[Proposal] Buffy the Vampire Slayer series remaster

[dvdmike]

There was dnr in the old 4:3 masters also sadly

[narth]

There was dnr in the old 4:3 masters also sadly

There was? Any sources and proof? There seems to be a lot of misinformation floating around about Buffy’s technical details.

[bluebanisters]

Not to bump up this old thread, but I recently decided to test out my own upscaled version of Buffy after originally witnessing the remaster rollout on television back in the day. 
I've seen some other efforts from the Buffy community with their AI upscales, but I wanted to do something a little more involved. 

I used the original R1 DVD sets because the PAL version is lower quality than the NTSC despite the higher resolution.

I processed+filtered the original DVD file a bit to improve the visual quality with minimal degrain and sharpen settings, which alleviated some of the compression issues. 
I also bumped up the gamma because the early seasons were so incredibly dark that you couldn't see anything in some night scenes.

After AI upscaling, I re-grained for 16mm and adjusted the contrast to compensate for my earlier gamma adjustment while keeping some of the shadow detail.

Nothing too crazy, I'm still in the testing phase to see what I can do, so nothing's ready or done yet.
My goal isn't to achieve a "4k" quality, but to create a sense of a "master" quality of the DVDs, which already looks so much better than the remaster.

[Hitcher]

Already a massive improvement over the streaming version. Good luck.

[alexp2000]

Very impressive, is it Topaz you're using or some other upscaler?

[Beber]

Yes, very good improvement indeed. Another member has an ongoing similar project for the extended episodes of "Friends" only available on DVDs. Your process gives fairly good results. I'd like to improve some DVD upscales that way for sure.

[bluebanisters]

Very impressive, is it Topaz you're using or some other upscaler?

Yes! Using Topaz to upscale. Adding film grain in Davinci after improves the image immensely to avoid some of the "AI" look, since the built-in Topaz grain lacks real tweakability like grain color and softness.

[stwd4nder2]

Looks pretty good. I remember something about the PAL DVDs being native widescreen for the later seasons as apposed to the NTSC being 4:3. I'm sure someone knows more then me but that might be worth looking in to.

[FreaQ]

Looks pretty good. I remember something about the PAL DVDs being native widescreen for the later seasons as apposed to the NTSC being 4:3. I'm sure someone knows more then me but that might be worth looking in to.

Yes, that's true. From Season 4 the episodes are 1.78:1 which is incredible hilarious in some scenes, when you see actors waiting for their cue, production rig or shit like that.
So NTSC is the right way forward.

Edit: You would see the same, even more errors since S01-03 are 16:9 now too, in the HD remasters.

[stwd4nder2]

Looks pretty good. I remember something about the PAL DVDs being native widescreen for the later seasons as apposed to the NTSC being 4:3. I'm sure someone knows more then me but that might be worth looking in to.

Yes, that's true. From Season 4 the episodes are 1.78:1 which is incredible hilarious in some scenes, when you see actors waiting for their cue, production rig or shit like that.
So NTSC is the right way forward.

Edit: You would see the same, even more errors since S01-03 are 16:9 now too, in the HD remasters.

The PAL DVDs use a different framing then the HD masters. But maybe there's still issues with them, ti's been a long time since I've looked into this in detail.