Soothe

Abstract
Author	Didée
Version	1.0
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Category	Unclassified filters
License
Discussion	Doom9 Thread

Description

Soothe lessens the temporal instability and aliasing caused by sharpening, by comparing the original and sharpened clip, leaving a smoother and slightly softer output. Soothe is a small postprocessor function for sharpening filters. The goal is temporal stabilization of clips that have been sharpened before. It is reasonably fast (contains 1 mt_lutxy and 2 mt_makediff operations and one TemporalSoften - that's about the cheapest possibility for what is done), and seems to work pretty well.

The introduction of jitter on the temporal axis is a general problem of sharpening operations, since sharpening (usually) considers spatial aspects only. Therefore, Soothe() does a very simple job: get the difference between [source] and [sharpened source], apply a TemporalSoften on this difference BUT allow only changes towards 128 ("neutral"), and then apply this temporally calmed difference back to the original clip. Effectively, this will reduce the overall effect of sharpening - less in static areas, and more in moving areas.

Advantages:

• more steady appearance (less "nervous")
• less bitrate required
• somewhat positive effect on detail that is, due to the sharpening, prone to aliasing
• smoother motion compaired to plain-sharpening, since motion-blurred edges will be less sharpened
• less artefacts in moving areas
• LimitedSharpenFaster can run faster, since one can get away with less supersampling
• should only help, never harm

Disadvantages:

• overall sharpening effect is reduced, but this can be compensated by a little more initial sharpening.

Requirements

• AviSynth 2.5.8 or greater
• Supported color formats: YV12

Required Plugins

Latest version of the following plugins are recommended unless stated otherwise.

• MaskTools2

Additional planar colorspaces are supported when using AviSynth 2.6 and appropriate MaskTools2.

Syntax and Parameters

Soothe(clip sharp, clip orig, int "keep")

clip   =

Sharpened clip.

clip   =

Original clip.

int  keep = 24

Minimum percent of the original sharpening to keep; range: 0-100.

Examples

We use LimitedSharpenFaster() as sharpener, and we'll keep at least 20% of its result:

AviSource("blah.avi")
dull   = last
sharp  = dull.LimitedSharpenFaster(ss_x=1.25, ss_y=1.25, strength=150, overshoot=1)

Soothe(sharp, dull, keep=20)

Soothe.avsi

function Soothe(clip sharp, clip orig, int "keep")
{
Assert(sharp.width == orig.width && sharp.height == orig.height,
 \  "Soothe: clip dimensions must match!")
keep  = default(keep, 24)
keep  = (keep>100) ? 100 : (keep<0) ? 0 : keep
KP    = string(keep)
diff  = mt_makediff(orig,sharp)
diff2 = diff.temporalsoften(1,255,0,32,2)
diff3 = mt_lutxy(diff,diff2,  "x 128 - y 128 - * 0 < x 128 - 100 / "  + KP 
 \                           + " * 128 + x 128 - abs y 128 - abs > x " + KP 
 \                           + " * y 100 " + KP + " - * + 100 / x ? ?")
return( mt_makediff(orig,diff3,chroma="copy first") )
}
# 14th July 2007, http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?p=1024318

External Links

• Doom9 Forum - Soothe discussion.