS is almost free on my desktop system (i5-4570 4 cores @ 3.4ghz). AMD claims it's "highly optimized".
QTGMC and nnedi3_rpow2 are very CPU intensive... try commenting everything out except CAS, toggle CAS on/off and compare CPU before/after (give it about 10 seconds of playback for buffers to fill... after that my CPU usage settles around 7-10%).
If you're still getting high CPU try playing with the opt parameter (opt=0/1/2/3) in case the default setting (-1) isn't correctly autodetecting your CPU capabilities. If it's a mobile CPU that might have something to do with it. The slowest should be opt=0, fastest should be 1 or 2.
Avisynth can also suffer from bottlenecks depending on what order you call filters in, eg. if there is a slow filter higher up the script, that can grind everything under it to a halt, but I don't think that's an issue here.
edit: also QTGMC's stronger smoothing (TR2=3) is very expensive on my system - I'm seeing a 30% increase vs default (TR2=1).
Also it's 60fps - more frames to process.
Well, I feel safe in saying it's probably QTGMC and TFM and the 60fps framerate, then.
I've processed 1.02 - 1.09 with the new script, although I dialed down the sharpness to 80 percent. They look a bit better than before, although I haven't had the chance to watch them on an actual TV. I'm impressed by how "Summer of Love" looks a lot better. Of course, "Luck of the Draw" still looks very fuzzy because pneumatic is a person, not a god. But at this point, anything even approaching reasonable DVD quality for 1.02 - 1.09 is a minor miracle. :-)
One silly thing I'm doing: I'm currently encoding 1.09, "Luck of the Draw", into the 540p format with added noise and maximum contrast adaptive sharpness. I'm wondering what Topaz AI can do with it with whatever remnants of grain being sharpened and augmented. (Probably not much, but my soul won't rest without knowing for sure.)
Of course, "Luck of the Draw" still looks very fuzzy because pneumatic is a person, not a god. But at this point, anything even approaching reasonable DVD quality for 1.02 - 1.09 is a minor miracle. :-)
So I googled "fuzzy video algorithm" to try to see if there'd be anything out there for the type of content in S1 where it's just fuzzy and blurry and I got a lot of results for fuzzy-matching logic, which isn't necessarily the type of fuzzy I meant....
That said, the results made me re-google it using the blur keyword, and I got results on video stablization that took blurry frames and made them much more precise. I am not sure how they work, if they look for a stable frame and then extrapolate that for the frames where blur occurs. Or if something else is at play.
But it makes me wonder... could video stablization algorithms people currently use for shaky hand-held video provide any gains?
There seem to be quite a few of them, all that may work in different ways. But I wonder if any of this could unlock any benefit for the most troublesome, blurry episodes of S1 or if there's just not enough clear frames in the content for this class of aglorithms to benefit from. My guess is it's the latter.
Pneumatic, have you ever heard of anyone playing with those types of algorithms on old, compressed tv shows?
I found that Topaz AI made the grained up, max-sharpened video files look like a clumsy AI-generated animated movie. I tried turning on the video stabilization module and what I saw was so disturbing, so fundamentally antithetical to life and existence and sliding as we know it, so mentally cataclysmic that I gave serious thought to giving up SLIDERS and getting into STARGATE instead.
I don't know what the hell is going on up there and I don't ever want to see it again.
I found that Topaz AI made the grained up, max-sharpened video files look like a clumsy AI-generated animated movie. I tried turning on the video stabilization module and what I saw was so disturbing, so fundamentally antithetical to life and existence and sliding as we know it, so mentally cataclysmic that I gave serious thought to giving up SLIDERS and getting into STARGATE instead.
I don't know what the hell is going on up there and I don't ever want to see it again.
Sliders the animated movie! A little WHO FRAMED ROGER RABBIT in there. Some people might dig that! 
Actually, would a Black & White version of that be so bad?
I am wondering if pneumatic might turn his video powers to "Luck of the Draw" and consider that episode separately from 1.02 - 1.08.
1.02 - 1.08 look pretty good to me after pneumatic's scripts with TFM and TDecimate and QTGMC and the contrast adaptive sharpener and the nnedi3 upscale and the spline36 downscale and pneumatic's tireless spit and polish. But "Luck of the Draw" is a unique case. It is uniquely bad.
