Hi,

I agree with John, the difference between the two images is pretty much just sharpness and contrast and perhaps a little brightness.

I took your image, adjusted those 3 parameters plus a little color and hue and came up with this

Magix Image (adjusted)

Original Nero Image

So by a few adjustments, I made the Magix image look better than the Nero Image including the color saturation.

The Kanji charecters are more clearly defined, are pure black and white (not gray) and the whole image pops.

Here are the other set of images you uploaded.

Magix Image (corrected)

Original Nero Image

I may have over done the sharpness a little on this one but you can clearly see that there is plenty of adjustment in the Magix product to get these images to look like pretty much anything you want them to.

George

So I tried to increase the contrast and brightness, but the detail in the black areas still can barely be seen.

If you look at the Nero screen shot of the video you will see the clothes have outlines, they are not seen. Thats the problem I"m having no brightness or contrast helps bring it out.

The preview area on MEP does show the outlines of the clothes perfectly fine. But after conversion is when that detail (outlines) in dark areas dissappear.

Hi Bassam

I can definitely see what you mean with the purple image where the mortar lines in the bricks are very undefined in both yours and Georges' render in Magix. In fact there is a lot of block (compression) noise and smearing in the Magix output and I must confess that I have never been that happy with the way some of the MEP preset encoder templates render detail in the dark areas, even at high bitrates.

I can only suggest you analyse the Nero output files with Media Info (TM) and try to match some of the properties in the Advanced Encoder settings in Magixs export settings. I do not know what the bitrate of the original material was but 1700kbps is quite compressed even for MPEG4. Something like the 4800Kbps of your other encode might yield better results although I can still see slight loss of clarity in the creases in the suits (which I presume is the detail you are referring to?).

Ss

So by a few adjustments, I made the Magix image look better than the Nero Image including the color saturation.

 

George: I don't think so. If you look more closely at the shoulder of the smaller boy, there is no longer any clear outline. And there are a lot of JPG artifacts in your version, particulary obvious around the Kanji characters.

--
Terry, East Grinstead, UK

Hi bassam

Is it possible for you to ulpoad a 10 second clip of each part of the video shown in your still images, for us to try with?

If you can I would suggest you export the video as Magix video format ( mvx) to give a consistent starting point and upload to somewhere like Dropbox and post a link to them.

John

Ya here is a small few second one show that exact scene..

http://dropcanvas.com/u34nz

I can provide one for the bricks to, but this should be enough to see what results we can get.

I appreciate everyone who is trying to help me figure out how to make these dark scenes converted better on Magix.. Just please keep in mind I'm not trying to go over 5000 kbps. I mean if I did 13000 kbps I can see the outine/detail on their unforms/outfits. It still isn't nearly as good as what I would get on Nero just at 4000 kbps.

Hi bassam

Thanks for the video clip.

Here is the effect which, for me, give the best results

Original video file VLC snapshot.

   hires version

Modified effects VLC snapshot

    hires version

The sharpening was achieved using the msharpen plugin available here with the following settings:

    Strength        200

    Threshold       0

    Blur method     3x3x block

and

    Contrast          55

Final video output to 720p mp4 4000kbs is here

NOTE - the biggest issue I have is displaying this on various types of screen - the differences vary depending on the video player you use and your monitor colour, contrast and mode settings.

On my colour corrected monitors the video file above is improved considerably compared to the original, however on an unadjusted monitor there is very little difference.

HTH

John

just in case no one noticed I added additional info to question I'm adding it here:

John, thanks so much for your help. That is much better results that you have there.. If only now I can replicate them..

I dowloaded your video & can definitely see the outline & detail in the unfirom.

I tried using a HDTV preset with the contact & msharpen settings you had indicated. So I must need to alter my preset somehow.. Do you think you can export your MPEG-4 preset and upload it somwhere so I can try it out?