Video Enhancer guide

Contents
 Chapter 1: Introduction
o Before you start

o Registration
o Definitions
o System requirements
 Chapter 2: Interface overview
o Simple mode
o Advanced mode
o Visual appearance (skins)
 Chapter 3: Using Video Enhancer
o Selectinh input and output file(s)
o Input and output formats
o Super Resolution work modes
o Setting desired resolution
o Scaling
o Choosing a video codec
o Audio codec
o Wizard
o Filtering your video (Advanced mode)
o Options
o Preview
o Processing live preview
o Processing time
o Finally: uprezzing your video
o Command line interface
 Chapter 4: Troubleshooting
o XviD compression doesn't work.
 o Can't load FLV video
o Processing does not start
o Frequently Asked Questions & Troubleshooting online
o Forum

Chapter 1: Introduction
Before you start

Video Enhancer is a program that allows you to increase resolution of video using Super
Resolution method. Super Resolution is a smart video upsizing algorithm which uses
information from neighbor frames to upsize current frame. It accumulates information, so the
more sequential frames are processed, the better quality you get. If picture in your video
doesn't change too fast, then information from several frames can be added to create a picture
of a bigger size, revealing details which would otherwise remain hidden. No algorithms of
ordinary image resize/resample can provide this quality just because there's not enough
information in one frame.

Video Enhancer also allows you to use more than two hundred of VirtualDub filters to do
everything you want with your video: deinterlacing, denoising, deblocking, color correction,
deshaking, sharpening, visual effects etc. But unlike VirtualDub, in Video Enhancer all filters,
coders and decoders work simultaneously in separate threads saving your time.

This tutorial will help you to benefit from every opportunity offered by Video Enhancer.

Registration

Video Enhancer is a try-before-you-buy program. You can use it free of charge for 30 days
without functional limitations. In order to use it longer you must purchase it. Doing so you
will receive a registration code which must be entered in registration dialog offered by Video
Enhancer at start.

Definitions

Artifact - a visible defect in a digital photo or video picture

Codec - a third-party system component that compresses and/or decompresses data

Compression - lossy or lossless process of encoding information using fewer bits

Deblocking - correcting blocks in decoded video in order to improve visual quality and
prediction performance by smoothing the sharp edges which can form between blocks when
block coding techniques are used

Deinterlacing - converting interlaced video, like common analog television signals, into a
non-interlaced form.

Denoising - removing noise from a video. Noise is an unwanted distortion of data, including
false contouring appearance, wide horizontal noise strips typical for old VHS, film artifacts -
dust or dirt; snow, multiple small dots etc.

Deshaking - removing shaking from a video (typical effect for home camera shooting).

DirectX (Microsoft DirectX) - a set of system components providing application

programming interfaces (APIs) for handling tasks related to multimedia, especially game
programming and video, on Microsoft platforms

Filter - a program component used to modify the content of video

Multithreading - parallel (simultaneous) execution of several pieces of program in different

threads

Uprezzing - increasing video resolution

VirtualDub - a powerful video editing application with a collection of more than 100 video
filters

System requirements

A Pentium Pro or higher, 64 MB of free RAM, Windows 2000/XP/2003/Vista/7, DirectX 9 or

higher.

Chapter 2: Interface overview

Video Enhancer provides two modes of user interface: Simple and Advanced. Simple mode opens by
default when Video Enhancer starts for the first time.

Feature Simple Advanced

Select input video file(s) + +
Select output video file(s) to be created + +
Select codec to be used for video and audio + +
compression
 Preview input file + +
Launch video file processing + +
Preview output file + +
Wizard + +
Increase video resolution to any desired width and + +
height
Setting scale size to keep or edit aspect ratio while - +
increasing resolution
Create a sequence of filters to be applied to video one - +
by one (including any number of Super Resolution
steps)

Simple mode

1 Click to select input or output file

2 Click to select more than 1 input file
3 Click to select video (V) and audio (A) compressor from the list
 4 Select variant which suits your needs best: either maximize quality of the output
file but prepare to wait longer, or have a speedy processing with less impressive
result
5 Set in pixels the frame size you want to obtain in output file(s)
6 Approach user's guide from Video Enhancer
7 Play the input file
8 Launch the wizard - an illustrated guide to quickly choose filters and clean your
video
9 Open Options window
10 Purchase Video Enhancer
11 Switch to Advanced mode
12 Start video processing (be sure to set all parameters first)
13 Click to see fully processed video and compare with original without saving to
disk