I know it makes workflow sense to use the same script on all the Season 1 post-Pilot episodes, but there is something just wrong with the "Luck of the Draw" file, something that has degraded it further than even "Summer of Love" (which looks pretty solid after the inverse telecine and sharpener). I think "Luck of the Draw" needs to be treated as its own entity and requires its own specific set of filters and algorithms.
I'm not sure what those would be; I don't know if it's algorithmic or some sort of neural net or advanced AI; I don't know if it's going to come down to refilming the episode and deepfaking the actors' faces onto the stand-ins. I just know that of all the things wrong with 1.02 - 1.09, something is especially wrong with 1.09.
I am wondering if pneumatic might turn his video powers to "Luck of the Draw" and consider that episode separately from 1.02 - 1.08.
1.02 - 1.08 look pretty good to me after pneumatic's scripts with TFM and TDecimate and QTGMC and the contrast adaptive sharpener and the nnedi3 upscale and the spline36 downscale and pneumatic's tireless spit and polish. But "Luck of the Draw" is a unique case. It is uniquely bad.
Had a look just now with just TFM.TDecimate to see the raw frames, and I can't really see anything exceptional apart from the 1:1 sections at around 11:00 - those will look terrible with stutter and combing as TFM wasn't designed for deinterlacing 1:1 sections (still working on my adaptive deinterlacing script to solve this... around 1500 lines so far).
The field alignment seems no worse than something like Eggheads, and there's definitely 480p to recover from the source after IVTCing with TFM.TDecimate, judging by the smoothness of diagonal or curved lines.
I am sharpening the image with MadVR though - subjectively I find standard definition unwatchable at 0 sharpness. For maximum effect sharpening should be applied before upscaling otherwise the sharpener is looking at soft upscaled pixels which don't sharpen as well.
Is the issue that the image doesn't look sharp enough? Or too noisey/grainy?
Think I've identified the issue - setting TFM(display=true) shows the 60fps TFM is returning combed frames with this episode for some reason, so it's actually deinterlacing most frames, resulting in 240p on motion. The standard TFM.TDecimate to 24p doesn't have the issue. Might be something to do with the field order, I'll get back to you...
The latest version of TFM (v1.0.27) appears to be broken when feeding it 60fps via DoubleWeave(), which is what the script I posted here uses.
For some reason v1.0.27 fails to fieldmatch a 60fps doubleweaved input, whereas the previous version (v1.0.26) succeeds. This is the version I've been using since last year.
I tried using all the fieldmatching modes but they all produce the wrong result - either failing to fieldmatch or producing the wrong output cadence (2:2:2:4 instead of 3:2).
Failure to fieldmatch means combed frames which triggers deinterlacing, so if you were using v1.0.27 you'd regularly be dropping to 240p on moving objects.
Interesting. Is the broken TFM v1.0.27 producing 240p on all the episodes or just "Luck of the Draw"?
Interesting. Is the broken TFM v1.0.27 producing 240p on all the episodes or just "Luck of the Draw"?
All episodes. I think 1.0.27 isn't detecting the alternating field order produced by DoubleWeave() - I've reported it to the author. I just happened to update to 1.0.27 today so I mistakenly thought it was just this episode.
Anyway I was looking at Luck of the Draw some more and I'm starting to see what you mean - it does look quite soft and blurry at times. Some shots look ok though, others look like they've been through some kind of degradation of sharpness
Unsharpened , CAS sharpening , MadVR sharpening
CAS seems to bring out the contrast in the ground's brick texture more, but has fatter edges (MadVR sharpening includes edge thinning). I think CAS + thin edges might look nice.
To counteract the softness I tried skipping the QTGMC repair to try and let more detail through at the expense of more noise and aliasing, and then readjusting the CAS sharpening a bit lower to compensate (80% instead of 90%). Clip: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1JiHrjX … share_link
A better strategy might be to thin edges before NNEDI3 AI upscaling. That way NNEDI3 has thin smooth edges to work with and can make better guesses at what the higher resolution edge would look like. Whereas if you give it a soft fat edge it doesn't really see that as a high contrast edge and won't do much with it.
