How to make VHS look good at 720p?
I get it that SD video is captured at 480i. But I've got a project in mind where I'd like to make some downloadable YouTube videos using some footage which was taped aboard a steaming battleship in the 1980s. Obviously it's not possible to do a re-shoot! I'd like to edit in some still photos at points in the video when I want to show something in higher resolution. I'd like to make the final video 720p, or possibly 1080p if someone wants a Blu-ray copy. So, if I'm going to be resizing and enlarging SD video from a VHS source (lossless captures with an AIW card), what's the way to make it look as good as possible?
Got a render running from the capture right now; might be able to upload a few clips after it finishes. |
In today's standards 720p doesn't make any sense anymore, There is no native 720p displays left and it is not a multiple integer of neither 480 nor 1080, Therefore when you resize to 720p you get the first resize in software from 480 to 720 and the second resize during viewing from 720 to 1080/4K inside the TV or media player, since each resize is lossy you get double loss there, on top of that Youtube algorithm classifies 720p as SD and applies harsh compression and limits the frame rate to 30fps.
What you want if you must resize is, first de-interlace with QTGMC, crop the edges down to the active video area while respecting the ratio 704:480 for NTSC, then resize to 1440x1080 square pixel, and upload to youtube, That's exactly what I do for youtube. A good reason why you resize to 1080 exactly and not more is that 1080 is a multiple integer of every future resolution, it will be just a matter of line doubling of future displays. |
This won't be popular, but we're starting to dial in some good results with Topaz Video Enchance.
We've recently done a set of cautious 'smart' upscales and had some very good results, the deblocking and NR beats anything I've now seen with any other method including NeatVideo/Denoiser III and the usual AVISynth suspects, it doesn't take hours to do it either. It's taken a bit of time to dial in some settings, but we're starting to use it more-and-more, we've done some full HD upscales, and whilst they don't look like HD footage they're more watchable on modern devices we're finding. I know it'll be an unpopular opinion, but we're finding some very interesting results with it if you're cautious, feed it good footage, and experiment with the settings. If you can post up a small sample (10 seconds or so) I'll quickly run it through our settings. |
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vmHJyF_XxT0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LW6XWp9e5ws For analog captures, there is nothing that Neat Video or Topaz Video Enhance AI can do that couldn't be achieved or beaten with Vapoursynth or Avisynth. Some discussion we had in the past: https://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?t=183124 https://forum.videohelp.com/threads/...-AI-discussion https://forum.videohelp.com/threads/...Topaz-products https://forum.videohelp.com/threads/...video-denoiser Edit: IMO it was better to open a specific thread rather than adding contributions here. It is a very hot topic ;) |
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I'm sure that many of these things can be replicated, however I work in quite a different market and can only report what I find. I will have a flick through these when I get a moment, however without opening them I can feel pages and pages of debate, pages of AVISynth script etc which are great and I'm sure very, very good - however when you're working on about $6US/hour quite often for footage they're not practial. But I don't want to start a debate there, I have my business model, others have theirs, those with time or restoring their own footage will have their own thoughts and opinions and rightly so. It's just interesting to experiment and let people draw their own conclusions on cost/benefit analysis. You've also used 'Arthemis' in the comparison of yours that I opened, it's very poor with VHS footage. For the avoidance of all doubt: This is just something I've been experimenting with, I know from previous experience that this could well be misrepresented as 'RR hates AVISyth, he destroys customers footage etc' both of which are entirely untrue - all I'm trying to represent is that I've had very good (and fast) results in experiments with a useful GUI interface, that's all..... |
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I am putting all the needed effort on my videos, cause I do not have constraints. If you need quick and acceptable results Topaz VEAI and Neat Video (with the right settings!) are a good option. Edit: Quote:
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We're always experimenting with different options, but what we've dialled in certainly looks good to our eyes, but as I said, we're just experimenting at the moment. Anyway, let's steer this back. I've found Topaz interesting and with some fiddling, it's possible to get some very good, fast and easy to operate results. AVISynth (et. al.) I know have sublimely good video restoration tools (and they're by the far the bulk of what we use) but let's not overlook some other stuff. I can also agree entirely with others that the deinterlacer is not beaten by QTGMC. |
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Then you process: deinterlace, upscale. You must make wise choices here. You can, for example, deinterlace wrong, and actually lower the resolve/detail of the source. That's what happens when folks blindly use the QTGMC preset "slower". Slower blurs. The speed has nothing to do with quality, but rather the time needed to run the filters in the QTGMC preset. The fringes are generally bad, and slower is a fringe setting. You can opt for a better detail-retaining preset like "faster", or simply manually set QTGMC and not use presets. Next comes the choice in scaling. Don't get bamboozled by marketing BS from the likes of Topaz. The scaler should only scale. Sharpening is a separate concept, don't cram them together like the Topaz goobers. You must deinterlace first. Then the generally sharpen and NR, scale (enlarge), and usually have to sharpen and NR again. When you scale, you emphasize noise and problems. Quote:
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But he mentioned Blu-ray, which assume dual usage. So a better mastery copy is wanted, not merely Youtube. Make the Youtube version, to whatever ridiculous specs they insist on (for now), after the mastery copy is made for multi-use. Like the Blu-ray. Quote:
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As you said, filtering the trolls, those threads are a high value examples! |
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I use Proteus-6 (the one with the 'levers') which does allow some element of control, if you dial it in just right it can look very good. But this wasn't a thread about Topaz, I was just reporting some results that I've had. 'Your mileage may vary' as I believe our North American cousins say. |
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First, let me thank all participants for the good discussion last night while I slept. Some further amplification on my intentions in this project: First, the source material was taped aboard USS Missouri (BB-63) underway in the Pacific between Pearl Harbor and Long Beach. I was serving aboard the ship at that time, and the Navy has a "Tiger Cruise" program in which they sometimes permit guests to come aboard for the last leg of a long deployment. At the time we were returning from a six-month deployment to the Persian Gulf for Operation Earnest will in 1987, and so when we stopped in Pearl all of the sailors who could be spared took early leave and flew home to the mainland, while our guests flew out to Hawaii and took their berths for the trip back home to Long Beach.
