vapoursynth-bm3dmetal 4.0.0

BM3D denoising filter for VapourSynth, implemented in Metal

VapourSynth-BM3DMETAL

Copyright© 2021 WolframRhodium

Copyright© 2025 Sunflower Dolls

BM3D denoising filter for VapourSynth, implemented in Metal.

Ported from VapourSynth-BM3DCUDA.

Description

• Please check VapourSynth-BM3D for the original CPU implementation.

• This Metal implementation leverages Apple's Metal API for GPU acceleration on macOS systems, providing efficient denoising on Apple Silicon and Intel Macs with Metal-capable GPUs.

Requirements

• macOS 12.0 (Monterey) or later.

• Metal-capable GPU:

  • Apple Silicon (M1, M2, M3, or newer)
  • Intel Mac with Metal-capable GPU (requires SIMD width/thread execution width of 32; older Intel GPUs may not be supported)

• VapourSynth R74 or later on macOS.

Installation

For VapourSynth R74 or later, install both VapourSynth and this plugin from PyPI:

python3 -m pip install -U vapoursynth vapoursynth-bm3dmetal
vapoursynth config

The wheel installs libbm3dmetal.dylib into VapourSynth's Python package plugin directory and provides a manifest.vs for autoloading.

Parameters

bm3dmetal.BM3D(clip clip[, clip ref=None, float[] sigma=3.0, int[] block_step=8, int[] bm_range=9, int radius=0, int[] ps_num=2, int[] ps_range=4, bint chroma=False, int device_id=0, bool fast=False])

• clip:

  The input clip. Must be of 32 bit float format. Each plane is denoised separately if chroma is set to False. Data of unprocessed planes is undefined. Frame properties of the output clip are copied from it.

• ref:

  The reference clip. Must be of the same format, width, height, number of frames as clip.

  Used in block-matching and as the reference in empirical Wiener filtering, i.e. bm3d.Final / bm3d.VFinal:

  basic = core.bm3dmetal.BM3D(src, radius=0)
  final = core.bm3dmetal.BM3D(src, ref=basic, radius=0)
  
  vbasic = core.bm3dmetal.BM3D(src, radius=radius_nonzero).bm3d.VAggregate(radius=radius_nonzero)
  vfinal = core.bm3dmetal.BM3D(src, ref=vbasic, radius=r).bm3d.VAggregate(radius=r)
  
  # alternatively, using the v2 interface
  basic_or_vbasic = core.bm3dmetal.BM3Dv2(src, radius=r)
  final_or_vfinal = core.bm3dmetal.BM3Dv2(src, ref=basic_or_vbasic, radius=r)
  

  corresponds to the followings (ignoring color space handling and other differences in implementation), respectively

  basic = core.bm3d.Basic(clip)
  final = core.bm3d.Final(basic, ref=basic)
  
  vbasic = core.bm3d.VBasic(src, radius=r).bm3d.VAggregate(radius=r, sample=1)
  vfinal = core.bm3d.VFinal(src, ref=vbasic, radius=r).bm3d.VAggregate(radius=r)
  

• sigma: The strength of denoising for each plane, defined as the standard deviation of the AWGN component, implying $Noise \sim \mathcal{N}(0, \sigma^2)$ on a $0\text{-}255$ scale.

  The strength is similar (but not strictly equal) as VapourSynth-BM3D due to differences in implementation. (coefficient normalization is not implemented, for example)

  Default [3,3,3].

• block_step, bm_range, radius, ps_num, ps_range:

  Same as those in VapourSynth-BM3D.

  If chroma is set to True, only the first value is in effect.

  Otherwise an array of values may be specified for each plane (except radius).

  Note: It is generally not recommended to take a large value of ps_num as current implementations do not take duplicate block-matching candidates into account during temporary searching, which may leads to regression in denoising quality. This issue is not present in VapourSynth-BM3D.

  Note2: Lowering the value of "block_step" will be useful in reducing blocking artifacts at the cost of slower processing.

• chroma:

  CBM3D algorithm. clip must be of YUV444PS format.

  Y channel is used in block-matching of chroma channels.

  Default False.

• device_id:

  Set Metal GPU device to be used (for systems with multiple GPUs).

  Default 0.

• fast:

  Enables multi-threaded copy between CPU and GPU, consuming 4x more memory.

  • Apple Silicon: Enabling this option will degrade performance. Keep it disabled.
  • Intel Mac with AMD discrete GPU: May (or may not) provide slight performance improvement.

  Default: False.

• extractor_exp:

  Used for deterministic (bitwise) output.

  Pre-rounding is employed for associative floating-point summation.

  The value should be a positive integer not less than 3, and may need to be higher depending on the source video and filter parameters.

  Default 0. (non-determinism)

• zero_init:

  This parameter only has an effect in temporal mode (radius > 0).

  It controls the output of planes that are not being processed (i.e., where sigma is set to 0).

  • True (default): Unprocessed planes will be filled with zeros (resulting in a black image).
  • False: Unprocessed planes will contain uninitialized data, which may appear as garbage or random noise.

  This parameter has no effect in spatial mode (radius = 0), as unprocessed planes are copied from the source clip. It also has no effect on planes that are actively being denoised.

  Default: True.

Notes

• bm3d.VAggregate should be called after temporal filtering, as in VapourSynth-BM3D. Alternatively, you may use the BM3Dv2() interface for both spatial and temporal denoising in one step.

• The Metal implementation uses Metal Shading Language for GPU kernels, providing efficient computation on Apple platforms.

Statistics

GPU memory consumptions:

(ref ? 4 : 3) * (chroma ? 3 : 1) * (fast ? 4 : 1) * (2 * radius + 1) * size_of_a_single_frame

Compute complexity:

(chroma ? 3 : 1) * ceil((width - 8) / block_step + 1) * ceil((height - 8) / block_step + 1) * ((2 * bm_range + 1) * (2 * bm_range + 1) + 2 * radius * ps_num * (2 * ps_range + 1) * (2 * ps_range + 1)) * (ref ? 1.5 : 1) + (radius > 0 ? width * height * (chroma ? 3 : 1) * 2 * radius : 0)

Benchmarks

input: 1920x1080

• chroma=False: GrayS
• chroma=True: YUV444PS

data format: fps

radius	chroma	final	M2 Pro 32GB (macOS 15.6.1)	M4 16GB (macOS 26.1)
0	False	False	120.31	173.74
0	False	True	102.20	102.86
0	True	False	56.09	71.08
0	True	True	48.20	49.18
1	False	False	63.20	71.56
1	False	True	57.61	51.07
1	True	False	29.03	24.93
1	True	True	25.03	25.39
2	False	False	44.35	58.43
2	False	True	39.69	53.94
2	True	False	20.34	16.46
2	True	True	18.46	11.99

Compilation

Requires CMake 3.20 or later, Xcode Command Line Tools, and VapourSynth's Python package.

python3 -m pip install -U "VapourSynth>=74"

cmake -S . -B build -D CMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Release

cmake --build build --config Release

The compiled dynamic library (libbm3dmetal.dylib) will be located in the build/lib directory. Copy it to your VapourSynth plugins directory.

If CMake cannot locate VapourSynth's headers from Python, pass -D VAPOURSYNTH_INCLUDE_DIRECTORY="/path/to/vapoursynth/include".

License

This project is licensed under the GNU General Public License v3.0 or later (GPLv3+).

Based on VapourSynth-BM3DCUDA by WolframRhodium, which is licensed under GPLv2 or later.