- December 31, 2001: Released a new version of Decimate. This version is a major improvement.
It has the following advantages:
- There is no longer a threshold to tweak.
- It supports 1 in N decimation, where N can be up to 50.
- It is much more reliable, i.e., false duplicates are not generated.
Thanks to James Lin for suggesting the algorithm change. If you have not been happy
with Decimate, try this new version. I think you'll be very pleasantly surprised.
- December 30, 2001: Released new version of 2D Cleaner Optimized with fixes for
interlaced mode provided by Jaan Kalda.
- December 29, 2001: I've made and released a new version of Jaan Kalda's super-fast
2D Cleaner. This new version provides active filter preview and a help facility. Also,
please note that the interlaced mode currently has a bug and has been disabled. It will be
repaired as soon as possible. You can achieve the same effect using VirtualDub's internal
deinterlace filter, as described in the help file for the optimized 2D Cleaner.
- December 27, 2001: I've corrected several broken links and typos. Thanks to Fred
Thompson for keeping me honest. He also has sent along several interesting links that
I will soon add.
Do you like Jim Casaburi's 2D Cleaner but find it painfully slow? Wish it were as fast
as Smart Smoother? Well now it is thanks to Jaan Kalda. In fact, it is two to three times
faster than Smart Smoother! Jaan has sent in
Athlon and PIII optimized versions. On one test that I ran
with the Athlon version, the speedup was seven-fold versus Jim's original!
- December 21, 2001: Karel Suhajda has released a new version of his
DeLogo filter. He indicates that the
new version has the following changes:
- Fixed a stupid bug causing improper function when cropping was used.
- Enhanced bitmap save/load procedures to be more effective.
- Repaired bugs in manual.
- Added Error messages and Version history sections to the manual.
Thanks for the new version, Karel!
- December 21, 2001: Released a new version of the Zoom filter. The new version supports two
independently configurable zoom phases to allow, for example, a zoom in followed by a zoom
out. This version also corrects a bug in the scripting support.
- December 5, 2001: Did a little cosmetic/usability overhaul on the web site. It's fairly primitive as web sites go, but I think it's at least a bit easier on the eye as well as being
easier to use.
- December 4, 2001: I am back on-line at neuron2@attbi.com. I must say, I am impressed at how fast AT&T brought me back to full functioning after Excite pulled the plug.
- December 3, 2001: Due to the @home fiasco, my email address neuron2@home.com is dead and
will not be resurrected. AT&T tells me that I will be back up on neuron2@attbi.com within
10 days.
- December 3, 2001: Released version 1.1 of the Zoom filter. This version corrects a bug
in support for interlaced source clips.
- December 1, 2001: Released a nifty new Zoom filter that Avery Lee and I co-authored.
This filter provides a configurable perspective zoom that supports the resizing modes of
VirtualDub's internal resize engine. The size of the output window can
be arbitrarily specified. The focus point in the source frame can be specified. Zoom in and
zoom out are supported. The starting and ending frame numbers for the zoom can be specified.
When the source frame is zoomed out to a size smaller than the output frame, the resulting border
is filled with a specified color. Interlaced source is supported. Finally, filter preview and
scripting are supported.
- November 19, 2001: Released the source code for Smart Smoother after receiving many
requests for same. Due to the MMX optimization kindly provided by Avery Lee, it's not real
obvious from the source code what is going on, so I'll explain in words here. Take a window
around each pixel. Add to a set all pixels in the window that are within threshold of the
center pixel. Average just the pixels in that set. Finally, replace the center pixel with
the average. Simple, Huh?
- November 14, 2001: Released a new version of the Standalone BMP Deinterlacer. It now
supports batch mode and includes clarified and expanded help text.
- November 13, 2001: Corrected various broken/redirected links.
- November 13, 2001: Released the first version of my
Stand-Alone Smart BMP Deinterlacer. This is a command-line program that operates on 24-bit BMP files. I have provided this in response to several requests for
deinterlacing of a non-lossy format. Future versions may add a GUI as well as additional
image file formats.
- November 13, 2001: Added a link to an interesting
Video Denoise Filter by Rising Research. It removes the
colored banding that you get when capturing from some video tapes. By the way, I am currently
working on a standalone deinterlacer for BMPs, as several people have requested the capability for non-compressed graphic formats (currently I support only JPEGs). I plan to add TIFF as well.
- November 8, 2001: Thomas Hargrove has offered a few
filter utility functions that may
be useful to filter developers.
