I'm new to the diy pj scene, but I stated here because of my background in digital video, and I thought I'd share something that I was surprised that it hadn't been mentioned before. Some of you may have heard of avisynth, but I haven't seen any articles on using it and the script iip to upconvert dvds to 720p.

For those of you who don't know. Avisynth is a script based video editor (editing videos via a text editor), that supports a lot of filters, scalers, etc, and many of these filters can be combined to get some very nice results. Some people over at forum.doom9.org have been working to get a script to get a high quality upconverter from 480p dvds to 720p with some VERY nice results.

A bit of a WARNING though, this is very processor intensive, and can take a little bit of time to learn if you've never used avisynth before, but the standard settings for the script work really well.

Well I hope that helps somebody.

Is this application similar to Dscaler?

I am currently using Dscaler to remove 'De-Interlace' the video. I notice about a 30% increase in TV resolution.

I have never actually tried to use Descaler on a DVD.

Dscaler is primarily a scaler for live tv capture and it doesn't do a whole lot to clean up the source. This doesn't scale in real time, but it does upscale it with very high quality (high than using ffdshow to upscale). It's also great at just cleaning up and selectively sharpening a dvd source, even if you don't upscale.

why am i not getting any sound? am i r-tarded

There could be quite a few different reasons why, but it shouldn't have anything thing to do with the script directly (video and audio are treated separately). If you're trying to just watch a movie with this script without re-encoding it, then that would be your problem, but if you've re-encoded it, then I would look at how you processed the audio in your encoder. If the encoder messed up, it's pretty easy to just go back and encode the audio on its on and then mux them back together.

if you are going through this much trouble why not just use zoomplayer pro, your choice of codecs (pref nvidia) and ffdshow?? Use resize to 1920x1080 or whichever you like and it does it realtime from the DVD, and sharpens the image dramatically.

Here is a guide I wrote a looong time ago lol, it will give you the basics but a lot has improved and changed since then, also provides some before and after mouse over images. As I said things have improved since then and you can test out other settings to see better IQ than that

http://www.htpcnews.com/index.php?option=c...2&Itemid=48

That method does an O.K. job, but it's compromising speed for quality. The method in ffdshow equally sharpens all of the image, and the end result often has halos, and sometimes even the noise is sharpened (despite the denoising from the blur). The Austin Powers example at the end of the article shows both.

The iip uses a really high quality denoiser (Pixiedust), and selective sharpening to give a REALLY detailed result, but I would say it's not for every movie you watch. If you've got a couple movies that you watch a lot or are your favorites and they haven't been released in a high def format or you don't have an HD player, I'd suggest converting them to get get the best quality on your PJ. I might do some comparison shots to kinda show the differences between them if that would help anybody.

i finally got ffdshow working, it cleaned up my image a little, but now there are a lot of fuzzies. I guess i just have to play with it some more.............oh and it tends to run a little choppy

my setup
amd 3400+ processor
1 gb ddr-ram(3200 i believe)
256 radeon 9800 xt

theschwa: yes the austin powers movie is a good example of a movie that they tried to apply some filters to to make it look better on screen during the encoding process. There was a thread on AVS that discussed how some movies did this and why superbit movies were all the rage.

I read a little more on the method described here and it does seem pretty interesting, I like how it evaluates the image and finds stuff that is supposed to be in the background and doesnt apply the sharpening to it.

The main downside I see to this method is the time it takes to re-encode, and the performance hit it has (but then again that thread is really old compared to what may be out current)

The ffdshow method can be used with great results as long as you dont over do it. It is a time tested method that really does an excellent job, especially for those who want something that isnt to hard to do and takes little time to setup. After you set it up, your done... just pop the movie in and play, no worries

I've played a bit with ffdshow (for display from HT-PC to plasma), but this re-encoding process for std-dvd's sounds VERY interesting...[I'd love to try one for display on a 720P-PJ].
My initial-take is that this would enhance re-encoded dvd's much-better than running them through upconverting players (like my Momitsu 880DX, or the Helios). I am currently trying to 'wade through' the discussion linked-to on doom9, but (for reasons of 'not wanting to reinvent wheel' AND elements in there being, frankly, 'over my head'!), I wonder if you'd be open to, at some-point, providing for us a succinct 'how to' for d/l&config-ing needed proggies/scripts, and walking us through a typical dvd-conversion...as you've come to use these toolz? Also, for burning-result, would a typical/full 4.35gb/dvd require 2-disks and/or dual-layer to handle output -- or do you not retain original mpg2/.vob structure, and go with mpg4/.avi instead?
<thanks in advance!>

HapHazard, you read my mind. I've just started working on a how to type thing.
nintari, yes, it's rather time intesive (namely letting your computer sit for several hours of encoding). Like I said it's not for every movie, but maybe just those special ones... Right now I'm working on doing the matrix for the how to. I'll post up the how to once I get everything finished.

is this only used when running dvd's thru htpc?

