On intro video

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MasonFace
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Re: On intro video

Post by MasonFace »

Ok, here is the denoised live action video.
Very impressive results for just being denoised! I knew that the original video (the one from Bethesda's website, not the one shipped with the game) was low FPS with duplicate frames, but I didn't realize that it was one unique frame for every 3 frames... I had thought it was 15 FPS stretched to 30 FPS, not 10 FPS stretched to 30 FPS.

Here is a version of the "original" video that is cut to only the live action part with the duplicate frames removed if you want to start from that: https://drive.google.com/open?id=1pp_kZ ... kBDp4uM2am

With regards to denoising, I was really hoping you could denoise the upscaled version, specifically around the fire if your denoising filter has a masking region setting or maybe a brightness threshold setting. This is such a specific case that I doubt any denoiser has such a feature. Because of this, it probably is best to denoise before upscaling as you're doing.
Speaking of which...could someone provide me with a script?
I did some digging but couldn't find a transcript., so I transcribed it myself:

"400 years after Tiber Septim's reign, the beginning will meet the end and the bloody circle will close at the Empire of Tamriel. The unworthy heirs of the Septim dynasty have allowed the bonds of the Empire to weaken and crack. Uriel Septim the 7th, an (ugly pair?) his ancestors ignored. The provinces fight among themselves like neglected children drunk with rebellion and one indomitable power hides itself, but not forever. "

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NyanCommissar
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Re: On intro video

Post by NyanCommissar »

MasonFace wrote: Sat Mar 30, 2019 7:40 pm "400 years after Tiber Septim's reign, the beginning will meet the end and the bloody circle will close at the Empire of Tamriel. The unworthy heirs of the Septim dynasty have allowed the bonds of the Empire to weaken and crack. Uriel Septim the 7th, an (ugly pair?) his ancestors ignored. The provinces fight among themselves like neglected children drunk with rebellion and one indomitable power hides itself, but not forever. "
On the early part of the introduction movie, if you cannot hear clearly what the narrator says (because Julian LeFay's danish accent is thick), this is what he says:
"Four hundred years after Tiber Septim's reign, the beginning will meet the end, and the bloody circle will close in the Empire of Tamriel. The unworthy heirs of the Septim Dynasty have allowed the bonds of the Empire to weaken and crack. Uriel Septim the Seventh cannot repair what his ancestors ignored. The provinces fight among themselves like neglected children, drunk with rebellion, and one indomitable power hides itself, but not forever."
Credit goes to Aquiantus, Brendan and Andux for transcribing the narrator speech.

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King of Worms
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Re: On intro video

Post by King of Worms »

Nice results on the video Azteca!
What about the rest of the rendered vids, like the death sequence etc, would such image gain anything from the methods you are using?
Thanks for contribution!!

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jayhova
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Re: On intro video

Post by jayhova »

The denoising has done a very nice job of removing the banding caused by the video compression. You can really see this effect on things like streaming videos where you have colors on screen that are very near one another. Very dark scenes and shots of a sky can suffer from this.

The denoising does a good job of removing the glare from blobs of highlight colors. However the lack of glare makes the scene a bit more subdued than the original. It's possible the video could stand a bit of brightness and contrast since removing the artifacts of 30 year old compression should give you a bit more headroom.
Remember always 'What would Julian Do?'.

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ByteMixer
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Re: On intro video

Post by ByteMixer »

I took a crack at recording my voice for the narration part. Given the context of the passage of text, It's not quite in the same style as the original. And vanilla sound isn't really what I was aiming for. My internal thoughts are more an embittered scholar or narrator recounting the history from old archives, so I'm less emotive. And of course, my voice and internalized emotion are obviously much different.

I managed to find a few minutes of more quiet to do a couple takes. There is some background noise, (neighbor noises and a fan in the other room) so I'll need to find a better, quieter time to do this, and get a proper take. But the scratch take gets the idea across.

I don't really do voice acting, so I took a moment to do this for grins. I'm only mentioning here because it's vaguely in the context of the intro video. Naturally, I did add quite a bit of reverb/delay.

https://drive.google.com/open?id=1Ic4J3 ... CCIxEKT_73


Recorded using an SM7B slightly off-axis to mitigate plosives, recorded into my Mackie Onyx, and into Reaper. RAW audio recording quality is 48KHz, 24-bit. WAV file render is 44.1KHz, 24-bit.
"Whatever you do, make good art." - Neil Gaiman

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jayhova
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Re: On intro video

Post by jayhova »

I also took a crack at it. I'll stick mine up as well. It still needs a drum track added.
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Daggerfall intro sequence.zip
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Remember always 'What would Julian Do?'.

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Azteca
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Re: On intro video

Post by Azteca »

King of Worms wrote: Sat Mar 30, 2019 8:27 pm Nice results on the video Azteca!
What about the rest of the rendered vids, like the death sequence etc, would such image gain anything from the methods you are using?
Thanks for contribution!!
Thanks!
I would be glad to try but I do not have the videos. I can't make any promises but I would be willing to try on any of these videos.
MasonFace wrote: Sat Mar 30, 2019 7:40 pm
Ok, here is the denoised live action video.
Very impressive results for just being denoised! I knew that the original video (the one from Bethesda's website, not the one shipped with the game) was low FPS with duplicate frames, but I didn't realize that it was one unique frame for every 3 frames... I had thought it was 15 FPS stretched to 30 FPS, not 10 FPS stretched to 30 FPS.