Also there seems to be more film jitter in Luck of the Draw. That thing where the film frames are jittering slightly in the spool causing the whole image to move around slightly by a few pixels. QTGMC repair was automatically correcting that with its stabilisation so you might notice it in that clip since I disabled QTGMC. If that bothers you it's possible to correct it with something like
# Image stabilisation - http://avisynth.nl/index.php/DePan
mdata = DePanEstimate(last)
DePanStabilize(last, data=mdata, initzoom=1.025) I think initzoom=1.025 means crop 2.5% around image edges as buffer zone for image stabilisation.
I would say that the scenes that stand out to me as blurriest in "Luck of the Draw" are the wideshot during Wade's voiceover in the teaser, the horseback riding shots, the fishing sequence, Wade and the Professor arguing about walking Henry the Dog, and the two shots of the Lottery Police detective after the sliders depart with Ryan and Henry.
I have to ask: at this point, would it be better to just stick to TFM and TDecimate on all the episodes and just omit QTGMC due to how it smooths out an already blurry video image? Would it be better to accept a litte aliasing and moire here and there? In my case, I prefer noise to smoothness.
Right now, I'm re-running all the encodes with TFM 1.0.26 on your most recent script -- except I turned QTGMC off for "Luck of the Draw". I haven't added DePanStabilize to the script for "Luck of the Draw", but I might after reviewing the episode without it.
I have to ask: at this point, would it be better to just stick to TFM and TDecimate on all the episodes and just omit QTGMC due to how it smooths out an already blurry video image? Would it be better to accept a litte aliasing and moire here and there? In my case, I prefer noise to smoothness.
Well it's entirely up to you and how you want it to look. Personally I prefer to let as much resolution through if the flaws aren't visible at normal viewing distances on a TV. Usually this means the image looks bad up close on a PC monitor like those Eggheads screenshots I posted.
There's an Avisynth filter called aWarpSharp which can do edge thinning so I'm going to have a play with that in combination with CAS and nnedi3 to see if it can do anything special with these softer looking episodes.
If we were pros doing a restoration project we'd probably do per-episode and per-scene processing...
clip = "C:\Video\Sliders\Season 1\S01E10 Luck of the Draw.mkv"
# apply this processing to all episodes in season 1
if (FindStr(clip, "\Season 1\") != 0){
SubTitle("Now playing: Season 1")
}
# apply this processing only to Summer of Love & Luck of the Draw
if (FindStr(clip, "S01E03") != 0
\ || FindStr(clip, "S01E10") != 0){
SubTitle("Now playing: Summer of Love or Luck of the Draw")
}
# apply QTGMC processing only to opening street scenes of Last Days
if (FindStr(clip, "S01E06") != 0){
scene1 = Trim(0, 193) # frames 0 to 193
scene1 = scene1.QTGMC(InputType=1, preset="slow", EdiThreads=2, Rep0=13)
scene1 = scene1.SubTitle("Now playing: opening street scene with QTGMC")
remainder = Trim(194, 0) # frames 194 till end
scene1 ++ remainder # join scene 1 and remainder
}
ShowFrameNumber() # overlay the current frame number
# can set a hotkey in MPC eg. ctrl+left/right to framestepHere's a clip of Luck of the Draw PAL DVD (remuxed, no transcoding, no processing at all)
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1xsgovx … share_link
You might notice their voices are chipmunked due to the 24->25fps speedup - this can be reversed with AssumeFPS(24000, 1001, true) to slow the video and audio back down to 23.976fps same as the NTSC version.
I would say that the scenes that stand out to me as blurriest in "Luck of the Draw" are the wideshot during Wade's voiceover in the teaser, the horseback riding shots, the fishing sequence, Wade and the Professor arguing about walking Henry the Dog
Here's a clip of those scenes: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1WcV86w … share_link
I think that's about as sharp as I can manage in Avisynth without going overboard with the sharpening.
The relevant filters were:
# thin edges
aWarpSharp(10.0, blurlevel=1)
# sharpen
CAS(sharpness=0.85, y=3, u=2, v=2, opt=-1)
# AI upscale
nnedi3_rpow2(rfactor=4, nns=1, nsize=0, cshift="Spline36Resize")
# 1080p
Spline36Resize(1440, 1080)I don't know anything about cameras but it seems like on some of the shots the depth of field is set to focus not on the actor's faces but on other objects slightly in the foreground or background? Or something like that?
