MSmooth


This plugin for Avisynth implements an unusal concept in spatial smoothing. Although designed specifically for anime, it may be useful elsewhere. The filter is effective at removing mosquito noise as well as effectively smoothing flat areas in anime. Not only is the noise reduction valuable, but less bits are needed to encode the resulting clip.

Here are before and after images:

This filter supports RGB32 or YV12 color spaces for input. 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 Smart Smoother (for example) is that setting the threshold high enough to give the desired smoothing destroys a significant amount of detail. We need to decouple the control of detail detection from the amount of smoothing applied. In Smart Smoother and other thresholded smoothers, one threshold controls both of these functions.

Also, smoothing should not be done across image edges.

MSmooth implements both of these refinements. To use it, first set the 'threshold' parameter so that desired detail is preserved. Then set the smoothing strength. You can set very high smoothing strengths without destroying the preserved detail (because the detail map is used to mask the smoothing).


MSmooth Version 2.0.2 [Source Code]


Copyright (C) 2002,2003,2004 Donald A. Graft, All Rights Reserved.

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