Cannot use VS denoise script with Kvazaar

[manzing]

Hi,

I make some testing for denoising and have pretty good results using temporalDegrain2 with SVT-HEVC.
I wanted to give a shot to kvazaar as encoder and got weird results :

- Encoding using kvazaar without VS script give normal result
- Using TDG2 with kvazaar (10 bit) i got a totally green video all the length
- Using TDG2 with kvazaar (8 bit) i got a weird (but fun) result, picture is continuously scrolling from left to right and colors are totally messed.

Same settings in VS script give normal results with SVT-HEVC.

Not a big deal, but just wanted you to know.

By the way, I know each video source is different but what would your denoiser filter of choice for medium grained video (like say many movies from 50->90s) ? The first you would try ?

Thanks,

[Selur]

For grain, I usually try: MCDegrainSharp>SMDegrain>TemporalDegrain>TemporalDegrain2 and then the rest, depending on the source.
Will try to look at kvazaar-issue this evening, but not sure whether I'll make it.

Cu Selur

[manzing]

Thanks in advance, those are already my favourites filters, your answer confort my choices 
I try TemporalDegrain2 at the moment as I find it is a very good denoiser and sometimes is better on motion than MCDegrainSharp ou SMDegrain. Downside is that it denoise a lot, even at minimal setting.

About kvazaar, another thing is that there is no progress indicator in job tab, but despite it seems very good, I probably won't use too much this encoder as it is pretty slow.

[Selur]

Send you a link to a dev version (via pm) which hopefully fixes the kvazaar issues.

Cu Selur

[manzing]

Problem solved with dev version, thanks !
The progression display is also really appreciated 

I tried with the latest build of kvazaar (2.2.0) just to let you know : 
It works flawlessly in 8 bit but crashes on 10bit encoding, whether I use a VS filter or not.

I hope the next Hybrid build will embed the new version as it seems that the speed and efficiency have been improved a lot 

- encoding a 1mn video (263 MB) at default settings / 8 bit took 2.15mn for a 20MB size with current Hybrid's Kvazaar
- encoding the same video at same settings using 2.2.0 version of kavazaar took 48s for a 18MB size

This is a huge improvement, considering that the encoder quality is also pretty good.

I will do some testing with VMAF check to see how it compares with other x265 encoders, but it is promising for x265 encoding.

[Selur]

I'll look at the latest kvazaar.

Cu Selur

[Selur]

I just tried encoding 10bit and Hybrid used:

ffmpeg -y -loglevel fatal -noautorotate -nostdin -threads 8 -i "G:\TestClips&Co\files\10bit Test.mkv" -map 0:0 -an -sn -vf zscale=rangein=tv:range=tv -pix_fmt yuv420p10le -strict -1 -vsync 0 -f yuv4mpegpipe - | kvazaar --preset medium  -i - --input-res 640x352 --input-fps 25/1 --input-format P420 --input-file-format y4m --input-bitdepth 10 --level 4.1 --high-tier --qp 22 --ref 3 --subme 0 --sar 1:1 --range pc --colorprim undef --transfer undef --colormatrix bt470bg -o "J:\tmp\10bit Test_2023-02-10@13_55_22_2410_01.265"

for the encoding no crash here.
Hybrid (2023.02.09.1) used kvazaar: 2.2.0-1-gfa2b4e0b 2023-01-10

=> can you share a debug output of the crash with 10bit?

Cu Selur

[manzing]

I just tried with 2 diferents videos but still no luck.
Here is a debug output if you want to see what happen.

Sadly, the quality image test I ran against old and new version of kvazaar shows a huge drop of quality for the same settings, so there is no miracle here.

[Selur]

Using preset medium: --rd=0 --pu-depth-intra=1-4 --pu-depth-inter=0-3 --me=hexbs --gop=16 --ref=4 --bipred=1 --deblock=0:0 --signhide=0 --subme=4
--sao=full --rdoq=1 --rdoq-skip=0 --transform-skip=0 --mv-rdo=0 --full-intra-search=0 --smp=0 --amp=0 --cu-split-termination=zero --me-early-termination=on --intra-rdo-et=0 --early-skip=1 --fast-residual-cost=0 --max-merge=5
input-bitdepth can't be set to larger than 8 because Kvazaar is compiled with KVZ_BIT_DEPTH=8.

the kvazaar version you used is not compiled with 10bit support.
The 2.2.0 version the dev version comes with is.

Cu Selur

[manzing]

Sorry, my bad. I took the latest on Github and couldn't think it wouldn't support 10bit...
Thanks for your help