Decrease the sharpness on an oversharped video

[Nóra5E9E]

Hello,

I just finished a video which looked good on my screen but when I checked it elsewhere, it looked horrible.

The contours are super distinct. This wikipedia image shows what I'm talking about: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unsharp_masking#/media/File:Usm-unsharp-mask.png

I probably applied to much unsharp masking.

I don't have access to the sources anymore, only to the final exported video.

How could I soften the contours?

I've tried blurring it, but it didn't look better. It was just blurry.

I might have tried the wrong effects.

[Rick Gerard]

What other sources? Did you preview your render in a media player like Quicktime or Windows Media Player?

YouTube and Vimeo re-compress your video. If you do not render to their specifications the compression is done with a sledgehammer and it always looks terrible. If all you have is the original render you have to degrade the edges the best you can with the tools available in AE. The workflow depends entirely on the image. There is no one-click magic solution. We need to see a screenshot to even come close to any meaningful suggestions.

[Nóra5E9E]

I mean I don't have the original files to undo my previous sharpening.

I thought I'd been done with it and I deleted most of the files. The good news is that it's in a lossless video format (utvideo).

It looks kind of okay with this particular monitor, but it's really painful to watch it on our TV.

We have some sliders there and if I decrease the sharpness, it's sort of pleasant.

Well, I haven't asked permission to share his video, so I think I should blur him out hoping that you can still give me some useful advice.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/nn19vhs24ijf8hk/screenshot.jpg?dl=0

If you could name what tools I should try, that would be great!

[angie_taylor]

Great tips from Rick to try. You could also try using the Median effect or Minimax as it can be good for reducing these issues without blurring. they do so by "blocking out" or averaging areas as opposed to softening them.

[Nóra5E9E]

Thank you both for your answers.

I've tried Median and Minimax. I might have heard of the former but I'm quite sure this is the first time I've used Minimax.

I haven't completely figured out what it is or what it does.

So what do you think of this;

I've tried all 4 operations. I didn't really like the first two.

'Minimum then Maximum' and 'Maximum then Minimum' are better, but I couldn't pick one because it's either too black or too white.

I duplicated the layer and applied 'Minimum then Maximum' to the upper layer, 'Maximum then Minimum' to the bottom layer and set the opacity to 50% to the upper layer.

Radius is super sensitive. 1 is barely noticeable and 2 is way too much, so duplicated one of the layers (removed Minimax), precomposed the first two layers, and set the opacity 50%, again.

How horrible my approach is?

[Rick Gerard]

That pattern in the curtains is going to generate moray patterns when the video is compressed. I'd soften that quite a bit. I might even add some camera lens blur and do some roto to give the shot a little artificial depth of field. I don't have time to put together a sample comp but I am pretty sure that those lace curtains are going to cause a lot of problems. I would have moved the camera or reduced the depth of field significantly.

In the future, please embed your screenshots. It makes things a lot easier to see.

[Nóra5E9E]

Thank you for helping.

I wish you had named the effects that you would use.

"I'd soften that quite a bit"

What effect would you use for softening?

The Minimax, that angie_taylor suggested, seems quite good, though. I doesn't blur the image at all.

(I tried embeding the image, but it was huge and I didn't find the way to resize it)