- November 7, 2001: Smart Deinterlacer version 2.7 beta 2 is now available. The improvement
is subtle but definite.
- November 7, 2001: The new beta of Smart Deinterlacer is down for repairs. If you
downloaded it already, trash it and wait for the next beta. Oops!
- November 6, 2001: New beta release of Smart Deinterlacer. Version 2.7 beta 1
adds optional cubic interpolation (instead of linear) for recreating missing field lines
in moving areas. The resulting deinterlaced video is better, but the processing time
is increased. We report, you decide! Please let me know if these changes have broken anything.
- November 6, 2001: I've added a link to
EOD's Auto Levels Filter. This filter is based on the "Auto Levels" function of ACD Photo Enhancer (part of ACDsee).
- November 1, 2001: Thomas Hargrove has enhanced his
frame numbering filter. It now
supports timestamping as well. And it now also offers the option of adding extra space
to the frame for the numbering or stamping, instead of overlaying the source video.
- October 26, 2001: Have you ever wished that you could apply a filter to only a
subset of the frames in a clip? For example, you have a clip that has a dark portion
that you need to brighten, but you don't want to brighten the entire clip. Well now it's
possible thanks to Dmitri Schamschurko! Dmitri has written a very useful
conditional execution filter.
Dmitri writes:
I have implemented a conditional filter for VirtualDub, which
allows simple branching. It provides you the possibility to
apply filters with different settings under some conditions.
You can specify conditions like "frame(1-100, 200, 201-300)".
This addresses the second point of your "to-do" list.
The filter acts like a proxy between the VirtualDub and its filters.
It works by switching the filter's private data.
The filter has a built-in logic where you can express things
like "frame(10,30-40)" and "max(luma)-min(luma) < 30", etc.
It provides also the possibility to write external functions
(like the built-in "luma" or "saturation").
The filter binaries and the source are released under the terms
of the GPL. The filter is in beta phase and is not yet extensively tested,
but, I think it is stable enough to be published.
Please send your feedback on this highly useful tool directly to
Dmitri Schamschurko.
Thanks, Dmitri!
- October 10, 2001: I'm back! That terror stuff has me in a bit of a funk but I'm coming
out of it. Here is a nice new filter written by Karel Suhajda. It is intended to perform a sophisticated logo removal function that is claimed
to be superior to the existing filter LogoAway. I haven't had a chance to try it yet. I'd
be interested to hear any feedback users may have on it. Thank you, Karel!
- August 25, 2001: Minor update to Telecide (Version 1.2 beta 4). This version now uses
bicubic interpolation for generating the first two frames.
- August 24, 2001: I added a new page called
My To-Do List. It will let people
know what is going on in the filter factory here, as well as possibly save people
emailing me about things I've already got planned. But certainly feel free to contact me
if you have any comments about the to-do items or want me to add something. Also, now that
the source is available, if anyone wants to pitch in and tackle any of these, then just
let me know so we can avoid duplicate efforts.
On another topic...the movie Gladiator
just played on HBO in 3:2 NTSC pulldown, so I thought I'd use it as a real-world test for
Telecide/Decimate. I captured 15 minutes in DV and processed it through the filters, saving
the final output in DivX. The results were wonderful. Not a single frame wrong. I'm really
looking forward to a version of VirtualDub that can delete frames so that I can make a
nice integrated and easy-to-use general-purpose inverse telecine filter.
Warren Young is putting together a nice little program that simplifies working with Avisynth.
Check it out at his website. It supports
user-defined templates and lets you generate a tailored Avisynth script by simply right
clicking on an AVI file. Please send Warren your ideas for improvements. He's really
motivated to make this a useful tool. Thanks Warren, it's already become indispensable
to me!
Finally, I will be on vacation in South India until September 20. Don't be alarmed if
you get an auto-response on my mail. I'll be back!
- August 24, 2001: Updated Telecide. This version: 1) makes the desperation mode threshold
more usable as its value is now
independent of the frame size, 2) desperation mode is disabled by default, and 3) the
executable size is reduced by half. The latest releases of Telecide and Decimate together
now allow one to effectively clean up PAL video that was telecined from 24fps to 25fps.
- August 24, 2001: A minor fix for Decimate. This fix causes the Decimate 1:25 mode
to ignore the initial duplicate frame put out by Telecide.
- August 23, 2001: I've released a new version of Decimate. This version is improved
as follows: 1) A 1-in-25 decimate mode is added for PAL clips
that are telecined from 24fps to 25fps. 2) The duplicate detection is improved as the
threshold is no longer dependent on the frame size. 3) The size of the executable is
reduced by half. 4) The help is now HTML.
