The Upscale Project (aka Project Upscale)

[dwalkerdon]

I have the Full Frame 1.33:1 Open Matte DVD version of King Kong (2005) When I crop it to 16:9 using VLC, it looks nearly identical the Open matte Version i downloaded off of a torrent site a while back (but it could be tilt and scanned, like the Matrix Reloaded And The Matrix Revolutions Full Frame DVD's (certain scenes have the sides chopped off, but the image is taller and certain shots were framed for the scope ratio)

[PDB]

Recently picked this project up again. Trying to think of interesting or unique DVDs. Was working on a few different things including the 1999 DVD version of Dracula.

99 DVD Upscaled Bicubic x400/99 DVD My Upscale, grained, deblocked, de-haloed, chroma talk removed x400


I thought it might be a fun upscale since the scan was unique and different from the later DVD and BDs. One thing I wanted to do and still haven't gotten to work is a quick clean-up of dirt/garbage in AVIsynth using something like RemovedirtMC or SE. But haven't gotten those to work yet.

(I could do it in PFClean but don't want to convert this to an image sequence)

[captainsolo]

Whoa!!! I still love that disc and that looks fantastic!

All the 1999 Uni horror DVDs were new/probably from the final super rare Japanese LDs for the first wave but as they were early discs crammed with extras you get all those nasties above. I've never seen that disc look that good!! Most were reused for the 2004 legacy dvd sets with better bitrates and compression but that introduced a few errors like Dracula suddenly having the old censored audio again.

[spoRv]

chroma talk removed

Silly idea: have you tried to just set saturation=0? If not, try it and see if the details are better in the chroma bugged parts.

[PDB]

Well it looks like Gigapixel (GP) has finally released a video version of their program which sort of negates the weeks and weeks I spent scaling individual images into useful video. Initially, I wasn't impressed with Gigapixel until I learned how to deal with its quirks, settings and ignore the preview screen (that is not indicative of the final results). Also having AVIsynth do everything initially except the upscaling helped produce better outcome(s) for GP. Doing a lot of post-processing helps also.

So in keeping with this thread proposal of upscaling unique DVDs lost to time, I decided to upscale the Terminator 2 4:3 DVD. For those that don't know the 4:3 DVD of T2 was a semi-open matte version of T2 prepared under the auspices of James Cameron. The original frame was reformatted to best fit with the CRT screens at the time. It loses some picture but gain more in other dimensions. Overall it presents a version of T2 that is lost to time. One that Cameron really was a big proponent of at the time (read: his infamous Abyss LD letter)..

I've wanted to do a T2 project for a long time but haven't been very successful. I was never happy with my first project and the second which was to be graded to the Japanese Squeeze LD got lost in a HDD crash. So I figured I'd try this as a replacement for those.

So before GP's released of its video program, I upscaled large chunks of T2 and color-corrected it to the ~300 35mm frames I had. Processing runs about 7 frames a min on a good but not great CPU/GPU. That means I was getting 3 to 5 mins of footage done overnight. Not great but almost workable.

So here is some of what I've done so far as now I need to decide to switch to the video app. The frame by frame will probably give better results but its speed makes its results almost unattainable. I'll compare some later but for now here are some test pics the frame by frame way

GP Upscale+ deblocking+dehaloing+anti-aliasing+tiny bit of re-graining and color correction to 35mm frames.

[Stamper]

Like it a lot! But the blue scenes looks a bit off. I would do minimal color timing corrections and concentrate on the good upscale to get the best out of the SD master. Do you think it can beat panup (though in this case there is only one DVD master)?

[DoomBot]

Except that the original dvd color timing is absolute crap.

[Stamper]

That DVD is way different from all the others masters, that's for sure

I would just dial back the red tint. Cameron probably spent more hours on this Pan & Scan version than he ever did on the original scope version masters.

[PDB]

Like it a lot! But the blue scenes looks a bit off.

Except it seems the blue is theatrically accurate. I have collected a lot of 35mm examples of that scene



which are further collaborated by examples from another separate 35mm print and an 8mm print. And then also from a telecine boot I have



All the other video masters are white balance more neutral. They had a chance to fix it for the 4K and what did they do? Turned it green:

https://caps-a-holic.com/c.php?go=1&a=0&...30&i=4&l=0

I would do minimal color timing corrections and concentrate on the good upscale to get the best out of the SD master.

Except that the original dvd color timing is absolute crap.

Its bad. Its the same thing as all the masters of that time. White balance it and then add a red bias.

DVD/My Upscale


I can’t use that dvd’s truly awful colors. I'm going to try to make this as theatrically accurate as I can with the resources I have at hand.

Do you think it can beat panup (though in this case there is only one DVD master)?

I don't claim to know how panup works so I can't say. That's a question for spoRv.

In other news I tried Gigapixel (GP) video last night. I tired it versus the exist GP image (aka upscaling frame by frame) and there was zero competition. The frame by frame was vastly superior at delivering a better picture. I was disappointed really because I was hoping to get a faster method than what I have at the moment. The only advantage I saw was that GP video produced 14 frames a min vs GP image's 7. Only problem was video kept switch between an ETA of an hour and 13 mins. Neither of which was true as the timespan to render was really several hours. It also had a hard time with my GPU. It would see it but not use it. After several reboots I got it to render via it.

I also tried it versus my old method of uspscaling via superres and nnedi_rpow and found the output similar in look. Problem is SR/nnedi was faster at 1 to 2fps.

I would love for someone to check my findings. I still hope this is a faster way to use GP for video. Maybe I missed something or had the wrong setting...

[deleted user]

I love the color grading you applied. What bothers me a little are the artifacts in some images, especially considering they're downscaled. But I guess it remains to be seen how it looks in motion. Either way, I look forward to watching this a lot.