Advanced mode
This table covers buttons which are NOT present in Simple mode:

1 Select a VirtualDub filter and add it to the processing sequence.

2 Add Super Resolution to the sequence and configure it.
3 Change settings of currently selected filter.
4 Move selected filter up in the sequence to make it applied earlier.
5 Move selected filter down in the sequence to make it applied later.
6 Delete selected filter from the sequence.
7 Switch to Simple mode.
8 Save current project.
9 Load a previously saved project.

  For power users who want to use Video Enhancer from shell scripts, it also provides a
command line interface.

Chapter 3: Using Video Enhancer

Selecting input and output file(s)

 Processing a single file:

1. To select input file: Browse (next to "Input video file" box)>Select file>Open.

2. To look through input file: the first video frame of selected file appears in the monitor
area on the right. Just drag the pointer under monitor area to see other frames or press
Play to start playing it from current position.
3. Default output file: after input file was selected, the default output filename is original
filename plus the word "new" preceded by a dash. For example, if your input file name
is bora320.avi, than the default output file is bora320-new.avi.
4. To set output file: Browse (next to "Output video file" box)>Fill "File name"
box>Save. Or just edit filename in the box.

 Processing several files:

1. To add file: Many files>Add>Select file>Open>OK or just drag the files to the list
window.
2. To delete file: Many files>Select file>Delete>OK
3. To select several files: hold Ctrl on your keyboard while selecting.
After the list of files was created, the "Input video file" box shows the first filename in your
list plus number of other files selected:

The lower box indicates resolution and duration of the first file in your sequence. Click "Many
files" to view and/or edit your list of files.

It is not recommended to apply sequence of filters to several files which differ in original
resolution.

You can not edit output file names separately, all but the first one will be named by adding "-
new" to the end.
 

Input and output formats

Video Enhancer reads any video file that can be played by Windows Media Player. By default
this is AVI, WMV, MPEG and ASF files.

If any problems arise with opening or processing a video file in Video Enhancer, in most
cases they are caused by a lack of proper codec. It is highly recommended to install K-Lite
Codec Pack, full verwion. See detailed instructions how to install and tune video codecs
properly.

The output video is stored in AVI file. You can use any video codec to compress output video
- any DirectShow, DMO and Video for Windows codecs. By default audio stream (if present)
is stored to the output AVI without changes. But you can choose to recompress audio with any
audio codec installed.

Super Resolution work modes

There are several super resolution work modes to choose from in Video Enhancer. Video
Enhancer uses neighbor frames to upsize a current frame with maximum quality. This requires
multiple calculations to be performed, so prepare for 95-100% CPU usage. By changing how
precise Video Enhancer searches for motion one can choose between quality and speed. The
more precise motion search is, the slower it works but the better is quality. You can just drag a
slider between speed and quality ends. The fastest and the slowest modes differ in speed about
2 times.

Setting desired resolution

 In Simple mode

This couldn't be easier: just set width and height in respective boxes of the main window.

Original width and height are indicated under input file name. You can specify desired size
either in pixels or in percents of original. Type in % symbol to switch to percents. Delete it to
switch back to pixels. See section "Scaling" below to master more complex uprezzing
technique.
  In Advanced mode

1. Click SR button
2. Set output size: use either pixels or percents. Type % symbol to specify size in
percents of original. Delete % symbol to switch back to pixels.
3. Set scaling parameters (see "Scaling" for details)
4. Select qualitative or speedy mode (see "Super Resolution work modes")
5. Click OK

Scaling

There are actually two frame sizes that Video Enhancer uses to resize your video: output
width and height and actual frame size to scale to (see panda scheme on the screenshot
below).

Suppose you have a video 320x240 lines and want to make it 720x480 (NTSC). If you just
scale 320x240 to 720x480, the image will become wider, all circles will become ellipses and
all people will look fat. Simply because 4:3 proportion (320x240) does not equal 3:2
proportion (720x480). In order to preserve aspect ratio and make video 480 lines high, output
size must be 640x480 (to keep the same proportion 4:3).