Stunt actor
Here's a clip of those scenes: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1WcV86w … share_link
good god, the amount of improvement!
i'm really floored by the change.
edit: updated for correct link
Did you mean the PAL version? Because I didn't do anything to it.
Did you mean the PAL version? Because I didn't do anything to it.
sorry i quoted the wrong link
the other one!
Personally I prefer to let as much resolution through if the flaws aren't visible at normal viewing distances on a TV. Usually this means the image looks bad up close on a PC monitor like those Eggheads screenshots I posted.
I don't think I understand your meaning. When you say you "prefer to let as much resolution through", is that via the magic of QTGMC? Or do you mean using QTGMC minimally and only for combed frames?
I ran all the re-encodes with QTGMC enabled as per pneumatic's settings (except for "Luck of the Draw" where I turned it off). It seems best to do things pneumatic's way before making any changes for personal preference. I'll next run the encodes with QTGMC disabled for all of them (except for "Luck of the Draw") and compare them when time permits.
My understanding (and let's use the word "understanding" very loosely) is that QTGMC is interpolating the field frames together and smoothing out discrepancies which creates blur, but blur that that can usually be sharpened. Meanwhile, disabling QTGMC at this point leaves some aliasing and moire and noise, but might leave us with more image texture. When an episode is in okay condition like "Prince of Wails" and "Fever", QTGMC's smoothness is fine. When an episode is fuzzy like "Luck of the Draw", it has so little detail to lose that QTGMC makes it worse. I could be wrong and maybe pneumatic will correct me.
I doubt "Luck of the Draw" was incorrectly filmed with out of focus takes used in the final edit. I'm not saying SLIDERS' Vancouver team was devoid of human error, of course, but we've seen what a version of SLIDERS is like when the crew have completely given up. That's an attitude you see in Season 3 where episodes are missing sound effects or actors are shown missing their mark when jumping into the vortex or misdelivered lines are left in the episode, but I don't feel you'd get that in Season 1 or 2 (aside from some of the issues in "Time and Again World" due to the episode being shot before production was fully organized).
I think it's more likely that "Luck of the Draw" was edited on a particularly low-grade videotape that caused the film to suffer more image degradation than any previous episode. I guess we could say that the crew at the time didn't care, but the reality of 90s CRT televisions is that the diode pattern on such screens would have made all the episodes look equally sharp. I can't find fault with the creators for not anticipating that their show would be watched on HD screens at home in the decades to come. That's also why Jerry O'Connell's stunt double's face can be seen in the episode; the expectation was that the face would be obscured by the haze of a cathode ray tube.
Stunt performers are also an artifact of low resolution television that is found in STAR TREK. Watching the HD remaster, the stunt performers for William Shatner look nothing like him. Watching the SD version in the 90s, the mismatches were also glaring and hilarious. But in the 60s, TVs were so small and the colour so vague and the transmission so fuzzy that for the average viewer, it didn't matter.
When you say you "prefer to let as much resolution through", is that via the magic of QTGMC? Or do you mean using QTGMC minimally and only for combed frames?
QTGMC softens the image slightly...
The core of the algorithm involves a binomial smooth to remove shimmer. So the result needs to be resharpened to counteract this blur. The main setting Sharpness defaults to 1.0, which is a level designed to retain the sharpness of stable areas. However, this level can cause moving areas to be oversharpened so you may wish to reduce the value depending on source.
We can control the amount of smoothing/softening by adjusting the TR0, TR1 & TR2 parameters, but it still won't retain as much texture detail as not using QTGMC at all.
I have been so busy lately that I didn't have time to try out pneumatic's new scripts and the resulting video files on an actual TV. But I tried them last night and... nothing played. My Android TV could not process the MP4 files.
They play fine on my i7 + 32GB RAM gaming laptop, and they play just as well on my i5 + 16GB of RAM mobile laptop. But the Android TV can't handle the files. They look good on a 13.3 and 15.6 inch screen, but that doesn't mean anything for 55-inch TV playback.
