1.Hi -- Interesting question about the sharpening. Yes, it uses AviSynth's built-in sharpening filter. This is certainly not very sophisticated sharpening – and it can increase noise in the video. However, after much testing, I decided that it is "good enough" for most purposes and – for its ills – produces rather natural-looking, moderate sharpening very quickly. Some things to consider when using it: 1.) In an effort to reduce artifacts, all sharpening is performed after deinterlacing (if applicable) but before scaling. In my opinion, this is really the best way to perform sharpening during the conversion process. If you would like to change this behavior, you can set SharpenPost=true (it is false by default), which will perform sharpening after the video has been scaled to SD. This can be advantageous when the default "false" option does not provide obvious enough sharpening. Rule of thumb: If your video requires a very high sharpness (such as Sharpness=0.75 or greater), consider adding SharpenPost=true and trying a lower value, such as Sharpness=0.3 (as Post-Sharpening will be more obvious at lower values than Pre-Sharpening). 2.) If you are sharpening the video, you should probably use some noise redcution also. Take note of the different NR options and how the affect the "stacking" of processing. (e.g: Setting NR=5 will apply noise reduction to the source [so it goes NR->Sharpening->Scaling], while NR=3 applies it to the output [sharpening->scaling->NR]). 3.) I did not use LimitedSharpen or any other "fancy" sharpening in my function. I tried a few of these out, but I found them either to be painfully slow or ineffective or both. It would also result in way too many optional paramters and make things more difficult for me to troubleshoot between different revisions, multithreading, etc. If you would like to try any of these, you'll need to do it manually.I suggest the using post-sharpening in these cases. Although it can make some artifacts more apparent, it is much easier to accomplish and processing will be much faster. Assuming progressive output: hdsd(OutputFieldRate=30) LimitedSharpen() For interlaced output, you'll need to output 60Hz progressive (or 50p for PAL) and then re-interlace after sharpening: hd2sd(OutputFieldRate=60, interlaced_out=false) LimitedSharpen() # Output BFF [change to 4,0,1 for TFF] SeparateFields().SelectEvery(4,1,2).Weave()
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