Video Enhancer guideContents
Chapter 1: IntroductionBefore you startVideo Enhancer is a program that allows you
to increase resolution of video using Super Resolution method. Super
Resolution is a smart video upsizing algorithm which uses information from
neighbor frames to upsize current frame. It accumulates information,
so the more sequential frames are processed, the better quality you
get. If picture in your video doesn't change too fast,
then information from several frames can be added to create a picture
of a bigger size, revealing details which would otherwise remain hidden.
No algorithms of ordinary image resize/resample can provide this quality
just because there's not enough information in one frame. Video Enhancer also allows you to
use more than a hundred of
VirtualDub filters
to do everything you want with your video: deinterlacing, denoising,
deblocking, color correction, deshaking, sharpening, visual effects
etc. But unlike VirtualDub, in Video Enhancer all filters, coders
and decoders work simultaneously in separate threads saving your time. This tutorial will help you to benefit from every opportunity offered by Video Enhancer. RegistrationVideo Enhancer is a try-before-you-buy program. You can use it free of charge for 30 days without functional limitations. In order to use it longer you must purchase it. Doing so you will receive a registration code which must be entered in registration dialog offered by Video Enhancer at start. DefinitionsArtefact - a visible defect in a digital photo or video picture Codec - a third-party system component that compresses and/or decompresses data Compression - lossy or lossless process of encoding information using fewer bits Deblocking - correcting blocks in decoded video in order to improve visual quality and prediction performance by smoothing the sharp edges which can form between blocks when block coding techniques are used Deinterlacing - converting interlaced video, like common analog television signals, into a non-interlaced form. Denoising - removing noise from a video. Noise is an unwanted distortion of data, including false contouring appearance, wide horizontal noise strips typical for old VHS, film artifacts - dust or dirt; snow, multiple small dots etc. Deshaking - removing shaking from a video (typical effect for home camera shooting). DirectX (Microsoft DirectX) - a set of system components providing application programming interfaces (APIs) for handling tasks related to multimedia, especially game programming and video, on Microsoft platforms Filter - a program component used to modify the content of video Multithreading - parallel (simultaneous) execution of several pieces of program in different threads Uprezzing - increasing video resolution VirtualDub - a powerful video editing application with a collection of more than 100 video filters System requirementsA Pentium Pro or higher, 64 MB of free RAM, Windows 98/2000/XP/2003/Vista, DirectX 9.
Chapter 2: Interface overviewVideo Enhancer provides two modes of user interface: Simple and Advanced. Simple mode
opens by default when Video Enhancer starts for the first time.
Simple mode
Advanced mode
This table covers buttons which
are NOT present in Simple mode:
Visual appearance (skins)Video Enhancer's visual appearance
can be changed by right-clicking on the main window and selecting a
new skin from the list:
For power users who want to use Video Enhancer from shell scripts, it also provides a command line interface.
Chapter 3: Using Video EnhancerSelecting input and output file(s)
After the list of files was created, the "Input video file" box shows the first filename in your list plus number of other files selected: The lower box indicates resolution and duration of the first file in your sequence. Click "Many files" to view and/or edit your list of files. It is not recommended to apply sequence of filters to several files which differ in original resolution. You can not edit output file names separately, all but the first one will be named by adding "-new" to the end.
Input and output formatsVideo Enhancer reads any video file that can be played by Windows Media Player. By default this is AVI, WMV, MPEG and ASF files. To open MOV files (QuickTime), install "QuickTime Alternative" version 1.7. If you want to open RM and RMVB files (Real Media), install Real Alternative. The output video is stored in AVI file. You can use any video codec to compress output video - any DirectShow, DMO and Video for Windows codecs. By default audio stream (if present) is stored to the output AVI without changes. But you can choose to recompress audio with any audio codec installed. Super Resolution work modesThere are 2 super resolution work modes to choose from in Video Enhancer. Video Enhancer uses neighbor frames to upsize a current frame with maximum quality. This requires multiple calculations to be performed, so prepare for 95-100% CPU usage. The "better quality" mode is time consuming while delivering the best achievable output. The "better speed" mode saves your time and video is processed quicker with sacrifice in resulting quality. If you are not satisfied with output, than change to "Better quality" and click START.