I think that the sharpened edges of the new script matched with the 10 MB bitrate that I set made the files far too much for the fairly weak processor in my Android TV box (a MiBox running on Android TV 9). I'm going to try re-encoding at a 4,000 kb bitrate and see if the file is playable.
I'm going to try re-encoding at a 4,000 kb bitrate and see if the file is playable.
Please don't! It's already bad enough going analogue -> DVD MPEG2 compression -> X264 compression. Another round of X264 compression on top of that will surely damage the picture quality. I can see slight visible differences between the MPEG2 & X264 even at 10mbps. I'll rerender the clip at 8mbps, hopefully it should be compatible.
edit, link: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1np2d_d … sp=sharing
Full script used to make the above clip:
file = "S01E10 Luck of the Draw.mkv"
# Create source clip
video = LWLibavVideoSource(file, stream_index=-1, repeat=true, cache=true)
audio = LWLibavAudioSource(file, stream_index=1, av_sync=true, cache=true)
AudioDub(video, audio)
# Cut requested scenes
Trim(0, 7200) ++ BlankClip(last, 30) ++
\ Trim(10196, 18249) ++ BlankClip(last, 30) ++
\ Trim(61702, 65834)
# 24fps IVTC
TFM(mode=0, slow=2, PP=3, clip2=bwdif(field=-1, thr=2, edeint=nnedi3(field=-1)))
TDecimate(mode=1, cycle=5, cycleR=1, hybrid=1, viddetect=2, vidthresh=4.5,
\ denoise=true, chroma=false, hint=false, display=false)
# QTGMC antialiasing - not used for this episode to preserve sharpness
# QTGMC(InputType=1, TR2=1, preset="slow", EdiThreads=2, Sharpness=1.0, Rep0=13)
# Convert to HD colour
z_ConvertFormat(
\ colorspace_op="601:601:170m:full=>709:709:709:full",
\ resample_filter="spline36",
\ dither_type="ordered",
\ interlaced=true )
# Thin edges
aWarpSharp(10.0, blurlevel=1)
# Sharpen
CAS(sharpness=0.85, y=3, u=2, v=2, opt=-1)
# AI upscale to 2880x1920
nnedi3_rpow2(rfactor=4, nns=1, nsize=0, cshift="Spline36Resize")
# Downscale to 1440x1080
Spline36Resize(1440, 1080)Hmm, yes. At 4mbps vs 10mpbs side by side, I definitely see that the 4mbps version has lost some of the fine texture that the sharpening brought in, but it still looks better than the DVD. I'm not sure how noticeable that fine texture it would be at living room distance. Anyway! I'll try it at 8mbps and see if that's playable.
Hmm, yes. At 4mbps vs 10mpbs side by side, I definitely see that the 4mbps version has lost some of the fine texture that the sharpening brought in, but it still looks better than the DVD.
But it's a transcode of a transcode of the DVD, so it will look considerably worse!
This is why I'm such a stickler about using Avisynth in realtime to watch episodes, as it's the only way to do video processing without any generation loss. It also saves storage space - 5mbps for the DVD vs 10mbps for the x264. And no need to burn your CPU for days to render the files.
The only issue with realtime playback is you need enough CPU power if you want to do a lot of advanced AI upscaling in realtime. However Avisynth+ supports multithreading & if I enable it by putting a Prefetch(8,6) at the end of the script I posted above, it manages to play in realtime at around 90% CPU load on an i5-4570 (4 cores 4 threads @ 3.2Ghz) which is not a very powerful machine at all. btw Prefetch(8,6) means use 8 threads and prebuffer 6 frames in advance. I found that even on my 4 core machine, 8 threads still loads up the CPU better.
The 4mbps file doesn't look worse than the DVD because your QTGMC and sharpening have improved it significantly. Anyway, I'm hoping the 8mbps version will be playable. While Avisynth+ files may play better, there isn't any way for me to play them on my HDTV via my Android TV. I don't have a Windows home theatre PC anymore and it's not practical to hook up laptops to my TV, so an actual file is necessary.
I'll update on the 8mpbs results when I have time to review them on a TV.
someone tell me how the streaming quality of this is acceptable?
this is what NBCU is distributing:
someone tell me how the streaming quality of this is acceptable?
this is what NBCU is distributing:
I've seen nothing more magnificent in my life.