But you wanted 720x480! In this case you just set output size to 720x480 and size for scaling
to 640x480:
Video Enhancer will scale your video to 640x480 and add black borders to right and left to
make output width 720. Or, you can set scale size to 720x540 (still 4:3) and output size
720x480. Then Video Enhancer will scale your image to 720x540 and keep 480 center lines,
cutting top and bottom. Of course, if you want to change aspect ratio (to make fat people look
less fat, for example) you can set any values of width and height. If you do not like typing in
pixels, use percents instead. Type % in width or height box to specify size in percents of
original. Delete % to switch back.

In the Simple mode you enter just one size - output size. Video Enhancer preserves aspect
ratio and scales your video to fit output size (no cutting) adding black borders if needed. In the
Advanced mode you can set both sizes manually.

If you want to increase your video resolution more than 2-3 times, you will obtain better
quality by using several steps of Super Resolution. Just add several SR steps to the filter
sequence, each time doubling the video resolution, and setting desired resolution on the last
step.

Choosing a video codec

1. What is a codec
To understand what a codec is you can read this Wikipedia article:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Codec
So, a codec is a piece of software that can encode and decode video. When it encodes video, it
gets uncompressed video (sequence of images) on its input and outputs some data, usually
much smaller in size. That's the main purpose of the codecs - make video size in bytes
smaller. When it decodes video, it takes that compressed data and outputs sequence of
uncompressed images.

Some video editing/playing software contains certain codecs built-in, but most software
doesn't - it uses codecs made by third-party developers and separately installed in your
system. The system usually provides some means to find installed codec and use it for
compressing and decompressing data. Each codec knows how to compress data, how to
decompress data created by itself (but not by other codecs), but codecs do not know how to
store this data on disk.

When you write compressed video to disk, it's written in one of container formats such as
AVI, MOV, MP4 or something else. Each container format describes how to save chunks of
compressed data and information about it, for example a little code (i.e. FourCC) that signals
about compression method. When this file is then read, that meta information about
compression method is used to find a codec that will decompress the data. So, knowing how
to read AVI files is not enough to decode the video - a proper codec is essential.

Some compression methods are described in some standards (like MPEG4, for example). So
many different codecs may implement such compression algorithms and they are often
interchangeable. For example, DivX and XviD are both implementations of MPEG4
compression method, so video compressed by one of them can be decompressed by another
one or even a third codec that knows how to decompress MPEG4. But some codecs have their
own unique compression methods and video compressed by such codec can be decompressed
only by the same codec.

2. Lossy and lossless compression

The task of a video codec is to compress video so it takes less space on disk or downloads
faster. This can be done in two ways: it can try to compress the video without losing any
information at all - like zip compresses your files without changing them. Such compression is
possible but it's quite limited - most lossless codecs provide small compression ratio, like 1:3.
And you cannot control how big the result will be - it totally depends on the algorithm and the
source video. But they guarantee that decompressed video is exactly the same as the source.

Another way is to allow losing some information. Most video codecs go this way, they throw
out much of original information but in a way not very noticeable by the eye. In this case
decompressed video is not the same as original - it's always of lower quality. But now you can
control how much information will be thrown away and so control how large the result will be
measured in bytes. Amount of bytes (or bits) per second of video is called bitrate. The more
the bitrate is, the less information is lost, the better is quality. The lower bitrate, the lower
quality. And remember that each time you compress video by a lossy codec, the quality gets
worse.
3. What kind of codec to use
So when selecting a codec you need to decide first which kind to use - lossless or lossy. If you
need just to temporary store video for further editing and you need to keep maximum quality,
then a lossless codec is what you need.
If, otherwise, you need to create a file which will only be played but not edited, and you want
it to fit in limited size (like CD or DVD), then you need a lossy codec.

4. Choosing a lossless codec

Lossless codecs differ by availability (some are Windows-only, some are free, some are
commercial), by speed and by average compression ratio. Some codecs are very powerful in
compressing the data, but unusably slow. Some are very quick but compress poorly. You can
find a big and detailed comparison here:
http://compression.ru/video/codec_comparison/lossless_codecs_2007_en.html
Video Enhancer author's personal choice is Lagarith, it's quite fast and provides reasonable
compression.