Check the desired mode in the main window:
Click SR button and select the mode by a mouse-click:
Setting desired resolution
This couldn't be easier: just set width and height in respective boxes of the main window. Original width and height are indicated under input file name. You can specify desired size either in pixels or in percents of original. Type in % symbol to switch to percents. Delete it to switch back to pixels. See section "Scaling" below to master more complex uprezzing technique.
ScalingThere are actually two frame sizes that Video Enhancer uses to resize your video: output width and height and actual frame size to scale to (see panda scheme on the screenshot below). Suppose you have a video 320x240 lines and want to make it 720x480 (NTSC). If you just scale 320x240 to 720x480, the image will become wider, all circles will become ellipses and all people will look fat. Simply because 4:3 proportion (320x240) does not equal 3:2 proportion (720x480). In order to preserve aspect ratio and make video 480 lines high, output size must be 640x480 (to keep the same proportion 4:3). But you wanted 720x480! In this case you just set output size to 720x480 and size for scaling to 640x480: Video Enhancer will scale your video to 640x480 and add black borders to right and left to make output width 720. Or, you can set scale size to 720x540 (still 4:3) and output size 720x480. Then Video Enhancer will scale your image to 720x540 and keep 480 center lines, cutting top and bottom. Of course, if you want to change aspect ratio (to make fat people look less fat, for example) you can set any values of width and height. If you do not like typing in pixels, use percents instead. Type % in width or height box to specify size in percents of original. Delete % to switch back. In the Simple mode you enter just one size - output size. Video Enhancer preserves aspect ratio and scales your video to fit output size (no cutting) adding black borders if needed. In the Advanced mode you can set both sizes manually. If you want to increase your video resolution more than 2-3 times, you will obtain better quality by using several steps of Super Resolution. Just add several SR steps to the filter sequence, each time doubling the video resolution, and setting desired resolution on the last step. Choosing a video codec1. What is a codec DivX and XviD are most commonly used (the first is commercial and the second is free) and they are our codecs of choice for lossy compression.
WizardThis useful feature helps you to quickly diagnose which distortions your video file is subject to and it will choose some filters for you. Select an input file (Browse>Choose file) and follow Wizard's instructions checking the boxes as you analyze your file: Wizard asks you to evidence interlacing, blocking and noise in your video. This will take a few seconds. Then, choose a new resolution for your video (see "Setting desired resolution" for more details): After new parameters are entered, you can choose a video and audio compressors (read more in "Choosing a video codec"). Wizard will probably suggest you to switch to Advanced mode to apply denoising or deinterlacing or deblocking filters and clean your video. Just do so; Video Enhancer will create a filter sequence by itself. Filtering your video (Advanced mode)In the Advanced
user interface mode you can create chains with any number of VirtualDub
and Super Resolution filters to be applied to your video. It means you
can filter your video before resizing, after resizing, between or even
instead.
You can use about a hundred of VirtualDub filters to alter your video: deinterlace, denoise, deshake, do color correction, apply some visual effects and much more. If you have VirtualDub installed, then Video Enhancer will probably find your filters automatically. You can see list of filters that work in Video Enhancer at http://www.thedeemon.com/VideoEnhancer/filters.html. To use a filter download it and unpack *.vdf file to "plugins" subfolder of the folder you installed Video Enhancer to. Usually it will be "c:\Program Files\Video Enhancer\plugins". When Video Enhancer looks for filters, it first looks at its own plugins folder, then searches for VirtualDub plugins folder and loads filters from there if something found. You can change VirtualDub filter settings (configure) as desired when adding to the sequence and later by pressing CONFIGURE button. When you are happy with the settings, click OK in the filter configuration dialog box. You can easily edit the filters sequence:
MultithreadingUnlike VirtualDub, in Video Enhancer all filters, coders and decoders work simultaneously in separate threads. For example, if you process your video with two filters, then at the time coder compresses the first frame second filter is already processing second frame, first filter is processing third frame and decoder decompresses fourth frame. Simple test with processing DV video with 3 filters and compressing it with XviD showed 1.9 times higher speed than VirtualDub on Dual Core AMD Opteron. Just check "Use multithreading" box to optimize parallel processing: PreviewPreview option allows you to see the output video resulting from parameters you have set and compare it with original input file (without saving output file). It is recommended to always preview at least several seconds of output file before you start processing of a large video in order to avoid common mistakes (scaling-related, for instance).
