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Hi everyone,
I’m having trouble improving the quality of an anime video and I can’t seem to fully fix it.
Source info:

• FPS: 29.970
  
• I already processed it with SRestore to get back to 23.976 fps
  
• I also used QTGMC to fix interlacing
  

Current issue:
There are still a lot of small bright and colored pixels around the lineart (edges). It looks like strong compression artifacts (ringing / mosquito noise), almost like an over-compressed JPEG.
What I already tried in Hybrid:

• DeHaloAlpha (Radius 2, Strength 1–2)
  
• HQDeRing (Y + U + V checked)
  
• Deband (f3kdb Neo, light settings)
  

Despite this, the pixels around the lines are still very visible.
What I’m looking for:

• Best way to reduce/remove these artifacts without destroying line detail
  
• Recommended filters or settings in Hybrid / VapourSynth
  
• Whether this can be properly fixed or if it’s just a limitation of the source
  

If needed, I can provide screenshots or a sample.
Thanks a lot for your help! [attachment=3543]

Those look like Dot Crawlers which you usually can remove with DeCrawl filters.
(make sure to apply the dot crawl remover behind the deinterlacer)

Cu Selur

Ps.: if that doesn't work, share a short unprocessed sample of your source and I can look into it.

Thanks a lot for the help, I really appreciate it!
I’m still seeing some artifacts, so I’ve attached a short sample clip to better show the issue (especially around the lineart).
If you have any recommendations for the best settings or filters to reduce this without losing detail, I’d really appreciate it.

I’m also encountering another issue in Hybrid:
I sometimes get the error message “C:\TempHybrid\2026-04-06@16_28_43_6410_02.265 was not created!”.

If anyone knows what might be causing this or how to fix it, I’d really appreciate the help.
Thanks again!

http://titant.free.fr/tmp/OPBox2.mkv

Ah, those were dot crawlers once upon a time, but were not properly removed and at just artifacts now, so normal decrawl filter will probably not work :/

What gpu do you have? (so I know whether using machine learning based filters is an option)

Cu Selur

Thanks for the clarification!
I understand now that the remaining colored pixels around the lineart are residual compression artifacts rather than classic dot crawlers, so a normal DeCrawl filter probably won’t work.
For reference, my GPU is an NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3070 Ti, so I should be able to use machine learning–based filters.
Could you recommend which ML filters or settings would work best in Hybrid or VapourSynth to clean these artifacts without losing the line details?
Thanks a lot for your guidance!

Issues I see with the source:

• content is "(soft) telecined" => "Filtering->(De-)Interlace/Telecine->Overwrite input scan type to" should be enabled and set to "telecine (soft)", if you have an NVIDIA GPU also enable "Filtering->Vapoursynth->Source->Use DGDecNV when available"
  
• compression artifacts where banding turned into artifacts after due to recompression
  
• baldy handled dot crawlers turned badly filtered and turned into general artifacts (thus normal dot craw will not work)
  
• rainbow artifacts
  

=> you will probably lose details to address all of these

Will look at it in a bit, but have to fix a bug first, over which I just stumbled.

Cu Selur

Thanks a lot for taking the time to look into this and help me with the issue!

I really appreciate your guidance, and I’m happy to wait as long as it takes to get the best possible settings.

Thanks again!

Correction source is telecined not soft telecined

1st idea: TIVTC + RainbowSmooth + RealCUGAN(no-se) + BasicVSR++ (make sure to apply BasicVSR++ after RealCUGAN and with a bloated edgemask +3)
script: https://pastebin.com/3tp0B1mU
clip: https://www.mediafire.com/file/xvhar5q64...1.mp4/file
downside: slow

will look at it tomorrow some more (got a few ideas), i.e. something based on CCD with strength set to 60

Cu Selur

Ps.: took me longer than expected, since I ran into a buck I introduced when switching to Vapoursynth R74 for the dev versions.

Thanks! That pipeline looks really powerful but probably overkill for my case 😅 I’ll first try something simpler (CCD / derainbow + light denoise) and see how it goes. Curious to see your CCD-based approach though.
Aside from fixing the pixel artifacts, what would be your recommended filtering chain for this source? I’m aiming for a clean result without overdoing it.