5. Choosing a lossy codec

Lossy codecs also differ by availability (some are Windows-only, some are free, some are
commercial) and speed, but they also differ by quality/compression ratio. This means that
every lossy codec can compress video to almost any given size, so the compression rate is the
same. But video compressed to the same size by different codecs has different quality. And
again, usually the better this quality/compression ratio is, the slower is the codec. Nowadays
best quality/compression ratio is in H.264 implementations, but the speed is usually bad: they
need a very powerful CPU to decompress (play) the video and huge amounts of time to
compress it.
You can find big detailed comparison here:
http://www.compression.ru/video/codec_comparison/h264_2010/

The next level is MPEG4 implementations, they provide a bit lower quality/compression ratio,
but fast enough for modern PCs.

DivX and XviD are most commonly used (the first is commercial and the second is free) and
they are our codecs of choice for lossy compression.

If you install the codec pack we recommend, you'll have a good choice of video codecs to use.

Audio codec

For audio we recommend using AC-3 ACM codec. To install it download the archive, unpack
it to any folder, go to x86 subfolder, right click the .inf file and select Install.

Wizard
This useful feature helps you to quickly diagnose which distortions your video file is subject
to and it will choose some filters for you. Select an input file (Browse>Choose file) and
follow Wizard's instructions checking the boxes as you analyze your file:

Wizard asks you to evidence interlacing, blocking and noise in your video. This will take a
few seconds. Then, choose a new resolution for your video (see "Setting desired resolution"
for more details):
After new parameters are entered, you can choose a video and audio compressors (read more
in "Choosing a video codec").

Wizard will probably suggest you to switch to Advanced mode to apply denoising or
deinterlacing or deblocking filters and clean your video. Just do so; Video Enhancer will
create a filter sequence by itself.

Filtering your video (Advanced mode)

In the Advanced user interface mode you can create chains with any number of VirtualDub
and Super Resolution filters to be applied to your video. It means you can filter your video
before resizing, after resizing, between or even instead.

You can use over a hundred of VirtualDub filters to alter your video: deinterlace, denoise,
deshake, do color correction, apply some visual effects and much more. If you have
VirtualDub installed, then Video Enhancer will probably find your filters automatically. You
can see list of filters that work in Video Enhancer at
http://www.infognition.com/VideoEnhancer/filters.html.
Video Enhancer will automatically detect and make use of any already installed VirtualDub filters.
You may also easily install any additional filters.

1 You can choose and make use of any already installed filters.
2 Opens a link in your web browser for additional information about the
filter.
3 Automatically download and install the filter.
4 Manually install any additional .VDF filter.
You can change VirtualDub filter settings (configure) as desired when adding to the sequence
and later by pressing CONFIGURE button. When you are happy with the settings, click OK in
the filter configuration dialog box.

You can easily edit the filters sequence:

1. To change filters order: select a filter to be moved and click MOVE UP and MOVE
DOWN
2. To delete filters from the sequence: click DELETE
3. To add new filters: click VD FILTER

Options
Use multithreading

In Video Enhancer all filters, coders and decoders can work simultaneously in separate
threads. For example, if you process your video with two filters, then at the time coder
compresses the first frame second filter is already processing second frame, first filter is
processing third frame and decoder decompresses fourth frame. Simple test with processing
DV video with 3 filters and compressing it with XviD showed 1.9 times higher speed than
VirtualDub on Dual Core AMD Opteron. Just check "Use multithreading" box to optimize
parallel processing.

Number of threads in SR

Here you can select number of parallel threads used by one instance of super resolution
engine. Usually optimal value here is the number of logical CPUs of your PC, i.e. total
number of cores and hyperthreads. In Windows up to 7 this is the number of CPU graphs you
see in Task Manager. In Windows 8 Task Manager shows a single graph of CPU utilization
but tells number of "Logical processors" below.

Always work in RGB32

Since version 1.9.4 super resolution can work in two different colorspaces: RGB32 and
YV12, and in 1.9.9 one more was added (YUY2). Previous versions worked only in RGB32.
YV12 is an uncompressed video format where luminance is stored in full resolution and two
color components (chrominance) are stored in half resolution, so it is 12 bits per pixel. Most
video codecs internally work in this format. When Video Enhancer sees that your video file
can be naturally decoded to YV12 and you don't apply any VirtualDub filters before Super
Resolution, it uses YV12 version of SR. It works approx. twice faster than RGB32 version. If
you check "Always work in RGB32" checkbox, VE will always use RGB32 version of SR.

