Upscaling Software (Similar to upscaling set-top DVD players) for the PC

[QuadcoreHD]

I've been on this Forum for a while, so I feel like I should know better, but I have a super newb-related question :P

Is there a program for the PC that will upscale a DVD while it is playing. So, similar to an upscaling DVD plyer (such as the DVD player built-in to the PS3, as well as countless set-top upscaling players) it will upscale a 480p DVD to a higher resolution. I was not a believer in this technology until recenlty watching some DVD's on a friend's PS3 (which is connected via HDMI to his 1080 52inch Bravia LCD) and they looked suprisingly good....close to true HD I have to admit :P

Anyway, I'm basically looking for software that either plays back, or runs during playback, and upscales.

Thanks as always all!

~Q

[Sharktooth]

i'd say "not even close to true HD"...
however MPC-HC has some choices on upscaling filters.

[setarip_old]

@QuadcoreHD

Hi!

I believe PowerDVD performs upconverting when playing standard DVDs...

[DJ Bobo]

I didn't try the latest PowerDVD, since v8 was loaded with junk and messed up with my energy profiles which were disabled every time I loaded it and weren't restored afterwards.
So I tried WinDVD 9 Plus, which is simply great, 'cause it doesn't mess up with my energy profiles and doesn't come with any superfluous junk.
It has that All2HD function, which is pretty convincing I have to admit:
http://img217.imageshack.us/img217/8817/corelwindvd9plusall2hd.th.jpg (http://img217.imageshack.us/my.php?image=corelwindvd9plusall2hd.jpg)
Look at the shirt for instance.

[Didée]

DJ Bobo, what has (playback at NTSC resolution) + (simple sharpening inclusive creating edge halos) to do with the thread topic of "Upscaling" ?

You want to show some 1920x1080 screencaps to show how convincing it is ... ?


A quickie: Peeling off the effect from the right & laying it over the left ...
http://img220.imageshack.us/img220/7641/switcheffect2.th.png (http://img220.imageshack.us/my.php?image=switcheffect2.png) (switch forth-back between this and yours)

[shinedot]

i would choose between windvd and powerdvd
i tested both and results are poor anyway :/

[DJ Bobo]

@ Didée
That's the way WinDVD captures things. I have yet to find an option that would allow me to modify the way it captures, 'cause obviously it's upscaling to 1280x720 (that's what the info panel says anyway)
And hey, it's a PAL DVD :p

[EDIT]
OK, here a capture in fullscreen mode if that makes you happy (1366x768, the native resolution of my LCD :p)
http://img205.imageshack.us/img205/8273/windvd9plusall2hdfullsc.th.jpg (http://img205.imageshack.us/my.php?image=windvd9plusall2hdfullsc.jpg)

[CruNcher]

WinDVD has no real Super Resolution it's a plain sharpening filter :) try Cyberlink or Arcsoft products instead soon also Nero, though you need a supported GPU either ATI Stream or Nvidia CUDA to make use of it for Realtime Upscaling :)

http://www.arcsoft.com/public/feature_comparison.asp?productGroup=tmt3 <- SimHD = Super Resolution (Software/Cuda/Stream)
http://www.cyberlink.com/eng/press_room/view_2062.html <- TrueTheater™ Technology = Not sure if TrueTheaterHD is Super Resolution if it is it's only a Software based one or can't be used with GPU Decoding (which makes no sense)

For now it really seems only Arcsoft can Deliver true Realtime Super Resolution on GPU though it seems they want to sell that extra Research in form of a Plugin according to those information on their site (Feature Comparison Table) :P

Though it's the only Real working Super Resolution GPU implementation available in DVD Software Players :) http://video.aol.com/video-detail/amd-arcsoft-simhd-/524680174 also they showed it on Nvidia @ CES http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7yqGkqObma0

Arcsoft Total MediaTheatre 3 has been released http://www.arcsoft.com/public/feature_comparison.asp?productGroup=tmt3

[DJ Bobo]

WinDVD has no real Super Resolution it's a plain sharpening filter :)
May be. The option has a slider which is definitely about sharpening (left = softer, right = crisper). The screenshot was taken with the default position (in the middle).

PowerDVD is no option. Since v8, it has become a piece of junk with all sorts of useless functions and as said, it messes up with my energy profiles which I dislike like hell! WinDVD does mess up with the energy profile, but only if I experiment and enable and disable things, but once settled, it won't change anything anymore.

Don't know about that ArcSoft software, never tried it.