My father flew out to join me, and he brought his VHS camcorder. After a little give-and-take he was allowed to use it onboard, with very few restrictions. He taped about five hours of material, and after a little digging in the closet I found it. I had found one of the tapes about two years ago (hence the 2019 capture date on the clips following), but I just dug the other two out very recently. Battleship New Jersey museum has a very popular string of YouTube videos produced around the ship, and I was struck by the notion that a similar series based on this material which was taped with the ship actually in operation might also find an audience. While YouTube is the primary distribution channel, I also wanted to be able to offer hard copies on Blu-ray at essentially cost of distribution and postage (I don't want to get into the legalities of having to research and obtain releases from other sailors in the videos, especially those who may be dead!) for those who want optimum quality. I have an interview to go to across town and I need to get dressed and leave right away, but I wanted to upload a couple of brief samples. One is about a 45 second clip discussing the operation of the after steering gear in mp4 format (converted by Vdub2 FFmpeg), while the other is 400 lossless frames from the same clip as a direct stream copy from the original capture. Let's see what we can do with these. I do have Neat Video v5 for both VirtualDub and Resolve in my toolkit, but not Topaz. |
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Attachment 14211 Also should note, AI in the form of a neural network is used in the scaling part of the QTGMC deinterlacer, nnedi3. It's somewhat primitive in comparison to the topaz ai as I think it's only using it to detect/connect lines though it works reasonably well without causing weird artifacts. |
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Training/modelling it's not easy at all, but so far the achieved results on live video do not entirely satisfy me. However I see a lot of development activity on the VapourSynth filters (VSGAN and similar), so I will keep an eye on it! I use (excellent) Nnedi3 every (rare) time I wish to upscale and QTGMC every time I want to deinterlace, but it is a sort of NN, I would not call it AI. Edit: the experiement you show is interesting, but that plastic look is (one of) what we dislike in Topaz VEAI. Not easy to find the good compromise... |
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Let's look at the math: A general rule for upscale, at least in the old days (and I see no reason why it's not still good advice), is to never 2x+ it. If it goes over 2x, it needs to be stepped, unless it's a perfect multiple. This pre-dates my digital video days, way back to basic digital photography. That's probably why the Avisynth "rpow2" operates much in the same fashion, a 2x multiplier. 480 > 720 is a perfect 1.5 480 > 1080 is a less ideal 2.25 720 > 1080 is another perfect 1.5 That matters substantially with aliasing. Quote:
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Upscaling in steps is probably a better method because the math and because you can add a lighter sharpening at each step, producing less banding and artifacts then do it once on the final video, but for youtube upload is not worth imho
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Rule of thumb in upscaling the higher the upscaling ratio the lower the resizing artifacts, It's math. From 480 to 1080 the ratio is 2.25 meaning that every 4 lines are rendered into 9 new lines, 480 to 720 has the ratio 1.5 meaning that every 2 lines are rendered into 3 new lines (yikes), So the resizing artifacts are far apart in the first case than in the second case not to mentien that the damage is repeated again when going from 720 to 1080 and just hope that the TV or media player has better upscaling than what Vdub can give with different resizing filters.
As you can see stepping always incur a loss because the approximation. Whenever an image is rescaled or resampled, it will suffer from one or more of the following artifacts: Aliasing / moire Loss of frequency response / blurriness Ringing / halos |
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With that logic, 4K would be better than 1080p. That's ... no. :question: In a world without aliasing, I guess so. But with aliasing as a factor? Nope. |
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