Here is a version of the "original" video that is cut to only the live action part with the duplicate frames removed if you want to start from that: https://drive.google.com/open?id=1pp_kZ ... kBDp4uM2am
Thanks! I tried denoising with this but got worse results somehow. I'm doing this on a remote computer so I'll have to check it in a few days when I can tweak in person.
With regards to denoising, I was really hoping you could denoise the upscaled version, specifically around the fire if your denoising filter has a masking region setting or maybe a brightness threshold setting. This is such a specific case that I doubt any denoiser has such a feature. Because of this, it probably is best to denoise before upscaling as you're doing.
So, what's challenging is that this is a "halo" effect. Blockiness in the transition from light to dark. This is not something my denoiser is tuned for. There are a few specialist tools that seem to do this but it seems both expensive and time-consuming.
What I tried instead was to create a mask and apply the camera lens blur in After Effects. Thankfully Premiere Pro has an automatic mask tracking option that did a pretty good job with minimal input. I rendered out a test clip so you can get the idea. Obviously it means the flames have some blur and a slight loss of resolution but in my opinion it is less distracting than the artifacts. It would need fine-tuning, but now it's more of a glow around the flame than a stark drop-off. The blur can't be pushed too much further without getting blobby but maybe I could reduce the opacity of the blur and blend some of the original back in. We will see.
Speaking of which...could someone provide me with a script?
I did some digging but couldn't find a transcript., so I transcribed it myself:
SNIP
Thanks!
jayhova wrote: Sat Mar 30, 2019 9:51 pm The denoising has done a very nice job of removing the banding caused by the video compression. You can really see this effect on things like streaming videos where you have colors on screen that are very near one another. Very dark scenes and shots of a sky can suffer from this.

The denoising does a good job of removing the glare from blobs of highlight colors. However the lack of glare makes the scene a bit more subdued than the original. It's possible the video could stand a bit of brightness and contrast since removing the artifacts of 30 year old compression should give you a bit more headroom.
Good point. I increased the exposure so the flame pops more without clipping any significant detail. It revealed there is some good color in the lead actor's face. We can see it better now and I think it helps.

So, links:

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MasonFace
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Re: On intro video

Post by MasonFace »

Uriel Septim the Seventh cannot repair what his ancestors ignored.
"CANNOT REPAIR" ! Thank you! I knew at one time what the narrator was saying there but today I must have listened to it 15 times and it sounded like "an ugly pair" and couldn't remember what the actual words were. :lol:

I think the exposure boost made a big difference and looks much better. I'm very interested to see how my upscaled version would look with that exposure boost and the blurring mask on the flame.

Excellent work so far!

Edit1: Below is one of the CGI animations if you wouldn't mind trying to denoise that. I'd like to see if my AI upscales would fair any better with a denoised input. I think some of the frames got mixed up at the end. You can just denoise maybe a 10 second run of the video for our testing purposes if that's easier.

https://drive.google.com/open?id=1ORnm7 ... JX0bMCXBeI

Edit2: Below is an updated version of my upscale. The compression looks better and the frame interpolation came out a little better too, I think. No sound on this one; we can restore it later.

https://drive.google.com/open?id=1Id2un ... jAcCSLPMtB

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Azteca
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Re: On intro video

Post by Azteca »

MasonFace wrote: Sun Mar 31, 2019 4:08 am I think the exposure boost made a big difference and looks much better. I'm very interested to see how my upscaled version would look with that exposure boost and the blurring mask on the flame.

Excellent work so far!
Thanks! I'll work more on the flame this week and share when I can.
Edit1: Below is one of the CGI animations if you wouldn't mind trying to denoise that. I'd like to see if my AI upscales would fair any better with a denoised input. I think some of the frames got mixed up at the end. You can just denoise maybe a 10 second run of the video for our testing purposes if that's easier.

https://drive.google.com/open?id=1ORnm7 ... JX0bMCXBeI
I denoised this but it is so low-res it's nothing worth sharing. Does ok when the pages are static, falls apart as soon as they turn. It just looks like a smoother-over watercolor sort of effect.
Edit2: Below is an updated version of my upscale. The compression looks better and the frame interpolation came out a little better too, I think. No sound on this one; we can restore it later.

https://drive.google.com/open?id=1Id2un ... jAcCSLPMtB
It does seem improved. However, the cuts between close up and wide shots are pretty gnarly. See attached. You can't make out that detail in motion but it is different than a clean cut.

Last thing I'll be sharing this weekend. Since the flame is pretty much a blown-out blob of white to begin with, I decided to set exposure based on the close up shot. This brings his face up to more typical levels. It is a torch-lit scene and I know people are used to seeing it very dim, but figured I'd share. There is quite a bit of detail that comes out and his skin looks more natural.
Comparison (you can pick between original, small boost and big boost)
https://imgsli.com/MzExMg/0/1

Due to the aforementioned lack of detail in the flame, not much is lost, especially with the blur in place. Speaking of which, you can see that blur in action on the first half.

I played with color a bit but didn't find anything satisfying. The scene is naturally very warm (torchlight, red clothing) but the video is also desaturated from the video compression. Simply put, there is not enough color info to make any meaningful changes (to my non-expert eyes) so I have left it alone.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/l81hv99se7no2 ... t.mp4?dl=0

EDIT: one last bonus. This is why we denoise before we do any processing. This is the big exposure boost with no denoising. Not the exact same frame but you get the idea. https://imgsli.com/MzExMw
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mpv-shot0001.jpg
mpv-shot0001.jpg (47.1 KiB) Viewed 3066 times
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mpv-shot0002.jpg (52.63 KiB) Viewed 3066 times

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Alyndiar
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Re: On intro video

Post by Alyndiar »

I don't know about others, but I love the big exposure boost version. I would never have tought there was so much detail in there! Thanks for your great work!

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