[CruNcher]

You should try Arcsoft Products imho that company is the new Star @ the ISV Multimedia Heaven :) and they sort of Innovative at least they are fast with implementing the new Stuff :)
They didn't reached Cyberlink yet in Terms of GUI Design but their Algorithm and Dshow work (same for Nero) is much better (the core of the applications) :)
Their Player is currently the most versaitaile of all with Supporting everything from File Playback to Commercial Grade stuff like DVD,HD-DVD and Blu-Ray :) and it seems as i could see investigating their stuff they already work on their own GPU Encoding too :)

[DJ Bobo]

From what I see, their SimHD thing is available for CUDA only right now, so even if I download the trial, I won't get anything better than what I'm getting with WinDVD right now, so why bother?

And I don't think their software will be able to replace MPC-HC with its DXVA and shaders support.

[MysticE]

I've been on this Forum for a while, so I feel like I should know better, but I have a super newb-related question :P

Is there a program for the PC that will upscale a DVD while it is playing. So, similar to an upscaling DVD plyer (such as the DVD player built-in to the PS3, as well as countless set-top upscaling players) it will upscale a 480p DVD to a higher resolution. I was not a believer in this technology until recenlty watching some DVD's on a friend's PS3 (which is connected via HDMI to his 1080 52inch Bravia LCD) and they looked suprisingly good....close to true HD I have to admit :P

~Q
I think you are giving way to much credit to "this (upscaling) technology" and ignoring the very sophisticated image processing technology that Blu-Ray players (and even Toshiba's HD-DVD players) possess.

A friend has a new Pansonic Blu-ray player hooked to his Panasonic 1080 plasma. Both support 1080/24p output, the PQ and smoothness of a high action DVD movie was simply amazing, not HD, but I was amazed at what many of the new BD players can do with standard DVD.

[CruNcher]

DJ Bobo it doesn't try to replace it it has their own Market and i just talking about this Market well sure MPC-HC is the most versatile File Player but you can't say that about the License needed parts (except DVD which was RE very fast back then) also Security Problematic parts of it which will never be Open Sourced more probably we have to wait for some clever guys to fully RE BD+ in at least in terms of it's inner working to reach that :) though with the Confidential Papers only available on a Higher Level it wont happen that fast maybe even never we aren't in the times of DVD anymore the other side evolved in keeping their stuff more Secret :D

@MysticE
What you see their and describe is Toshibas and Panasonics own Super Resolution Postpro Algorithms (every big Vendor has their own like Hitachi or Sony) :D

[DJ Bobo]

@ cruncher
I'm not really looking for an all-in-one solution. I'm perfectly fine with the idea of having a software especially designed for DVD-playback only.
WinDVD definitely needs a lot of improvement in the performance department, it feels very heavy despite the X2 processor and the All2HD feature could use less horse power, but I don't see any better solution on the market right now.

[CruNcher]

Then you also should try Cyberlink PowerDVD 9 it has the same kind of Sharpening like WinDVD :)

http://s7b.directupload.net/images/090327/u9waocwf.png[/URL]

[DJ Bobo]

Naa, I don't think it has become better than v8.
Might just stick to good old v7, which is still the best version for Windows Vista imho: no energy profile mess up, clean programming, light interface, no junk.
If I was using Windows XP, I'd probably go straight back to v5!
Who needs upscaling anyway? :D

[CruNcher]

PowerDVD imho is still very clean coded (very modular) you can easily adapt it to your needs if you know how it is buildup (removing all the internet crap and so on) :)
I dont like WinDVDs GUI still being ActiveX based that was crazy from the beginning :D
Arcsoft has a very fast Menu Rendering Engine compared to both other also the most File Playback options and their Video Filters are one of the best :)
Nero Showtime didn't used that for a long time since it was buggy like hell in the beginning but it seems its not that bad anymore :P

[DJ Bobo]

OK, I went and downloaded the trial of PowerDVD 9... CRAP! the PowerDVD 8 "features" (read: junk) came all along of course (Moovix, etc). But what amazed me the most is... the broken hardware acceleration!! With PowerDVD 7 and 8, HA works, but with v9 => black screen! I only hear the sound! Deleted right away!
And True Theater looked worse to me than All2HD (messed up colors?)

Actually, the most stable DVD player on my machine is WinDVD 8. It is as light as PD7, but it allows me to change the deinterlacing mode on the fly, which isn't possible on my PC with PD7 (strange?)
But it doesn't have the upscaling feature, which is only available in WinDVD 9, which downside is the heaviness on the system.