RussianCabbie_Lotteryfan wrote:someone tell me how the streaming quality of this is acceptable?
this is what NBCU is distributing:
I've seen nothing more magnificent in my life.
someone tell me how the streaming quality of this is acceptable?
this is what NBCU is distributing:
I can't view it due to geoblock, but in my experience the technicians who prepare the videos for streaming services don't seem to understand how older video formats work, and the DVD is almost always better quality.
Recently bought Alfred Hitchcock Presents on DVD because Peacock's streaming version is downres'd to 240p due to the field discarding deinterlacer they used, and has a baked in frame stutter (1:1:1:2 cadence) as a result of that process.
Babylon5 just announced it was coming to blu ray
RussianCabbie_Lotteryfan wrote:someone tell me how the streaming quality of this is acceptable?
this is what NBCU is distributing:
I can't view it due to geoblock, but in my experience the technicians who prepare the videos for streaming services don't seem to understand how older video formats work, and the DVD is almost always better quality.
Recently bought Alfred Hitchcock Presents on DVD because Peacock's streaming version is downres'd to 240p due to the field discarding deinterlacer they used, and has a baked in frame stutter (1:1:1:2 cadence) as a result of that process.
it's likely because they likely have global settings for all content they transcode, if they do any processing. kind of a general laziness and also a practicalness to it.
In other news: my Android TV cannot play pneumatic's 60fps, 8mbps file properly. The video stutters and freezes and the MXPlayer Pro crashes. Let's be blunt, the Mibox Android TV player is not the latest and greatest: it's running on an AmLogic S905X-H chipset, basically a 2016 mid-range smartphone processor, and 2GB of RAM. It only has 8GB of onboard storage. It can play most MP4 and MKV files, including a 10mbps version of the Pilot at 29.97fps. But 60fps is just too much. Even for the 4mpbs version of the 60fps files, I had to enable a hybrid GPU and CPU mode in MXPlayer Pro that combines software and hardware decoding to get it to work.
It still looks fine. I don't doubt that pneumatic is right that a 4mpbs version looks worse, but at living room distance, it's perfectly fine. I'll keep the 8mbps version of the files, though. I don't see myself upgrading the Mibox any time soon, it's lasted since 2016. The bluetooth remote went dead, but I replaced it with a Logitech Harmony, so this is probably my TV box player for the foreseeable future.
In other news: my Android TV cannot play pneumatic's 60fps, 8mbps file properly.
Those ones I did at 24fps with pretty standard x264 settings (-tune film -pix_fmt yuv420p -b:v 8000000). Not sure why your box can't play it... out of curiosity could you try this 8mbps x264 that someone else did so I can learn hopefully about what makes files more compatible with devices - https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Q2o0Cz … sp=sharing (353MB)
it's likely because they likely have global settings for all content they transcode, if they do any processing. kind of a general laziness and also a practicalness to it.
Sounds about right. This is actually the problem I've been trying to solve the past few months with an Avisynth script which I'm calling "adaptive IVTC" (90% complete). Basically you can throw any content at it and it will give you the best conversion from interlace to progressive without having to configure anything. Optionally you can set it to a profile to tell it more info about how much of the content is film-based but you don't have to, it will still work at the default setting with high accuracy, and for the scenes gets it wrong it errs on the side of deinterlacing with QTGMC antialiasing which still looks pretty decent and in a double blind test can be hard to tell apart from IVTC.
I actually produced the 60fps/8mbps files using pneumatic's script. My (seven year old, budget hardware) Android TV box just can't handle those.
someone tell me how the streaming quality of this is acceptable?
this is what NBCU is distributing:
SLIDERS s1-3 are free on vudu now with ads
i just checked out the pilot, and it looked like dogshit. all it does is make the series feel much older, like it was shot in the early 70s and poorly preserved.
I feel like I got extremely lucky with an ebay seller in the US who was willing to do international shipping on their Universal NTSC discs. Most sellers wouldn't bother shipping internationally for such a low dollar value item, so I am very grateful to that seller. It took about a month to arrive. I've currently lent it to a family member and told them to be extremely careful with the discs as they are irreplaceable.
