7/23/2000
    I am embarrased!  Thank you to Donald Graft for pointing out the STUPID bug I introduced in 2D Cleaner beta 0.5.  I guess the code would be faster when I only ran through the inner loop of the averaging a single time per pixel.  Or to use his words, "This is of course not going to do what you intended. And it will be quite a bit faster at it..."  And thank you to the person who emailed me regarding the bug with hitting cancel in the dialog (I can't quite seem to be able to find the email referring me to that bug right now).  Beta .6 of 2d cleaner has this fixed along with a fix to the above bug, and hopefully the source-released Temporal Cleaner will also have this.  If you have noticed that no filtering occurs unless the radius is set to at least 2 and then it is only vertical, please download the new version.  Much code to write, so this is a small update.

5/2/2000
    My long promised optimizations to 2d cleaner and the actual release of its source code has finally arrived.  2d cleaner is a good deal faster now and the source code is finally somewhat decent to look at.  Many have kindly offered to optimize 2d cleaner with assembler code and mmx optimizations, so I expect 2d cleaner to get even faster despite its computational complexity.  Once I clean up temporal cleaner a bit, I will release its source as well, though I do not expect to get it much faster without assembler optimization.  As a note: I brought my big book of assembly programming up to school the last time I headed home, so I may also be doing a good deal of the assembly coding as well.

3/26/2000
    I finally got the correct update to the page uploaded that includes beta 3 of 2d cleaner that I finished several days ago. Beta .3 of 2d cleaner adds in a user configurable averaging area so the filter is no longer limited to 3x3 averaging areas.  Optimization is probably next for both filters.
    Note:  As I am stuck in Los Angeles for the next few days with only my laptop, and my laptop stuck in Win98 so I can use my SCSI backup drive, I will probably not be able to do much development on either filter until Wednesday or so.  I also want to thank all of you who have been giving me this incredible amount of positive feedback on the filters.  It is appreciated.

3/23/2000
    Updated both 2d cleaner and temporal cleaner two beta 0.2 with a few bug fixes, and added interlaced mode into 2d cleaner and "pixel lock" into temporal cleaner.

3/21/2000
    Initial release of the filters. There is an awful lot of work which needs to be done on the filters, and doubtlessly many bugs.  Please email me at casaburi @ earthlink.net if you have any suggestions or bug reports.

    The options available for the filter are a threshold value, a "show sharp edges" option, an interlaced option, and a configurable radius around the source pixel.
    Threshold can be anywhere from 0 to 255, and defines the maximum difference between a source pixel and a surrounding pixel in which the program will attempt to average the source pixel with the surrounding pixels.  Higher thresholds blend more.  The default is 12, which seems to work well for most of my video sources, but I highly recommend experimenting with different values to find the perfect match of removing noise and retaining details.
    The "show sharp edges" option, inspired by Donald Graft's equivalent feature in his Smart Deinterlacer, will turn any pixel where less than half of its surrounding pixels black.  This is useful for being able to see what pixels are passing through the threshold without being blended (as much).  Do NOT leave this option on when you are actually converting your files!  (note:  this setting is NOT saved for batch operations or when you save processing settings, since this option is meant only for "debugging" ones settings)
    The interlaced video option when checked processes the video as if it were interlaced. This means there is no attempt made to blend between even and odd scanlines. This keeps interlaced motion intact for those who are targeting full resolution interlaced video sources such as DV .AVIs or interlaced MPEG-2. If the video file you are dealing with is not interlaced, or under 288 pixels in height, it is recommended you not enable this function.
    The radius around source pixel option defines the area around the source that will be considered by the filter.  The bigger the radius, the better the noise reduction can be, however, the filter slows down geometrically the larger the radius is made.  A radius of 1 pixel means that the filter is doing 3x3 filtering for every pixel.  A radius of 10 pixels means that the filter is doing 21x21 filtering for every pixel, or over 20 fold the number of operations.

Download 2D Cleaner Beta 0.6!

The Source Code
    This source code is provided under the GPL license.  This means you are free to use and distribute the software and program code for no fee.  This also means you are free and encouraged to improve and expand upon the source code, but only as long as you make your modified version also under the GPL, and thus free software with access to the source code for anyone.  If you do improve the program, PLEASE do let me know and pass on the changes so I may integrate them into 2d cleaner.  You will be credited for your work.  The source code compiles under Visual C++ 6.0 with fix-pack 3.  I may attempt to convert the program to a Borland compiler later, but for now Visual C++ will have to do (anyways, that is what VirtualDub is written in).  If there is a problem with the source code distribution, please do let me know.

Download the source code to 2D Cleaner 0.6!
 

