Image Quality?

[lost in thought]

Okay, to start off, recently [as in the other day] I got a new machine with a DVD RW drive installed, so I decided the first thing to do was put it to good use, so I popped in my disc of Piccolo Jr (part 2), and looked up some information about ripped images off of my DVD's on the AMV.org site. [Note: one guide said that I should use "DVD Decrypt", "AviSynth", and "DGIndex". So I already downloaded and installed them.]

Now that I've established that I've got some seemingly necessary tools, I am going to move on to my question. When I had these programs installed, I decided to follow the instructions and rip some VOB's with DVD Decrypt, so far so good. Once that was done [taking almost an hour for the one disc alone,] I opened one of the VOB files in DGIndex, and saw that I could save individual frames out as a BMP file, which brings me to my question: is saving the frame out through this manner deteriating image quality? [or rather, making the quality any worse than the DVD itself?]

[Note: This doesn't have a lot to do with AMV's per-se', but it is still a technical question I've been pondering.]

[SuperFusion]

Your quality should be the same as it's shown in the preview window. You can always clean up your footage with AVS scripts, but that's too much of a hassle for me to go in to.

[VegettoEX]

I'd totally not download all of those items separately, and just install the AMVapp by itself. That'll install the latest versions of DGIndex (previously called "DVD2AVI"... a misleading title, which is why it was changed), AVIsynth, VirtualDubMod, and all the cleaning filters you'll ever need.

What you'll mostly want to do, to make things so much easier on yourself, is to inverse-telecine the video via an AVS script (frame-serve the VOBs through AVIsynth to VirtualDub). That'll get rid of all those interlaced frames, so each frame you'd want to take a screen-shot of will be nice and progressive.

Here's an old script we used for Enter the Dragon, which would probably work well for the footage you're looking to use:

a = MPEG2Source("C:\your_file.d2v").Crop(8,0,-8,0).ConvertToYV12().Deen("a3d", 3)
lm = a.FluxSmoothST(7, 24).Deen("a2d", 7).Blur(1.5).Blur(1.5)
lm_m = lm.EdgeMask(0, 1, 255, 255, "cartoon", Y=3, V=1,U=1).Binarize(threshold=20).Greyscale().Invert().Blur(1.5).Blur(1.5).Blur(1.5).Blur(1.5)
nlm = MaskedMerge(lm, a, lm_m)
mfToon(nlm).Tweak(sat=1.2, cont=1.1, bright=1.3).AddBorders(8,0,8,0)

This assumes that you have Deen, WarpSharp, MaskTools, FluxSmooth, and mfToon all installed... and I'm pretty sure they are with the AMVapp.

Basically:

• Rip the VOBs
• Run the VOBs through DGIndex, saving a project file
• Make a new text file in Notepad, and save it as whatever.avs (DGIndex might even auto-make one for you)
• Write some lines/cleaners that point to that *.d2v file that DGIndex makes
• Open this *.avs file in VirtualDubMod

Another reason I'd suggest taking the screen-caps from VirtualDubMod is because you can go frame-by-frame in there, as opposed to DGIndex that just skips over frames. It wasn't meant to take screen-caps, really. VirtualDubMod is much better.

Alternatively, for a way-crude way to do it, just open up a *.VOB in VirtualDubMod, directly. It'll take a while to parse the MPEG-2 video data, but it'll open it. It won't be any cleaned up at all...

Also, for the record, you can comment things out in an AVS script by putting a # in front of the line. For example:

MPEG2Source("C:\your_file.d2v")
ConvertToYV12()
deen("a2d",5,6,7)
#mftoon()
MSharpen(5,20,true,false,false)
tweak(sat=1.1)

mftoon would be ignored. It's a good way to bug-check scripts if they seem to be giving you problems.

...

I'm guessing none of that makes sense. Heh. Let me know if I can guide ya' any more, though.

[lost in thought]

Holy shit... I forgot I even posted this... fucking June... damn, huge necropost!

Thanks for your huge, and helpful post though, Mike.

[VegettoEX]

Hahaha... I didn't even notice I was responding to a necro-post... man, that's funny.

/me warns self

/me warns SuperFusion x2

[lost in thought]

Hahaha... I didn't even notice I was responding to a necro-post... man, that's funny.

/me warns self

/me warns SuperFusion x2

HAHAHA. Dude, you're so right though about VirtualDubMod, I just installed all of this shit, and 20 seconds loaded up, and looking at the Sparking OP, and I am fucking in love with this program!

edit: I just made a copy of one of the frames from the video, and damn... the quality is great!