Processing timeHow long will it take to upsize your video and clean it with selected filters? There are a lot of parameters to influence the processing time, including original and final video resolution (width and height), available CPU usage, filter features, original file size etc. It is recommended to end CPU consuming tasks (check in Windows Task Manager>Processes) before you start processing a large file in order to speed up. Once you have set super resolution parameters and selected the filters, remaining and elapsed time are indicated while processing is in progress (in Preview mode as well). If you feel like changing the settings, just press STOP and modify the data accordingly. Finally: uprezzing your video
Command line interfaceStarting from version 1.6 you can use Video Enhancer in batch files using its command line interface. Only super-resolution feature is accessible from command line, to use VirtualDub filters run it in GUI mode. Parameters:
Examples: VideoEnhancer.exe
-vlist -alist B. Upsize a file "176.avi" to 640x480 and compress result with Huffyuv codec: VideoEnhancer.exe -i 176.avi -o "Upsized 176.avi" -d 640 480 -vc Huff -fast
Chapter 4: TroubleshootingXviD compression doesn't work.In XviD version 1.1 to get it working one needed to change one option in Xvid's parameters (this needs to be done just once). When you choose Xvid for compression in Video Enhancer, press "Configure", then "Advanced options", "Debug" and switch off "Display encoding status". After you've done it once, Xvid will work in VE. Can't load FLV videoTo be able to work with FLV
video you can install K Lite Codec Pack (full): Processing does not startTo get the problem solved you need to answer 3 questions: 1) Can VE play the file in the main window when you open your file? If no, you seem to lack a codec for this kind of files. We recommend installing K-Lite Codec Pack (see link above). it contains necessary codecs to open 99% of files. When installing be sure you check the points regarding FLV, FLV1 and VP6 (install FLV Splitter and set ffdshow to decode FLV1 and VP6 video). In other points about DivX, XviD, MP3 etc we recommend not to use ffdshow and use original codecs since ffdshow is not very stable. 2) Can VE process your file in Preview mode? Open your file in VE, choose what you want to do with it (e.g. resize with SR, process with some filters) and press Preview. If preview does not start and shows some errors, this means the problem is with the decoder compatibility. You can try installing different codec for this kind of files or report the problem, read below how to get more details. If preview is ok, then next question: 3) Can VE process your file in normal mode - writing output to disk? If processing doesn't start and shows some errors, then probably you chose a bad codec for compression, try selecting another one. If processing doesn't start but doesn't show any errors either - just sits still, it means your codec wasn't configured properly, for example, see topics about XviD and DivX in the FAQ. If you couldn't find the solution yourself, you can report the problem. Since there are dozens of different codecs and thousands combinations of their interactions, the more information you provide, the more chances to get it working: Since version 1.9.1 Video Enhancer allows starting a program in debug mode in order to create a bug description. Open Video Enhancer folder in Program Files and start VideoEnhancerDebugMode. Then try to process your file as you wanted. At the same directory where you told it to write output file it will create a .txt file with the name of your output file which will contain list of components used in processing, including decoding and encoding codecs and all intermediate filters. Please provide contents of this file when reporting an error.
Frequently Asked Questions & Troubleshooting online
Visit Video Enhancer forum http://forum.thedeemon.com/
to suggest your ideas, ask your
questions or learn more about video processing and Video Enhancer.
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