The Upscale Project (aka Project Upscale)

[spaceboy710]

I also was going to pop in and beg for a tutorial. I'd love to experiment with upscaling.

[Stamper]

spoRv, I'm trying a thing, PanUp style, blending different versions of the old T2 master.

I'm going first to try having the 2015 mixed with the Lionsgate 2006 as it appears to have been free or automatic damage repair.

In order to achieve best result, do I have to go directly 4K and upscale, or can I just stay 1080p?

Also with PanUp, I suppose my final blend has to come up at 100% (ie 30% of 2006 and 70% of 2015), as if not, I can get under exposed or over exposed footage?

[spoRv]

Probably best result would be to upscale each version to final resolution; also using different upscale methods and mixing weight will make a difference - you need to test a bit (or a lot).

Under/over exposed: no idea!

[DVDUprez]

I have been messing around with DVD upscaling for awhile. While what you state is true "problem is I can't magically make SD into HD. You can never create detail that isn't there". You can definitely make it more enjoyable at least from a distance compared to the original. Up close while better at times can see more noise/artifacts due to scaling/sharping. I don't really care on the format 4:3 or 16:9 but prefer 16:9 if available. I'm mainly just doing old or out of print dvds and tv shows/vhs rips. Sometime I'll to 1080p to 2160p if something I really like and so far a 2160p hasn't been released. Like I loved Sidekicks as a kid and happened to get find a dvd and ripped it. Was better at 2160p but could still tell the age, however, Amazon just released a 1080p copy that I'm upping to 2160p to replace the dvd one. If anyone is interested I can post some pictures later, the 2160p should be finished tonight with denoise/sharp/little saturation/contrast to brighten a little. Wanting to look into LUTs and HDR or as close as I can get eventually.

[CloakedDragon97]

Is this project still active?

[PDB]

Is this project still active?

This project was dead but I'm thinking about picking it back up.

I still have ~2000 DVDs that I like to watch but in the world of 4K TVs they present diminishing returns. Especially since modern TV's aren't the best at taking 480i (NTSC) to 1080p or even 2160p. A lot of modern TVs focus on scaling 1080p to 2160p and above. So in that light, I have always had an idea to upscale my whole DVD collection so I'm able to watch them better on modern equipment.

I have been experimenting with this on two fronts, upscaling and color. The goal with the upscaling part is to get the best amount of details in the shortest amount of (upscaling) time. Say upscaling a DVD in two days versus taking a week. The question is: does the extra processing yield details that are worth it? Before I would of said yes but in lieu of upscaling hundreds of DVDs, I'm trying to find the mix of best details in the shortest timeframe.

The second part is color, specifically applying my CRT Project LUTs to old DVDs. Of course I'm on the lookout and first targeting those DVDs with unique color timing. Ones that would be useful for future projects. But I'm also looking at DVDs that seem uninteresting until you apply my CRT LUT. At that point they might be useful for future projects.

For example, the first DVD I was looking at is the old NTSC anamorphic Rambo: First Blood Part 2 (Rambo 2). I still have the DVD since it has a old 2 channel mix. Since this was an old DVD, it had all the hallmarks of CRT color timing. Pink and red skies for example. I then applied the CRT LUT to see how close it looked to the new UHD and the 35mm pics posted recently on ebay.

Upscale Testing


Original Colors


Colors Testing


And it was surprising in the ballpark of colors. So what other DVDs have useful colors.

In brainstorming here, I might just start upscaling these DVDs and post them on here. If there is enough interesting, I will host one or two online for people to procure. I'm curious to see how far I can get before I get burn out.

[CSchmidlapp]

Its pretty amazing how much you can pull out of a DVD.
If you're not already, have a play with this https://github.com/Alexkral/AviSynthAiUpscale

[PDB]

Its pretty amazing how much you can pull out of a DVD.
If you're not already, have a play with this https://github.com/Alexkral/AviSynthAiUpscale

Better than the original DVD, certainly not real HD.

You know I tried to get that working in avisynth

https://fanrestore.com/thread-3330-post-...l#pid63800

but for the life of me I couldn't get it working. Need to try again.

Are the results better then SR or VEAI, CSchmidlapp?

[CSchmidlapp]

Better than the original DVD, certainly not real HD.

You know I tried to get that working in avisynth

https://fanrestore.com/thread-3330-post-...l#pid63800

but for the life of me I couldn't get it working. Need to try again.

Are the results better then SR or VEAI, CSchmidlapp?

Ive not had the chance to use VEAI, as the app was crashing my computer!

I don't remember having any problems setting up AI upscale in avisynth, but I may have been lucky

Ive been playing with a combination of both SR() and AI Upscale in avisynth on SD material.
I use SR() to upscale (and back down) to 1024 x 576 or 1280 x 720, and AI Upscale from there.

Ive also used the AIUpscale in my past masters stuff to upscale the color channels (UV parts of the YUV) before applying corrections and LUTS ect.
It's quite quick as well, and im still rocking a RX480 and a i7 3770 processor.
It's well worth playing with if you can, and I personally see better results with this than any other upscale method I've used.
Although that Rambo picture above is pretty impressive

[captainsolo]

This project was dead but I'm thinking about picking it back up.
I still have ~1000 DVDs that I like to watch but in the world of 4K TVs they present diminishing returns. Especially since modern TV's aren't the best at taking 480i (NTSC) to 1080p or even 2160p. A lot of modern TVs focus on scaling 1080p to 2160p and above. So in that light, I have always had an idea to upscale my whole DVD collection so I'm able to watch them better on modern equipment.

Your results are very interesting. Have you ever been able to try a late model Sony crt or hdcrt with the red push removal feature? That has breathed new life into all my DVDs and now I can't watch them on an lcd or plasma which is nowhere near as pretty to look at for DVDs. If only it wasn't massive and didn't have the phosphor trailing-otherwise it'd be perfect.