This is a collection of free plugins, functions, and other tools that we regularly use in our work. Although this page is really intended more as a convenient in-house repository than a resource for the general public, in the interest of openness we are providing these tools in a convenient format with the understanding that we do not provide support, and we do not guarantee or warranty them in any way. Use at your own risk.
The idea is to try to get more people interested in working with video using high-end professional tools, instead of iMovie and the like. We've made a few brief notes about their usage and provided a direct download link from our Github repository. All files have been scanned for viruses and are clean, although some browsers may tell you that some files are suspicious. Documentation is often sparse, if there is any at all, and we assume that if you're curious enough to be using these tools, you're capable of either looking at the code to get the usage or Googling to find the documentation. Doom9 is an excellent starting place to learn about them.
Our full Github repository is available here.
This is one of our "go-to" denoisers that we use frequently, because it uses motion tracking based on mvtools to make it more intelligent than other temporal denoisers. It removes dirt, grain, sparkle, and other types of small-to-medium size noise from film sources. It's very non-destructive, so it can be used safely even at relatively high strength. 64-bit AVISynth+ function, all dependencies included. | |
This plugin layers different captures of the same video source and generates a median value for each pixel, leaving the truest possible approximation of the original pixel without the random noise introduced by the video heads. We sometimes use this for videotape captures with a lot of dropouts, but in order to work reliably, the captures must be exactly frame-accurate with no droped frames. That can be remarkably difficult to achieve without professional-grade equipment. 32-bit and 64-bit AVISynth+ plugin included. Discussion here. | |
QTGMC is considered the industry standard for high-quality deinterlacing, but it's important to understand exactly what it does, because it does more than just deinterlace and can sometimes have undesirable effects. This blog post is a good introduction to how it works. 64-bit AVISynth+ function, all required and optional dependencies included. | |
| NNEDI3 | NNEDI3 is probably the purest and most accurate deinterlacer available, as it performs no pre- or post-filtering on the source. This is the core deinterlacer from QTGMC as a standalone plugin. It's also useful for high-quality upscaling using the nnedi3_rpow function. 64-bit AVISynth+ plugin. |
These plugins are typically used together, although they don't have to be. TDeint is a sharp deinterlacer and TIVTC performs complex decimation, and together they can perform high-quality inverse telecine on film sources that have a 3:2 pulldown applied. TIVTC is also useful for progressive sources that just need a "1-in-X" decimation. 64-bit AVISynth+ plugin. | |
| Despot |
This plugin is useful for removing much larger spots and splotches than other denoisers, but it can also be highly destructive and should be used with caution. 64-bit AVISynth plugin. |
| Camcorder Color Denoise | This is one of the very few VirtualDub plugins that we use over AVISynth alternatives, but it's because this is simply the best function we've seen for this. It's an extremely powerful chroma denoiser that's very good at removing color splotches and banding in low-quality videotape sources. The downside is that it only works in RGB colorspace, which means that it requires an additional colorspace conversion. 64 and 32-bit VirtualDub plugin. |
| LRemoveDust |
This denoising function is good for cleaning fine mosquitto noise, but is relatively destructive to image detail. However, it yields significant gains in video compressibility. It should only be used when compressed file size is more important than image detail, or when fine image detail isn't important (e.g., low bitrate streaming). 64-bit AVISynth+ function, all dependencies included.
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TemporalDegrain2
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This function is excellent for cleaning very grainy sources while preserving detail, e.g., the movie 300, but it may leave some sources looking oversmoothed. It's extremely slow, but if you have a compatible video card, it can use the GPU to significantly speed up processing. This script requires FFTW to be installed on your system, and GPU usage requires installation of the Microsoft DirectX end-user runtime. All dependencies included in zip file.
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| SmoothFPS2 |
This function is based on MVTools2 and changes the frame rate of the source by interpolating new frames as needed. It's particularly useful for converting between PAL and NTSC video sources, but there are better methods for converting progressive film sources. It's a little older than other methods but still produces the most visually pleasing result in our opinion. 64-bit AVISynth+ function, all dependencies included.
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