Hows it going so far? I read into a lot of that info and it seemed pretty complicated lol. The matrix was one of the first movies I encoded to DivX to fit on a CD lol, I was amazed at how well it turned out. But Divx just doesnt cut it anymore lol, cause that was years and years ago, before I had my first bigscreen. Once I moved to the bigscreen and was outputting in HD resolutions I knew DivX was crap lol.

Really looking forward to that how-to, how's it coming along? How much space does a typical movie take up after it's been encoded to say 720p or around there?

I messed around with ffdshow and zoom player, dscaler, avisynth, etc.. following the guide on avsforums.com. I definitely got a sharper picture, but the contrast always suffered greatly.. always washed out. I gave up.

I Haven't abandoned this! I do have some hitches though. I'm planning on making a tutorial/quality comparison so people can decide which method is best for when and I have some questions for how people would like to be able to review the results. The best way to view individual frames would be with lossless compressed .png files and there are several mp4 profiles for Hi-Def encoding if people would rather see moving video. The only problem with either is that they'll both take up a fair amount of bandwidth, so I'm trying to see if my host will give me enough bandwith or maybe some one knows of a place where I can upload the results.

Also I kind of want to compare the results from ffdshow, Avisynth, and possible some HD-DVD or Blu-ray video (now that they're both capable of uploading to a computer [by this I'm not condoning copyright infringement]). Because of this I might switch my source material to something like serenity or what seems to be a board favorite, 5th Element.

Basically I'd like this to be as helpful as possible, so any tips on how I can do that would be greatly appreciated. thanx.

xvid is where its at. you can encode movies to about 2.2gb and keep ac3, and awsome quality, specifically in the contrast and color. but i also don't have a projector, yet.
i did d/l the back to the future in hd xvid/divx looks awsome on my brothers hf

I'd like to apply this to my back to the future. I had to re-encode it to get it to fit on a dual layer dvd (i spliced all 3 together).

hee...So, been a month now...learn to type, yet? <g>
[Or does it take this long to re-encode Matrix...? 486?]

Awesome theshwa! I'd love to see a tutorial on upscaling. I know how to use ffdshow, but I'd really like to see how to actually save an upconverted movie. I'd probably do it on the really pretty movies only....

Any updates shwa??

He's still hangin' with Mavis Beacon...<g>

Man, I NEEED that tutorial! I feel it in my bones!!

shwa.... feel the love here.... we need this man.... feel the love....

Can't wait...can't be too far away now...

(chanting)

schwa, schwa, schwa, schwa, schwa, schwa, schwa!

ummmm, I dunno that song (chant), but I'm definately waiting to hear more. Is this used as a 'pre' scale or scale on the fly???
how is the file saved then, if it is done ahead of time??? is it still saved via .iso or folders??

Damn...he took the Red-pill...

I can tell you that I have been reading about this a lot, and from what I myself have seen this is definitely a 'pre' scale. I get a screaming 2fps (WOW I'm flying now). But I haven't played with avisynth enough to even understand how to output to a file of any sort.

I've been sick as a dog, but I figured I should give you guys something.
Here's the text only version so far
Sorry it took so long, but I had to read through some of the same stuff as you guys, and I made a couple mistakes along the way, but I ran through this last weekend and it turned out great. Good luck.

looks good to me. haven't started doing it yet. are you still working on it or is it fully complete because I noticed that you had a header "multiplexing" with no text following. anyways, thanks for doing all that work!

Anyone else getting "URL not found" from the link??

it was working for me this weekend. i still have it in my browsers cache but I don't know if the theschwa will appreciate it if i paste it in here

Ravi, could you email it to me, or even PM it? I'm PMing you my email address...

wait.... it's working now... Love it!

Yeah, I'm planning on adding some pictures, but here's the link I meant to put under multiplexing. I've been extremely busy, but I wanted to give you guys at least something usable, albeit un-pretty. I threw together the website and I just got hosting on the university server, so if it goes down, tell me and I'll try to find a better host.