There is an encode of the Universal discs on channel BT. The quality is ok, but I still don't like being forced to watch someone else's encode for something so beloved. It's like it has their fingerprints on it or something. Although that one isn't too bad compared to some others - still highly watchable - and much MUCH better than the load of crap shoveled out by Mill Creek - they're the real bad guys here, am I right people?
I feel like I got extremely lucky with an ebay seller in the US who was willing to do international shipping on their Universal NTSC discs. Most sellers wouldn't bother shipping internationally for such a low dollar value item, so I am very grateful to that seller. It took about a month to arrive. I've currently lent it to a family member and told them to be extremely careful with the discs as they are irreplaceable.
There is an encode of the Universal discs on channel BT. The quality is ok, but I still don't like being forced to watch someone else's encode for something so beloved. It's like it has their fingerprints on it or something. Although that one isn't too bad compared to some others - still highly watchable - and much MUCH better than the load of crap shoveled out by Mill Creek - they're the real bad guys here, am I right people?
The thing about Mill Creek was their business model is offering very casual fan of a series, essentially 3rd, 4th run, of a disc set (that they didn't buy at 1st, 2nd run) the series at a super affordable price, and usually in "bargain bin/shelf" type placements in brick & mortar stores. So they are trying to keep their costs on the production side as low as possible (as few discs at possible). They may have lazily encoded the stuff, you'd know better than I, but they really are not meant to be a premium distributor, and therefore are less equipped to "getting it right" in the look of the content, and won't spend much time fiddling before moving onto the next title.
The thing about Mill Creek was their business model is offering very casual fan of a series, essentially 3rd, 4th run, of a disc set (that they didn't buy at 1st, 2nd run) the series at a super affordable price, and usually in "bargain bin/shelf" type placements in brick & mortar stores. So they are trying to keep their costs on the production side as low as possible (as few discs at possible). They may have lazily encoded the stuff, you'd know better than I, but they really are not meant to be a premium distributor, and therefore are less equipped to "getting it right" in the look of the content, and won't spend much time fiddling before moving onto the next title.
As far as I can tell Mill Creek isn't in the business of colour grading. If I had to bet money on it I'd say they are probably just doing the disc authoring & printing/pressing. I could be wrong.
I wouldn't even mind the lower 4.5mbps bit rate of the Mill Creek release if they had at least used the same masters as the Universal version. As an example I just bought this knowing full well that one of the reviewers has mentioned the reduced bit rate due to the lower disc count compared to the original 2008 CBS release. Although if it has serious mastering errors it's going back on ebay.
You'd think over time the image quality would get better, but with DVD they are actively making it worse. Which really hurts since DVD is already suffering at 720x480 standard definition, and there is often no better option due to the streaming services being even worse (except of course for shows that were remastered in HD at great expense to the studio).
Given the surprising popularity of DVD some 28 years after its conception, maybe they should consider coming out with a "DVD+" spec for better quality video while retaining backwards compatibility and cheaper production costs compared to bluray. For example the DVD+ spec could specify a minimum bitrate and have predefined encoder profiles agreed upon by industry experts. They could retire the interlaced format and require all video be stored on disc as progressive, and if generated from an interlaced master it would need to comply with a certain standard of deinterlacing & ivtc defined by industry experts. The raster size should also be expanded to 852x480 for NTSC and 1024x576 for PAL to retain 4:3 pixel density at 16:9.
As far as I can tell Mill Creek isn't in the business of colour grading. If I had to bet money on it I'd say they are probably just doing the disc authoring & printing/pressing. I could be wrong.
I wouldn't even mind the lower 4.5mbps bit rate of the Mill Creek release if they had at least used the same masters as the Universal version. As an example I just bought this knowing full well that one of the reviewers has mentioned the reduced bit rate due to the lower disc count compared to the original 2008 CBS release. Although if it has serious mastering errors it's going back on ebay.
You'd think over time the image quality would get better, but with DVD they are actively making it worse. Which really hurts since DVD is already suffering at 720x480 standard definition, and there is often no better option due to the streaming services being even worse (except of course for shows that were remastered in HD at great expense to the studio).
