Sparkly Grain

[robotdad01]

Hello, I am new to fractals and Mandelbulber. I've stumbled around the software a bit and I would like to make some of those awesome flyby animations. I've noticed a lot of "sparkling" in the backgrounds of my tests. Is this normal and is there a way to get rid of it?
Here is a sample.
" <a href="http://www.youtube.com/v/ipHodevvo8w&rel=1&fs=1&hd=1" target="_blank">http://www.youtube.com/v/ipHodevvo8w&rel=1&fs=1&hd=1</a> "
Thank you in advance for help and tips

[JohnVV]

not 100% sure
that video has WAY TOO much mpg( jpg) compression artifacts

the "sparkle " i see is that

now there is the DE setting increase it
a screen shot

click on HQ
or put a check in "Dynamic DE correction "

now i do normally find that this program dose produce some images that are a bit "too noisy"
for that i use a post-processing  with a PDE to smooth it out a bit (  Diffy-Q's are "fun")

Gmic has a good tool for noise reduction
-- single image 16 bit png  --

Code:

gmic -type ushort image.png  -pde_flow 3,15 -type ushort -o ImageSmooth.png 

And can be used on videos and even live video cameras using OpenCV


also with video ( as with a single image) you might want to WORK in a LOSELESS format like "ogg"
then as the VERY VERY LAST step save to a lousy format like "mpg"

[robotdad01]

 Sorry. I guess I need to supply more information when asking for help.
The video was put together with 1280 x 720 PNG -16 bit images at 100 frames per key.
The animation was rendered , uncompressed, with VirtualDub-1.9.11-AMD64. The "sparkling grain" is there before I render the movie.
 I've played around with the Engine tab settings. Even with Dynamic DE checked, I still get a lot of grain.

I'm starting to think that it's the fractal itself. Maybe too much Tglad's folding.

[taurus]

regarding the ammount of sparkle, there are several things you can try. maybe you need a combination of all to get satisfying results.

the "hq" button is quite sloppy and often produces too high de step factor. re-render after hq optimization and observe the bottom right percentage number (missedDE). decrease de step factor until missedDE is max. 0,002% better 0,000% after rendering is done. save your keyframe by hand. don't forget to check "glow" in shader tab - the hq optimization changes it most of the time. adjust it as desired and save again.

annother possibility is to ajust detail level to values below 1 (sounds absurd, but take it). this will make your fractal less fragile in structure and avoids small structures to jump from one pixel to annother in background. take the smallest detail level value as possible.

when all this doesn't help, you'll need to render in double or triple size for antialiasing. you can scale down afterwards in a batch process. irfran view for example has an easy to use and flexible batch conversion.

btw. except you're doing color corrections after rendering, 16bit png does not benefit your result as most codecs render 8bit/channel. (afaik only h264 has a 10bit mode)

hope that helps

[quaz0r]

just randomly read this post... the sparkly glittering sort of effect on a lot of render animations is just god-awful aliasing.  if you want to make a high quality video you have to render at very high resolutions and then scale them down to anti-alias them, otherwise your video will look like crap and the aliasing will glitter and sparkle and look just awful.

[Buddhi]

I looked at your animation. The most significant think on frames are visible oversteppings (a lot of random noise). To reduce "sparkling" you should decrease a little "DE Step factor" (or use HQ button to find optimal). Then would be much better.

[erstwhile]

If your video has a lot of flicker or sparkly edges due to surface noise on the fractal use some motion blur in post production to clear it up.