- August 17, 2001: New version of Histogram Equalize released. This version is recompiled
as a multithreaded DLL to reduce its size by half, a problem with painting the histograms
was fixed (when loading a new file after the histograms have been displayed, subsequent
display of the histograms wrote all over the dialog box in some cases), and the help file
was revised to add a general statement about equalizing color images.
- August 17, 2001: New version of Smart Resize released. This version is recompiled as a
multithreaded DLL to reduce its size by half, and some silliness about DV aspect ratios was
corrected in the help file.
- August 17, 2001: First release version of Windowed Histogram Equalize filter. This version
fixes another problem in script support.
- August 10, 2001: Added source code for the Telecide filter.
- August 8, 2001: Released a new beta of the Xsharpen filter. This version
fixes a bug in script support (you needed to move the strength slider to "wake up" the filter), and fixed a string displayed in the filter list dialog box.
- August 8, 2001: Released a new beta of the Windowed Histogram Equalize filter. This version
fixes a bug in script support (you needed to move the strength slider to "wake up" the filter), and is recompiled as a multithreaded DLL to reduce the executable size.
- August 7, 2001: Major update for Smart Deinterlacer. Version 2.6 has the following changes:
- Compiled as a multithreaded DLL to reduce executable size.
- Scene change detection restored (see help file).
- Source code cleaned up and comments updated.
- Luma calculations made more accurate.
- Filter defaults revised.
- Help changed to HTML.
- Much better parameters for motion-map denoising.
- July 27, 2001: Yet another new filter! Xsharpen is a useful rank-order sharpening filter.
Have a look; you might like it.
- July 25, 2001: Released a major overhaul of Smart Bob. This version makes the following changes: 1) The executable has been reduced from 56K to 24K. 2) The interpolation is now bicubic instead of bilinear. 3) A "dumb bob" mode is provided.
4) The filter is faster. 5) The help file is now HTML. 6) The "show motion only" mode now
passes moving video through instead of displaying white. 7) The source code implementation is
dramatically improved and optimized.
- July 19, 2001: Added links to Avery Lee's new filters Warpsharp and Filter Factory.
- July 18, 2001: Released a new filter: Brightness/Contrast (UI Enhanced). This is the
VirtualDub internal brightness/contrast filter with filter preview added and a few other small user interface improvements.
- July 13, 2001: Added source code for the Unsharp Mask filter.
- July 13, 2001: Added DebugView utility for WinNT/2K/XP. Also updated version for Win9x/ME.
- July 13, 2001: Added source code for the Antiflicker filter.
- July 13, 2001: Released the first beta of the Windowed Histogram Equalization
filter and its source code. Check it out; it's fun!
- July 9, 2001: Released yet another version of Histogram to fix two bugs:
1) The zero luma bin of the output histogram was not
accumulated. 2) If you selected preview but did not sample, and then you moved a slider, the
histogram boxes disappeared.
- July 8, 2001: Released a new version of Histogram Equalize. It adds
input and output histogram displays to the filter dialog.
- July 7, 2001: Released a new version of the Histogram Equalize filter. It uses a more accurate luminance calculation and provides antibanding capability.
- July 5, 2001: The previous beta of Telecide was not performing correctly on some
clips. Released a new version 1.2 beta 2 to repair it.
- July 3, 2001: Released first version of Histogram Equalize.
- July 2, 2001: Released version 1.0 beta 5 of Decimate. This version changes the default
threshold to 50, and is modified to allow the filter to run when no output script file is
specified. This is useful for tweaking with the DebugView option prior to generating the
final script. Also, added source code for the filter.
- June 26, 2001: Released version 1.2 beta 1 of Telecide. This is a major improvement that
greatly reduces false frame output for many clips that previously gave Telecide fits.
- June 23, 2001: I am now hosting filters by other authors. The first filter
is a Coring filter, by Paul Currie.
- June 20, 2001: Added edit boxes to RGB that display the numeric values of the sliders
to allow easily reproducing settings. Also, added source code for RGB.
- June 4, 2001: Source code for Logo added.
- May 24, 2001: Source code for Smart Deinterlacer added.
- May 18, 2001: Released version 2.5 of Smart Deinterlacer. This version allows both Advanced Processing and Motion Processing to be applied, if desired.
- May 6, 2001: Added link to Thomas Hargrove's frame numbering filter.
- April 30, 2001: Source code for Pan added.
- April 23, 2001: Source code for Smart Resize added.