    The options available for the filter are a scene detection threshold value, YUV mode option, a luminance blending threshold value, a luminance pixellocking value, a chrominance blending value, a chrominance pixellocking value, a "show motion" option, and a luminance locking option.  The default settings I programmed in seem to work well with most of my video sources, but you should experiment with them all to find your optimal settings.
    The scene detection threshold defines the percent of pixels in a frame that exceeds the threshold in order for the filter to assume a new scene has begun. When a new scene is detected, all locked pixels are ignored and the filter passes the new frame untouched.  This was necessitated since "pixel lock" would often keep some pixels from previous scenes even after scene changes.
    The YUV mode option decides whether or not to process the thresholding in YUV or RGB mode.  RGB mode is the native mode of VirtualDub and is thus quicker since there is no need to convert the pixels.  In YUV mode you can threshold the luminance and chrominance values seperatly.  In RGB mode only the luminance thresholds are used to compare against the Red, Green and Blue color channels.  (in fact, the filter will simply duplicate the luminance values into the chrominance values once you hit OK in RGB mode)  The RGB->YUV colorspace conversions will not effect image quality in any way unless the luminance locking option is enabled.
    The blending thresholds can be anywhere from 0 to 255, and defines the maximum difference between a pixel in the current frame and the pixel in the previous frame in which the program will blend the two together.  Higher thresholds blend more motion together, but will also blend more video noise away.
    The "pixel lock" threshold values defines the maximum difference between pixels between frames where the pixel from the previous frame can replace the pixel in the current frame.  It is recommended that the "pixel lock" thresholds be set to a value less than the main threshold values.
    The "show motion" option, inspired by the equivalent function in Donald Graft's Smart Deinterlacer, will turn any pixel in the current frame that exceeds the threshold black.  It also turns any pixels that are "pixel locked" blue and pixels that are being luminance locked gray.  This will show you the areas of the frame that the filter considers to be moving and the areas the filter considers static.  Do NOT leave this option on when you are actually converting your files. (note:  this setting is NOT saved for batch operations or when you save processing settings, since this option is meant only for "debugging" ones settings)
    The "luminance locking" option decides whether or not to allow yet another option for output for compared pixels.  If a pixel's luminance is with the Luminance pixellocking threshold of the previous pixel's luminance, but the chrominance difference is only within the chrominance blending threshold, Temporal Cleaner will keep the luminance of the previous pixel and blend the chrominance of the previous pixel and the current one.  This option only works in YUV mode, and may or may not help noise reduction.
BTW:  Since I cache the last frame internally within the filter and do not rely on VirtualDub to keep track of it, this filter can (and perhaps should) be run multiple times within a filter chain to further blend out noise.  (Thanks to Donald Graft for his great suggestion to handle previous frames this way!)

Download the Temporal Cleaner 0.5!

The Source Code
    This source code is provided under the GPL license.  This means you are free to use and distribute the software and program code for no fee.  This also means you are free and encouraged to improve and expand upon the source code, but only as long as you make your modified version also under the GPL, and thus free software with access to the source code for anyone.  If you do improve the program, PLEASE do let me know and pass on the changes so I may integrate them into 2d cleaner.  You will be credited for your work.  The source code compiles under Visual C++ 6.0 with fix-pack 3.  I may attempt to convert the program to a Borland compiler later, but for now Visual C++ will have to do (anyways, that is what VirtualDub is written in).  If there is a problem with the source code distribution, please do let me know.

Download the source code to Temporal Cleaner 0.5!

    At this point, ALL of these filters are probably still buggy and not fully optimized.  The code at this point is entirely C/C++ without a line of x86 assembler code.  Do note that due to the nature of 2d Cleaner, I find it unlikely that they it will ever be terribly fast.  I have released these filters under the GPL since I believe in the idea of community software, and since I partially based my code on other GPL covered source code.

    As you may be able to surmise from my release of the code under the GPL, these filters are totally and completely free to download, distribute and use.  Please check the GNU web page for more information about the specifics of the licensing model.  I claim no liability for any use of these filters for any malicious or illegal activities nor any spontaneous combustion that may occur from use of the software, you alone are responsible for your actions.

    Also if you would like to add a link to my filters, PLEASE make the link to http://home.earthlink.net/~casaburi/download/
I cannot guarantee the links in this page will always work

VirtualDub Links

VirtualDub - This is the mother of them all.  Avery Lee's page for the excellent free video editing/capture package that is the video editing/processing package that I use.
 

VirtualDub Filters

Donald Graft - The home page for Donald Graft's filters, which just happens to include the best deinterlacer available anywhere; a great unsharp mask filter, which despite what it sounds like, is a great sharpening filter; a color adjusting filter; and enough other advanced filters to keep you busy for hours experimenting with improving your video.

Chris LaRosa - Home page to an optimized 2:1 reduction filter and frame tweaker filter for VirtualDub.

X-Bios - Home page to a slew of filters including a very radical new color stabilization filter that promises to become one of the most effective temporal noise reducers imaginable.

Gunnar Thalin - More great, free VirtualDub filters including another intelligent deinterlacing filter.
 

MPEG Encoder Links

bbMPEG - The home page for one of the best Win32 MPEG encoders in existence, that also happens to be free.  It may not be the fastest encoder, but the results are truly amazing.  This is now the only MPEG encoder I use.

Tsunami MPEG (English Page) - The home page of the English translation of the terrific freeware Win32 Tsunami MPEG encoder.  This encoder boasts terrific image quality, good performance and a great set of mpeg tools allowing joining/cutting, demuliplexing and multiplexing of nearly any MPEG1/2 stream.
 

Other Video Links

Ben-Rudiak Gould - A great site which houses the incredible and free HuffYUV video codec that losslessly compresses video on the fly getting nearly as much compression as some motion-JPEG codecs without any loss of quality.  HIGHLY recommended!

Steven Don - The author of a slew of VirtualDub filters including a temporal noise reducer that predates Temporal Cleaner.  There are tons of utils and other cool stuff at this page.

CodecPage- A terrific video processing/compression site explaining how to best encode MPEG1/2/4

DesktopVideoWorld - A somewhat Matrox oriented site containing a great discussion forum on desktop video.
 

     Thank you to Avery Lee for developing the incredible program VirtualDub, and for releasing his source code under the GPL (which I used to as a template for several of these filters), and to Donald Graft, Steven Don, and X-Bios for his unending help, support, and useful suggestions.

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