Work with low priority

When Video Enhancer is processing a file it may load your CPU to 100% and in some cases
this causes other applications to slow down. If you check this option, VE will work with lower
than normal priority and will not affect other applications while still utilizing as much CPU as
possible.

Show SR mode

When this option is enabled, Video Enhancer will show if it's working in RGB or YV12 mode
during processing.

Don't use unknown decoders

In short:
Use for opening video files LAV splitters and decoders that Video Enhancer downloads itself,
or, if they can't handle your video file, try a few well known decoders but don't let the system
select decoders, i.e. don't rely on DirectShow default choice of codecs. Use this option in case
of having trouble opening or processing some files.

Longer story:
To process a video file Video Enhancer needs a splitter to read video and audio streams from
it and a decoder to get uncompressed video from a compresseed video stream. Earlier versions
of Video Enhancer delegated the choice of splitters and decoders to operating system:
installed decoders register themselves in the system with some priorities and the one with
highest priority is selected to try decoding first. Since some apps tend to install their own
codecs and register them with high priorities this sometimes leads to unstable work of apps
like Video Enhancer. That resulted to crashes and general inability of Video Enhancer to open
some files. Situation changed in version 1.9.9, starting from this version Video Enhancer first
tries splitters and decoders it knows well and only if they fail it tries other decoders installed
your system. One of the best open source splitter/decoder set these days is LAV, and if Video
Enhancer doesn't find it in your system and no suitable decoder is found for a video file, it
may suggest downloading LAV automatically and using it locally. But if you had some older
version of LAV installed or some other decoder seemed to handle the video file, then it was
used even if Video Enhancer didn't know this decoder. Starting from version 1.9.10 we have
this new option which tells Video Enhancer to only use LAV decoders it downloads itself or a
couple of well known codecs but never trust the system to choose decoders and splitters. This
will help in cases where some bad codecs are installed and registered as default ones, which
previously caused troubles opening some videos.

Language

Since version 1.9.4 Video Enhancer's interface can switch between different languages. All
language data is stored in text files with .lng extension. You can edit them in Notepad.
Anyone can create these translations files and add new languages. VE will search its folder for
.lng files and let you choose a language.
Skin

Here you can select how VE will look like. There are different looks available for your
choice. If you don't want any unusual skins, just select "No skin" and default Windows look
will be used.

Preview

Preview option allows you to see the output video resulting from parameters you have set and
compare it with original input file (without saving output file). It is recommended to always
preview at least several seconds of output file before you start processing of a large video in
order to avoid common mistakes (scaling-related, for instance).

1. Browse>Select input file (or Many files>Select input file(s))

2. Set Super resolution mode ("better quality" or "better speed")
3. Set desired resolution for output file
4. Set scaling parameters (available from Advanced mode only)
 5. Create filter chain (available from Advanced mode only)
6. Click Preview.

Processing live preview

During video processing, you will see live preview of your video.

1 Disable the live preview. Video Enhancer will use less memory.
2 Stop current processing. The aborted file will still be playable.
3 Resize the processing window. The live preview will be resized
accordingly.
4 Maximize the processing window.

Processing time

How long will it take to upsize your video and clean it with selected filters? There are a lot of
parameters to influence the processing time, including original and final video resolution
(width and height), available CPU usage, filter features, original file size etc. It is
recommended to end CPU consuming tasks (check in Windows Task Manager>Processes)
before you start processing a large file in order to speed up. Once you have set super
resolution parameters and selected the filters, remaining and elapsed time are indicated while
processing is in progress (in Preview mode as well). If you feel like changing the settings, just
press STOP and modify the data accordingly.

Finally: uprezzing your video

1. Select input file

2. Set output file
3. Choose video and audio compressor
4. Select "better speed" or "better quality" super resolution work mode
5. Set new resolution
6. Set scaling parameters (Advanced mode only)
7. Create sequence of filters (Advanced mode only)
8. If you want multithreading, check it
9. Preview output to control your settings
10. Start processing by pressing START button

Command line interface

You can use Video Enhancer in batch files using its command line interface. You can either
just use Super Resolutiuon resizing (by setting desired resolution with -d option) or provide a
file name of a previously saved Video Enhancer project (where a sequence of filters and their
settings are described) to apply filters from this project.

Parameters:

1. -i infile - specify input file. Use double quotes (like "...") for filenames that include
spaces.
2. -o outfile - specify output file,
3. -d width height - destination video size, or alternatively
4. project_file.vep - specify a Video Enhancer project file (created in GUI mode) to
apply filters from,
5. -vc codec - set name for video codec. First codec which name includes substring you
specify here will be used. So you don't need to specify full name of the codec. If this
parameter is not set, uncompressed RGB32 video will be stored (huge size)!
6. -ac codec - set name for audio codec. If this parameter is not set audio will be copied
 without recompression.
7. -vlist - output list of video codecs that can be used. All output is written to text file
ve.txt in the current folder.
8. -alist - output list of audio codecs.
9. -fast - use fast mode of super-resolution. If this parameter is not set, a slower high
quality mode will be used by default.
10. -nomt - do not use multithreaded processing.

Examples:

A. Show all available codecs (output goes to ve.txt):

VideoEnhancer.exe -vlist -alist

B. Resize a file "176.avi" to 1920x1080 and compress result with Huffyuv codec:

VideoEnhancer.exe -i 176.avi -o "Upsized 176.avi" -d 1920 1080 -vc Huff -fast

C. Process file "176.avi" with a sequence of filters described in a project file project.vep and
compress result with Huffyuv codec:

VideoEnhancer.exe -i 176.avi -o "Processed 176.avi" project.vep -vc Huff -fast

Chapter 4: Troubleshooting
XviD compression doesn't work.

In XviD version 1.1 to get it working one needed to change one option in Xvid's parameters
(this needs to be done just once). When you choose Xvid for compression in Video Enhancer,
press "Configure", then "Advanced options", "Debug" and switch off "Display encoding
status". After you've done it once, Xvid will work in VE.

Can't load FLV video

To be able to work with FLV video you can install K Lite Codec Pack.
Follow these instructions to solve most problems with video codecs.

Processing does not start

To get the problem solved you need to answer 3 questions:

1) Can VE play the file in the main window when you open your file?

If no, you seem to lack a codec for this kind of files. We recommend installing K-Lite Codec
Pack (see link above). it contains necessary codecs to open 99% of files. When installing be
sure you check the points regarding FLV, FLV1 and VP6 (install FLV Splitter and set
ffdshow to decode FLV1 and VP6 video). In other points about DivX, XviD, MP3 etc we
recommend not to use ffdshow and use original codecs since ffdshow is not very stable.

2) Can VE process your file in Preview mode?

Open your file in VE, choose what you want to do with it (e.g. resize with SR, process with
some filters) and press Preview. If preview does not start and shows some errors, this means
the problem is with the decoder compatibility. You can try installing different codec for this
kind of files or report the problem, read below how to get more details.

If preview is ok, then next question:

3) Can VE process your file in normal mode - writing output to disk?

If processing doesn't start and shows some errors, then probably you chose a bad codec for
compression, try selecting another one.

If processing doesn't start but doesn't show any errors either - just sits still, it means your
codec wasn't configured properly, for example, see topics about XviD and DivX in the FAQ.

If you couldn't find the solution yourself, you can report the problem. Since there are dozens
of different codecs and thousands combinations of their interactions, the more information
you provide, the more chances to get it working:

Since version 1.9.1 Video Enhancer allows starting a program in debug mode in order to
create a bug description. Open Video Enhancer folder in Program Files and start
VideoEnhancerDebugMode. Then try to process your file as you wanted. At the same
directory where you told it to write output file it will create a .txt file with the name of your
output file which will contain list of components used in processing, including decoding and
encoding codecs and all intermediate filters. Please provide contents of this file when
reporting an error.

Frequently Asked Questions & Troubleshooting online

 
 

Visit Video Enhancer forum http://forum.infognition.com/ to suggest your ideas, ask

your questions or learn more about video processing and Video Enhancer.