Improving Video

Improving Video (received near Wiesbaden using a single folded dipole in an apartment)

For a long time I dreamed of a solution to improve video of weak TV reception by using a noise reduction scheme that takes serveral consecutive frames and averages them in order to remove the noise. Well, I now found it in the DScaler plug-in Noise Reduction Adaptive Filter. And the result is really remarkable! As long as the picture does not move too much, most of the noise is removed and the picture gets quite clear. Especially static areas like logos get very clear.
During TV-DX once the TV-card does sync, the picture is a lot better than on standard TV, but it appears blurred if there is a lot of motion. That's the price you have to pay. But blurring isn't as bad as you might first expect, remember I talk about TV-DX. Making screenshots is now no longer frustating, you really get what you see, and it has the native resolution. (My setup)
Details of the video demonstration

Below on the left you see the raw image and on the right the processed one taken a few seconds later.

The first two rows are from AFRTS-Wiesbaden (NTSC) on UHF that arrive here extremely weak due to high hills in between. The sound is too weak to be audible and without the Adaptive Filter the program is very hard to follow. But turning it on makes all the difference.






Lotto show of BT1 (Minsk on R1) during sporadic E reception, only 5 seconds apart, note that you now can read the numbers in the proccessed video. It remains a bit blurred due to the unstable horizontal sync and the camera movement. Received with just a simple folded dipole placed in an apartment The following images are from 1TV on R1 St. Petersburg and were made during my first experiments. Received with just a simple folded dipole placed in an apartment
		Note the faint logo at the top right
		These splitscreens show the left raw and the right filtered

When the filter is active, it displays a number TLC that indicates its internal state, I left it on to monitor it. Values in the 40..50 range are optimal

My Setup

My TV card is a Lifeview FlyVideo 3000 nowadays often sold for 5..15 € on Ebay. Instead of its software I use Fly 2000 TV that is much more versatile and does not clutter up precious screen area. Pressing Ctrl-Return reduces its video screen to a tiny stampsize, very handy when doing other work on the PC. Fly-2000 uses the DirectShow system of Windows, and provides a hook for an external filter. (goto Settings / Video)
The Noise Reduction Adaptive Filter that comes with Dscaler is not DirectShow compatible. On the other hand I did not want to use Dscaler because its user interface is rather clumsy and clutters valuable screen space. The solution comes with ffdshow that is a DirectShow filter plug-in and itself provides an interface for DScaler plug-in's, so Fly-2000 can finally hook up Noise Reduction Adaptive Filter via ffdshow.

I thus installed

Fly 2000 TV (works with numerous other cards also)

Dscaler V4.1.15 only for the sake of its plugins (only FLT_AdaptiveNoise.dll is needed)

ffdshow

Configuration (see configuation screens below)
In Fly 2000 goto Settings / Video

activate Use external DirectShow Filter and select ffdshow raw video filter

click on Properties

activate DScaler filter and select FLT_AdaptiveNoise.dll

set Stability to 4 Noise Reduction to 118 disable Spatial Smoothing

goto Deinterlacing and select Linear Blending

goto Grab but do not activated it, set the file-path for storing screen-grabs and choose JPEG

goto Keys and remote and activate it

activate Process keypresses even if not focussed

Once this DirectShow filter runs, a screen grab with Fly-2000 cannot be done any longer and is now accomplished by ffdshow. Press Ctrl-Alt-G and the grab is stored in the path you specified. This file will be overwritten each time. So I wrote a small filemonitor that automatically renames it containing date & time. It also beeps to give an audible feedback that it indeed excuted the grab.

During Video-Recording the filter will be switched off and only the raw video is shown & recorded. That's the only drawback of Fly-2000.
But now I have found a way around it. Use for recording fffshow encoder, it has an option to use the filter.
Configuration for recording (see configuation screens below)

Once started the Noise Reduction Adaptive Filter has to run for a while to get to an optimum state in order to be effective. This state is shown as a number. I found that the value has to settle in the 40...60 range. However with a pure noise video it will take a long time. Better switch to a channel containing decent video or reduce contrast temporarily and let it train there, once settled go back to the DX signal.

I am using this setup since summer 2006 for Es TV-DX on Band-1 and it became my prefered setup, weak signals become much clearer than on my standard TV. Especially during co-channel interference it works outstanding, provided that sync is not lost by using free run mode. The annoying strong flickering is drastically reduced, and the picture remains viewable.

Video clip demonstration
The result of applying all methods combined is viewable in this 60 sec video clip (29 MB) it shows a split screen, left side raw, right side filtered. Recorded when receiving from Ukraine Inter and 1+1 simultanously. Free run mode was used so the picture position does not move at all. See how at 00:17 the Inter logo "i" becomes visible (Inter is the one that has its VBI visible at the top). Note the difference in flickering, cover up the left screen side with your hand to prevent irritation of your eyes. Stop the video in between to see what is then visible. The video clip was later hard-cut to reduce filesize, therefore the slider of your player will show the wrong total play time. The very first seconds the filter runs in and the left side looks like raw also. From 00:54 onward (with missing sound) the weaker signal shows much better when filtered

Also check out the TV-card modifications

Configuration screens

To get to ffdshow click on the red marked button or alternatively click on the ffdshow icon in the taskbar near the clock

Here you select the adaptive noise filter, these parameter work for me the best.

This configuration enables that Ctrl-Alt-G triggers a screen grab

This configuration defines that each Ctrl-Alt-G creates a screen grab as a JPG.

Configuration for recording

In Fly 2000 go to Record and then to AVI options

select for Video Codec the ffdshow encoder

set Frame size half the PAL resolution

disable Video processing and cropping

Click on codec options and you get this:
This setting will create file sizes of about 6 MByte/min and doesn't loose frames on a 2GHz CPU

click on configure and you get this: