blog-content/adaptivegrain.html
2019-04-13 15:16:45 +02:00

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<a href="/blog">
{% load static %}
<div class="bottom_right_div"><img src="{% static '2hu.png' %}"></div>
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<p class="heading">Adaptive Graining Methods</p>
<div class="content">
<ul>
<li><a href="#c_abstract">Abstract</a></li>
<li><a href="#c_demo">Demonstration and Examples</a></li>
<li><a href="#c_script">Theory and Explanation</a></li>
<li><a href="#c_performance">Performance</a></li>
<li><a href="#c_usage">Usage</a></li>
<li><a href="#c_outtro">Closing Words and Download</a></li>
</ul>
</div>
<div class="content">
<p class="subhead"><a href="#c_abstract" id="c_abstract">Abstract</a></p>
In order to remedy the effects of lossy compression of digital media files, dither is applied to randomize
quantization errors and thus avoid or remove distinct patterns which are perceived as unwanted artifacts. This
can be used to remove banding artifacts by adding random pixels along banded edges which will create the
impression of a smoother gradient. The resulting image will often be more resilient to lossy compression, as the
added information is less likely to be omitted by the perceptual coding algorithm of the encoding software.
<br>Wikipedia explains it like this:
<div class="code">
High levels of noise are almost always undesirable, but there are cases when a certain amount of noise is
useful, for example to prevent discretization artifacts (color banding or posterization). [. . .] Noise
added for such purposes is called dither; it improves the image perceptually, though it degrades the
signal-to-noise ratio.
</div>
<p>
In video encoding, especially regarding anime, this is utilized by debanding filters to improve their
effectiveness and to “prepare” the image for encoding. While grain may be beneficial under some
circumstances, it is generally perceived as an unwanted artifact, especially in brighter scenes where
banding
artifacts would be less likely to occur even without dithering. Most Blu-rays released today will already
have
grain in most scenes which will mask most or even all visual artifacts, but for reasons described <a
href="article.php?p=grain">here</a>, it may be beneficial to remove this grain.</p>
<p>
As mentioned previously, most debanding filters will add grain to the image, but in some cases this grain
might
be either to weak to mask all artifacts or to faint, causing it to be removed by the encoding software,
which in
turn allows the banding to resurface. In the past, scripts like GrainFactory were written to specifically
target
dark areas to avoid the aforementioned issues without affecting brighter scenes.</p>
<p>
This idea can be further expanded by using a continuous function to determine the grain's strength based on
the
average brightness of the frame as well as the brightness of every individual pixel. This way, the problems
described above can be solved with less grain, especially in brighter areas and bright scenes where the dark
areas are less likely to the focus of the viewer's attention. This improves the perceived quality of the
image
while simultaneously saving bitrate due to the absence of grain in brighter scenes and areas.
</p>
<p class="subhead"><a href="#c_demo" id="c_demo">Demonstration and Examples</a></p>
Since there are two factors that will affect the strength of the grain, we need to analyze the brightness of any
given frame before applying any grain. This is achieved by using the PlaneStats function in Vapoursynth. The
following clip should illustrate the results. The brightness of the current frame is always displayed in the top
left-hand corner. The surprisingly low values in the beginning are caused by the 21:9 black bars. <span
style="font-size: 70%; color: #aaaaaa;">(Don't mind the stuttering in the middle. That's just me being bad)</span>
<br><br>
<video width="1280" height="720" controls>
<source src="/media/articles/res_adg/adg_luma.mp4" type="video/mp4">
</video>
<br>
<div style="font-size: 80%;text-align: right">You can <a href="/media/articles/res_adg/adg_luma.mp4">download the video</a>
if your browser is not displaying it correctly.
</div>
In the dark frames you can see banding artifacts which were created by x264's lossy compression algorithm.
Adding grain fixes this issue by adding more randomness to the gradients.<br><br>
<video width="1280" height="720" controls>
<source src="/media/articles/res_adg/adg_grained.mp4" type="video/mp4">
</video>
<br>
<div style="font-size: 80%;text-align: right"><a href="/media/articles/res_adg/adg_grained.mp4">Download</a></div>
By using the script described above, we are able to remove most of the banding without lowering the crf,
increasing aq-strength, or graining other surfaces where it would have decreased the image quality.
<p class="subhead"><a href="#c_script" id="c_script">Theory and Explanation</a></p>
The script works by generating a copy of the input clip in advance and graining that copy. For each frame in the
input clip, a mask is generated based on the frame's average luma and the individual pixel's value. This mask is
then used to apply the grained clip with the calculated opacity. The generated mask for the previously used clip
looks like this:<br><br>
<video width="1280" height="720" controls>
<source src="/media/articles/res_adg/adg_mask.mp4" type="video/mp4">
</video>
<br>
<div style="font-size: 80%;text-align: right"><a href="/media/articles/res_adg/adg_mask.mp4">Download</a></div>
The brightness of each pixel is calculated using this polynomial:
<div class="code">
z = (1 - (1.124x - 9.466x^2 + 36.624x^3 - 45.47x^4 + 18.188x^5))^(y^2 * <span
style="color: #e17800">10</span>)
</div>
where x is the luma of the current pixel, y is the current frame's average luma, and z is the resulting pixels
brightness. The highlighted number (10) is a parameter called luma_scaling which will be explained later.
<p>
The polynomial is applied to every pixel and every frame. All luma values are floats between 0 (black) and 1
(white). For performance reasons the precision of the mask is limited to 8&nbsp;bits, and the frame
brightness is rounded to 1000 discrete levels.
All lookup tables are generated in advance, significantly reducing the number of necessary calculations.</p>
<p>
Here are a few examples to better understand the masks generated by the aforementioned polynomial.</p>
<table style="width: 100%">
<tr>
<td style="width: 33%"><img src="/media/articles/res_adg/y0.2.svg"></td>
<td style="width: 33%"><img src="/media/articles/res_adg/y0.5.svg"></td>
<td style="width: 33%"><img src="/media/articles/res_adg/y0.8.svg"></td>
</tr>
</table>
<p>
Generally, the lower a frame's average luma, the more grain is applied even to the brighter areas. This
abuses
the fact that our eyes are instinctively drawn to the brighter part of any image, making the grain less
necessary in images with an overall very high luma.</p>
Plotting the polynomial for all y-values (frame luma) results in the following image (red means more grain and
yellow means less or no grain):<br>
<img style="width: 100%; margin: -5em 0" src="/media/articles/res_adg/preview.svg">
<br>
More detailed versions can be found <a href="/media/articles/res_adg/highres.svg">here</a> (100 points per axis) or <a
href="/media/articles/res_adg/superhighres.7z">here</a> (400 points per axis).<br>
Now that we have covered the math, I will quickly go over the Vapoursynth script.<br>
<div class="spoilerbox_expand_element">Click to expand code<p class="vapoursynth">
<br>import vapoursynth as vs
<br>import numpy as np
<br>import functools
<br>
<br>def adaptive_grain(clip, source=None, strength=0.25, static=True, luma_scaling=10, show_mask=False):
<br>
<br>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;def fill_lut(y):
<br>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;x = np.arange(0, 1, 1 / (1 << src_bits))
<br>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;z = (1 - (1.124 * x - 9.466 * x ** 2 + 36.624 * x ** 3 -
45.47 * x ** 4 + 18.188 * x ** 5)) ** (
<br>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;(y ** 2) * luma_scaling) * ((1
<< src_bits) - 1)
<br>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;z = np.rint(z).astype(int)
<br>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;return z.tolist()
<br>
<br>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;def generate_mask(n, clip):
<br>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;frameluma =
round(clip.get_frame(n).props.PlaneStatsAverage * 999)
<br>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;table = lut[int(frameluma)]
<br>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;return core.std.Lut(clip, lut=table)
<br>
<br>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;core = vs.get_core(accept_lowercase=True)
<br>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;if source is None:
<br>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;source = clip
<br>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;if clip.num_frames != source.num_frames:
<br>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;raise ValueError('The length of the filtered and
unfiltered clips must be equal')
<br>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;source = core.fmtc.bitdepth(source, bits=8)
<br>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;src_bits = 8
<br>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;clip_bits = clip.format.bits_per_sample
<br>
<br>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;lut = [None] * 1000
<br>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;for y in np.arange(0, 1, 0.001):
<br>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;lut[int(round(y * 1000))] = fill_lut(y)
<br>
<br>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;luma = core.std.ShufflePlanes(source, 0, vs.GRAY)
<br>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;luma = core.std.PlaneStats(luma)
<br>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;grained = core.grain.Add(clip, var=strength, constant=static)
<br>
<br>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;mask = core.std.FrameEval(luma, functools.partial(generate_mask, clip=luma))
<br>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;mask = core.resize.Bilinear(mask, clip.width, clip.height)
<br>
<br>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;if src_bits != clip_bits:
<br>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;mask = core.fmtc.bitdepth(mask, bits=clip_bits)
<br>
<br>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;if show_mask:
<br>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;return mask
<br>
<br>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;return core.std.MaskedMerge(clip, grained, mask)
</p></div><br>
<b>Thanks to Frechdachs for suggesting the use of std.FrameEval.</b><br>
<br>
In order to adjust for things like black bars, the curves can be manipulated by changing the luma_scaling
parameter. Higher values will cause comparatively less grain even in darker scenes, while lower
values will increase the opacity of the grain even in brighter scenes.
<!--
<p class="subhead"><a id="c_performance" href="#c_performance">Performance</a></p>
<p>Essentially, this script does two things. It analyzes the average brightness of every frame and generates a
mask. Luma analysis is done with one of the core functions and should have no impact on the encoding
performance.<br>
The mask generation should also have virtually no impact on the encode, as the lookup tables
are generated within seconds and then reused for all frames. I cannot time the involved core functions
(core.std.lut and core.std.MaskedMerge)
accurately, but neither of them is particularly expensive, so the performance cost should be negligible.<br>
Don't expect a notable difference in encoding performance.
-->
</p>
<p class="subhead"><a id="c_usage" href="#c_usage">Usage</a></p>
The script has four parameters, three of which are optional.
<table class="paramtable">
<tr>
<td>Parameter</td>
<td>[type, default]</td>
<td class="paramtable_main">Explanation</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>clip</td>
<td>[clip]</td>
<td>The filtered clip that the grain will be applied to</td>
</tr>
<!--
<tr>
<td>source</td>
<td>[clip, None]</td>
<td>The source clip which will be used for the luma mask. For performance reasons this should be the
unfiltered source clip. If you changed the length of your filtered clip with Trim or similar
filters, also apply those filters here, but do not denoise, deband, or otherwise filter
this clip. If unspecified, the clip argument will be used.
</td>
</tr>
-->
<tr>
<td>strength</td>
<td>[float, 0.25]</td>
<td>Strength of the grain generated by AddGrain.</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>static</td>
<td>[boolean, True]</td>
<td>Whether to generate static or dynamic grain.</td>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>luma_scaling</td>
<td>[float, 10]</td>
<td>This values changes the general grain opacity curve. Lower values will generate more grain, even in
brighter scenes, while higher values will generate less, even in dark scenes.
</td>
</tr>
</table>
<br>
<p class="subhead"><a href="#c_outtro" id="c_outtro">Closing Words</a></p>
<p>
Grain is a type of visual noise that can be used to mask discretization if used correctly. Too much grain
will
degrade the perceived quality of a video, while to little grain might be destroyed by the perceptual coding
techniques used in many popular video encoders.</p>
<p>
The script described in this article aims to apply the optimal amount of grain to all scenes to prevent
banding artifacts without having a significant impact on the perceived image quality or the required
bitrate.
It does this by taking the brightness of the frame as a whole and every single pixel into account and
generating an opacity mask based on these values to apply grain to certain areas of each frame. This can be
used to supplement or even replace the dither generated by other debanding scripts. The script has a
noticeable but not significant impact on encoding performance.
</p>
<div class="download_centered"><a href="https://github.com/Irrational-Encoding-Wizardry/kagefunc/blob/master/kagefunc.py">Download</a></div>
<br><br><span style="color: #251b18; font-size: 50%; text-align: left">There's probably a much simpler way to do this, but I like this one. fite me m8</span>
</div>
</div>