[MPlayer-users] Please, I need urgent help with filtering a wedding video

[Rich Felker]

On Mon, Aug 08, 2005 at 10:40:05AM -0600, Dark Shadow wrote:
> So I found out something new about my minidv camcorder. That is the
> fact that I have never used it inside and thatall the footage I have
> taken has been natural light outside which gives absolutely perfect
> quality. Well the problem is I was asked if my sister could use it for
> her wedding and I said okay. Well my camcorder does bad quality at any
> non natural light level (church was in no way dark but still had
> slight problems) and as the scene is darker it gets worse.. The only
> outside parts are perfect quality and require no filters.
> 
> I have never used filters since my other footage was perfect so I
> would like some help and what would best make this video clean and
> presentable

There's no way we can know what to do without seeing a clip, but it's
probably going to be very difficult to clean it up well..

> I plan on making this into a dvd as such I don't need it deinterlaced
> since I have always preserved the interlacing and had it turn out
> awesome on the tv.

For converting interlaced content from DV to DVD, be _SURE_ you get
the field order right. If not you will get very stuttery motion. Some
people who don't know about this make such DVDs and assume it's
normal, and of course the results are very painful to watch.

> Here are 3 examples of the video
> http://members.shaw.ca/darkshadow/ceremony.jpg
> http://members.shaw.ca/darkshadow/reception.jpg
> http://members.shaw.ca/darkshadow/giftopening.jpg

Ah, here are the samples.. Hmm.. All I can suggest is some fairly
strong denoising, perhaps followed by a good sharpening filter.
Unfortunately mencoder lacks good sharpeners.. :( The second one is
very dark and will be difficult to do much with. If the denoising goes
well enough it might be possible to stretch the contrast, but I
imagine it will horribly amplify noise.

Here's an idea: try taking those still pics and loading them in gimp,
and see if you can get them to look good as stills. If so, tell us
what gimp filters you use to fix them, and we might be able to suggest
some good filters to do the same on video with mencoder..

Rich