RUSSIAN VERSION

VirtualDub MSU Smart Brightness and Contrast Filter

MSU Graphics & Media Lab (Video Group)

Take a look at this article on the new site! Follow the link
https://videoprocessing.ai/video_filters/smart-contrast.html

Project, ideas: Dr. Dmitriy Vatolin
Version 0.5, intraframe algorithm: Maxim Makhinya
Version 1.0, interframe algorithm, bug fixing: Alexey Moskvin

Version 1.01 - parameters saving to JOB files fixed

The filter allows adjusting image brightness and contrast with minimum loss of details, also supports automatic mode.

Main features

  • The filter doesn't shine bright areas, and doesn't move dark areas to 0 brightness value, keeping details in them.
  • Automatic brightness tuning mode, when contrast is set (useful for long mixed films).
  • Automatic brightness & contrast adjust mode (useful for long mixed professionally created films).
  • Color correction feature - usable for hard contrast correction of nearly black-and-white movies.
  • Adjustable intraframe contrast & brightness accuracy.
  • Controllable noise influence in final parameters in automatic parameters calculation.
  • Careful intrascene modification of parameters.
  • Automatic detection of scene replacement.
  • Supports Job Control and AviSynth.

Settings

In the filter's setting:
  • The set of presets for brightness & contrast (auto correcting manual settings, full auto mode, manual settings, some brightness/contrast presets)
  • Settings for decrease / increase color component of image
  • Settings for selecting image borders, which allows to prevent hard bright/dark noise influence in filter's work (with set of presets)
  • Mode, when global brightness & contrast settings are recalculated after scene change only and are become more stable during one scene.

Filters main window

Settings:
Brightness & Contrast Settings

  1. Contrast - contrast adjust (>1 - increase, <1 - decrease)
  2. Brightness - brightness shift
  3. Color Correction - >0 - increase color component, <0 - decrease color component
  4. Intraframe accuracy - threshold, if it is exceeded brightness & contrast coefficients are "blurred" for better details processing
Advanced Settings
  1. Histogram calculating - selecting histogram calculating method (for decreasing noise influence).
  2. Threshold percent - threshold, if you will increase it, the more number of details will be processed like a noise
  3. MIN brightness, MAX brightness- brightness borders. If some parts of image will exceed these borders after brightness / contrast correction, these parameters will be recalculated.
  4. Scene change detection - watch on scene replacement
  5. Threshold - threshold, used for scene replacement detection

Script example for AviSynth 


LoadVirtualDubPlugin("...\Virtual Dub\plugins\MSU_SmartBrightness.vdf","MSUSmartBrightness", 0)  
clip=AVISource("D:\Video\Samples\MSU.avi", false, "RGB24")
clip.ConvertToRGB32.MSUSmartBrightness(0, 150, 100, 0)

First parameter - number of brightness & contrast preset (0 - Auto (1): correcting manual settings, 1 - Auto (2): calculating contrast & brightness etc. )
Second parameter - value of Contrast, multiplied by 100 (from 50 to 400)
Third parameter - value of Brightness
Fourth parameter - value ColorCorrection, multiplied by 100 (from -100 to 100)

Examples

We shall compare Smart Brightness and Contrast Filter to Photoshop filter using a portrait of M. Lomonosov as the first example.

Source image
Source image 		Image processed by Photoshop
Image processed by Photoshop 		Image processed by the Filter
Image processed by the Filter

Let us zoom in so as to see the differences better and take a close look at areas outlined in red.

Source image
Source image
Image processed by Photoshop
Image processed by Photoshop 		Image processed by the Filter
Image processed by the Filter

The left histogram tells that Photoshop cares little about bright and dark pixels, it simply washes or blacks them out. The right one tells that the filter tends to keep maximum detail and takes good care of bright and dark pixels.

And one more similar example with histograms.

Source image
Source image 		Histogram of source image
Histogram of source image
Image processed by Photoshop
Image processed by Photoshop 		Image processed by the Filter
Image processed by the Filter
Histogram
Histogram 		Histogram
Histogram

MSU_2
Frames from sequence MSU.avi:
Original frames
Processed with Brightness & Contrast from Photoshop
Processed with MSU Smart Brightness & Contrast in automatic mode (auto correcting manual settings)
MSU_1

Download

E-mail:
For common questions about filter's work please contact us
For commercial license of this filter (commercial usage is not free) please contact us сontact email

Other resources

Video resources:

3D and stereo video
Projects on 3D and stereo video processing and analysis
MSU Video Quality Measurement tools
Programs with different objective and subjective video quality metrics implementation 		Codecs comparisons
Objective and subjective quality evaluation
tests for video and image codecs
Ext. link: x264 parameters efficiency comparison
Public MSU video filters
Here are available VirtualDub and AviSynth filters. For a given type of digital video filtration we typically develop a family of different algorithms and implementations. Generally there are also versions optimized for PC and hardware implementations (ASIC/FPGA/DSP). These optimized versions can be licensed to companies. Please contact us for details via video(at)graphics.cs.msu_ru. 		Filters for companies
We are working with Intel, Samsung, RealNetworks and other companies on adapting our filters other video processing algorithms for specific video streams, applications and hardware like TV-sets, graphics cards, etc. Some of such projects are non-exclusive. Also we have internal researches. Please let us know via video(at)graphics.cs.msu_ru if you are interested in acquiring a license for such filters or making a custom R&D project on video processing, compression, computer vision.
Video codecs projects
Different research and development
projects on video codecs 		Other
Other information
Last updated: 12-May-2022

Server size: 8069 files, 1215Mb (Server statistics)

Project updated by
Server Team and MSU Video Group

Project sponsored by YUVsoft Corp.

Project supported by MSU Graphics & Media Lab