Given the surprising popularity of DVD some 28 years after its conception, maybe they should consider coming out with a "DVD+" spec for better quality video while retaining backwards compatibility and cheaper production costs compared to bluray. For example the DVD+ spec could specify a minimum bitrate and have predefined encoder profiles agreed upon by industry experts. They could retire the interlaced format and require all video be stored on disc as progressive, and if generated from an interlaced master it would need to comply with a certain standard of deinterlacing & ivtc defined by industry experts. The raster size should also be expanded to 852x480 for NTSC and 1024x576 for PAL to retain 4:3 pixel density at 16:9.
Yea, you are right, they don't do color grading as far as I know. They did have Quantum Leap on Blu-Ray HD, and Airwolf, but I think maybe Universal did the restoration on that. Mill Creek I think usually just uses the files universal gives them (and actually contractually these types of deals with distributors don't allow them to "change" the content).
As far as bitrate -- could that just be a product of them trying to fit more episodes per disc? Because even an added disc cuts into Mill Creek's slim profit margin.
That, or it's just them being lazy or not having the know how.
You're right about DVD though -- I am constantly surprised how it's still ~40% units sold for the home market. A lot of people stuck on dvd for some reason.
As far as bitrate -- could that just be a product of them trying to fit more episodes per disc? Because even an added disc cuts into Mill Creek's slim profit margin.
I guess it depends how much it costs for them to manufacture an extra disc. Suppose we wanted double bit rate, say 7mbps instead of 3.5, then a 20 disc series is going to become 40 discs. If we allow +$5 for the total cost of the product, that would allow for 25c per disc. I'm not sure how much a DVD disc costs to manufacture but I'd imagine most people would be willing to pay an extra $5 for better picture quality. Maybe +$6.60 @ 33c/disc or +$8 @ 40c/disc?
RussianCabbie_Lotteryfan wrote:As far as bitrate -- could that just be a product of them trying to fit more episodes per disc? Because even an added disc cuts into Mill Creek's slim profit margin.
I guess it depends how much it costs for them to manufacture an extra disc. Suppose we wanted double bit rate, say 7mbps instead of 3.5, then a 20 disc series is going to become 40 discs. If we allow +$5 for the total cost of the product, that would allow for 25c per disc. I'm not sure how much a DVD disc costs to manufacture but I'd imagine most people would be willing to pay an extra $5 for better picture quality. Maybe +$6.60 @ 33c/disc or +$8 @ 40c/disc?
These sold on Amazon originally for about 20 bucks and the online retail price was like 29.99 tops at most places. Wallmart.com now has it for 15. Brick and mortar may have sold it higher back in 2019. The manufacturer suggested retail price was 45 but online nobody sold it for that. Maybe big box had it 30, 35, 40... I am sure they would have reduced it over time if they originally priced it at the upper end of those values.
88 episodes... target market being people who would have skipped buying initial studio releases (about 3 runs over 15 yrs).
And even with those low prices, mill creek only gets 66 to 50 percent of that (eg 15 dollars). So it's an extremely low profit margin of dollars per unit. 15 discs is taking out at least 5 bucks just on the DVD and sleaves. More discs/sleaves at 25-33 cents really matters to them and especially multiple if they are only making a few bucks a unit.
Besides he cost of printing, packing and shipping the current set as is, there is company overhead (employees.. mill creek is a rather small team )and the licensing fee they had to pay Universal for this release (my guess $50k to 250k). Let's assume 100k.
the-numbers.com has the DVD sales estimated at $295k in total revenue (before split between retailer and manufacturer). The number may very well be lower than that since they use a number from brick and mortar retailers to estimate marketwide price. In any case even at 295, if mill creek got lets say 60 percent of that in share with retailers, when you take out licensing fee, overhead, production costs, shipping costs... margins are slim and if they paid too much on the licensing fee in this one and overestimated demand, it would have probably put them in financial loss territory.
Sorry for my being long-winded on this.
margins are slim and if they paid too much on the licensing fee in this one and overestimated demand, it would have probably put them in financial loss territory.
Yeah of course, that's why it would have to be the sale price that increases by $5-$10 to pay for the extra discs (assuming my estimate of disc costs was correct... for all I know it may be way off).
Sliders.tv → Sliders Bboard → Sliders DVD Releases (Universal, Mill Creek, SD blu-ray, Restoration)
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