[MEncoder-users] hqdn3d and banding

[Andrew Berg]

Grozdan wrote:
> You'll either need to up
> bitrate or use a much better denoiser than hqdn3d which mplayer
> currently lacks.
Upping the bitrate won't help since the banding is in the video that is
to be encoded.

>  However, you can use the new dabanding filter during
> playback. -vf gradfun. You can also add gradfun after hqdn3d (-vf
> hqdn3d,gradfun) 
>   
It must be really new because it's not in the build I have (r29355,
built June 6). I've tried building MEncoder myself, but I always have
problems. I'll have to wait for a new build.
I'll definitely check it out when I can, though. Thanks.

> but I'm not sure how much it'll help since encoding
> tends to bring back banding artifacts
I try to make transparent encodes; hopefully the bits needed won't go up
much.
> Also keep in mind that a denoiser not only kills noise but also detail
> since there's no perfect math algo that can "know" what's noise and
> what not. A tiny bit of noise can be an advantage and can act as
> dither to randomize quantization errors.
I find it's almost always a challenge to get the right settings,
especially when there's a lot of noise.