- April 22, 2001: Source code for Hue added.
- April 21, 2001: Source code for Colorize added.
- April 20, 2001: Source code for Smart Bob added.
- April 16, 2001: The Yahoo site disappeared without notice or reason and Yahoo
does not respond to my emails. The site therefore moved to http://shelob.mordor.net/dgraft/index.html. This new site is kindly provided by
Chris Mauritz, whom many of you may know from his postings to rec.video.desktop.
Many thanks to Chris!
- April 15, 2001: Added link to tHE fISH'S VirtualDub Filters Page. I have decided to make my source code generally available. I am preparing it now and it should start appearing in about a week.
- April 2, 2001: First release version of Smart Resize. This version uses
Avery Lee's new resize engine, fixes various crashing bugs, and adds two
new fitting modes that are very useful.
- Feb 6, 2001: Yet another release of Smart Resize. Beta 8 limits the aspect ratio to 10/1 to avoid having temporary editing of the aspect ratio edit boxes crash Windows or VirtualDub.
- Feb 5, 2001: Released beta 7 of Smart resize. It fixes erroneous calculation of the frame size in some cases when both snap to width and snap to height are enabled.
- Feb 2, 2001: Fixed a bug in Colorize which caused the filter to exhaust GDI resources if the sliders were moved around too much, leading to a crash of the filter and Windows. The filter now properly releases all the resources that it allocates. Also, the help file was converted to HTML and your browser is now invoked on it.
- Feb 2, 2001: Beta 6 of Smart Resize released. This version removes the need for the Calculate and Accept buttons, replaces the Save Calculator Settings button with normal script file support, and supports batch operation where the final size decisions are made at the time an input clip is processed.
- Feb 1, 2001: Fixed the link to Chris Wojdon's site.
- Jan 25, 2001: Fixed a problem in Logo that made it impossible to put the logo exactly flush against the right and/or
bottom of the frame.
- Jan 20, 2001: Flame on... I had to remove the Guestbook on the main page. Yahoo changed it and it is now embarrassingly lame. Here are the problems with it: 1) It cannot be edited so if someone gets offensive in there, or typos are made, I can't correct it. Duh. 2) The entry size is limited to a small value, but the edit box doesn't enforce that limit, so your entry gets cut off after submission and you end up looking like an idiot. Duh. 3) I can't import old entries into the new guestbook, so I would have to have a stupid "View Old Guestbook" link. Duh. 4) The entries are now displayed old entries first. Duh. These are just the errors I noticed at a quick perusal. Yahoo has an unfortunate history of trying to improve things and totally screwing them up. Flame off...
- Jan 19, 2001: Released beta 5 of the Smart Resize filter. Fixed several snapping and user interface bugs.
- Jan 18, 2001: Released the first version of the Smart Resize filter.
- Jan 8, 2001: Added PicFix and Chroma Noise Reduction filter links to the home page.
- Jan 6, 2001: Released version 1.0 beta 4 of Decimate. This version now produces correct video in the output pane to allow Telecide to be placed ahead of it in the filter chain and produce correct final output. Also, the filter now uses the DebugView utility instead of writing an alternate script file.
- Jan 3, 2001: Released version 1.1 beta 1 of Telecide. This version adds an "interpolate threshold" option that avoids false frame output due to dropped frames and/or bad edit cuts. The internal operation of Telecide is now viewable with the DebugView utility.
- Jan 2, 2001: Made available a utility called DebugView that allows for viewing debug output from some of my filters. I will document these filters and announce them as additional news items as they become available.
- Dec 28, 2000: Released version 1.0 beta 3 of Decimate. It fixes problems with the Browse function: 1) it now works in Windows 2000; 2) doesn't clear the filename edit box if you hit cancel in the file dialog; and 3) defaults to file type *.avs.
- Dec 28, 2000: Released version 1.3 beta 2 of Logo. It fixes a crashing problem in Windows 2000 when the Browse button is hit.
- Dec 27, 2000: Released beta 2 of Decimate. This version is quite a bit faster.
- Dec 26, 2000: Released first version of Decimate (the companion of Telecide).
- Dec 18, 2000: Released beta 3 of the Telecide filter. A high-quality mode was added that significantly reduces false frames.
- Dec 11, 2000: Released first version of my new telecine killer filter: Telecide.
- Dec 9, 2000: Pan filter updated to version 1.0 beta 2 to correct a problem in timeline navigation when a preview is stopped and restarted.
- Dec 9, 2000: [begin this listing]
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