MSharpen Filter for Avisynth

This plugin for Avisynth implements an unusual concept in spatial sharpening. Although designed specifically for anime, it also works well with normal video. The filter is very effective at sharpening important edges without amplifying noise.

Following are before and after frames for a typical anime:

This version of MSharpen requires Avisynth version 2.0x. The filter supports YUY2 and RGB. It also supports configurable defaults in case the user is unhappy with the author's choices.

This filter is not yet optimized for speed. Optimizations will be included in a future version.

The justification for the filter is simple. The biggest complaint about Unsharp Mask (for example) is that setting the strength high enough to sharpen important edges also amplifies noise and small detail. MSharpen solves this problem effectively by detecting important edge areas and then applying sharpening only to those areas. You first set the 'threshold' parameter so that desired edges are selected. Then you set the sharpening strength. You can set very high sharpening strengths without amplifying noise or fine detail (because the edge map is used to mask the sharpening).

Version 1.0 [Source code]

This version fixes a few minor bugs in frame border handling and is faster.

Beta 4 fixed major bugs in beta 2. Beta 2 is unusable -- trash it!

Beta 3 was not released.

Beta 2 added YUY2 support, configurable defaults, a high/low quality option (to allow a quality/speed tradeoff), and increased speed, especially in YUY2 space. Several small but insignificant bugs were also fixed in RGB handling.

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