So, as far as I'm concerned, I would say, WinDVD 9 has the better looking upscaling.
For everybody else that doesn't need (fake?) upscaling, I would say, stick with PowerDVD 7 or WinDVD 8, whichever your system works best with (again, can say nothing about ArcSoft's software, I'm not in the mood of trying it, I'll leave that to Cruncher :p)
Indeed, nothing beats hardware decoding! :rolleyes:

[Dark Eiri]

PowerDVD9 works fine for me (and amazing, should I say). Their upscaler is really good (not nearly as good as anything HD, though) and the motion filter is easily the best on the market. I still don't like 60fps movies, but the movement is flawless and not un-natural like Bobbing film, for instance. And the hardware acceleration works fine, though, if you enable it, the upscaler and the motion filter are automatically disabled.

[CruNcher]

http://www.arcsoft.com/public/software_title.asp?ProductID=378&dyContent=LANG_DETAIL#submenu

20$ wow ok compared to the research that gone into it, gonna blast PowerDVD9 and WinDVD9 upscaling into pieces though ;)

@Dark Eiri
that Hardware accelleration is disabled means it can't work on the surface and that suggests it's Software Preprocessing and if it's indeed SR you should see heavy CPU Usage when activating it :P

Arcsofts on the other side works fine in combination with Hardware Decoding :)

Will be interesting to see what Nero now comes up with, their GPU Encoding should come soon now for Move and for sure they also have some Super Resolution stuff in their Box somewhere for Showtime :)


After 20 years of Military and Academic Research we finaly see Super Resolution stuff apearing in the Consumer Space and in Hardware that alone is great, definetly the beginning was DeeMons Video Enhancer http://www.thedeemon.com/VideoEnhancer/ and now Arcsoft is successoring it with the Help of Nvidia/Ati onto the GPU and Realtime Space same as MotionDSP does with Vreveal and Cuda, hope we gonna see more SR GPU implementations soon like from MSU/YuvSoft and other Researchers :)

720x480 upscaled to 1920x1080 in Realtime (with just 15% CPU Utilization) without any Halloing sounds major i hope we gonna see more also that can be used not only for MPG-2 Processing but Generaly for every Compressed Video (of course Super Resolution Output Quality Depends on the Input Quality) :)

i was allready amazed with 1080i->1080p Realtime conversion on the GPU 1 year ago but that here tops it, it really shows how powerfull that little piece of silicon is it makes the Mythbuster Mona Lisa Painting become understandable and just imagine that you can do all stuff @ once Decoding (being not Part of the Shader but it's own Chip),Motion Adaptive Deinterlacing, Super-Resolution, Motion Adaptive Denoising, Motion Adaptive Frame Rate Conversion @ the same time :)

Who really still want's to use the CPU for this in his Framework then, we realy need more Avisynth GPU research and portings currently OS lacks behind the commercial Development :(

[cwl7454]

Yes but in order to use the $20.00 addon you need to buy the $90.00 TotalMedia Theatre 3 and have the just right nvidia cards.
"*A compatible NVIDIA graphic card with the latest driver supporting CUDA installed are required. To get yourself ready for viewing standard-definition in near high-definition quality, you will need to install TotalMedia Theatre application first."
You can see a definate improvement watching their transformation display, but for what, watching on a computer monitor. I don't think so, perhaps if you already had a media center for the big screen, then it would make sense.

[DJ Bobo]

Their motorbike demonstration is fake, which discredits them. No way there would be such jaggies on a video that is not resized with their upscaler, because there is always a resizer working in the background. The upscaler is nothing but a better resizer with intelligent sharpening techniques, that's how I understand it anyway.
Same goes for their butterfly comparison. I only see a color modification (higher saturation, easily achievable with any software DVD player).
I think this is all a hype. See how everything is being CUDA-enabled lately, I think Nvidia is trying hard to push its technologies by providing free support to anyone who whishes to implement them (not that I wouldn't do the same to improve my image and broaden my market share = basic business administration strategy, hoping for a higher ROI).
Also, people tend to forget that lower CPU usage means higher GPU usage here. And may be the PC would draw even more power if CUDA is being used (CUDA is not hardware decoding, it's just an interface to run programs on the GPU).
To think that this SimHD technology was first demonstrated on ATi hardware, this all sounds a little bit fishy... licensing royalties? :rolleyes:

[CruNcher]

@cwl7464
Jep the price is heavy for the full suite

@Dj Bobo
They for sure know that the Motorbike Demo isn't quiete ok (pixel neigbouring filter without any filtering though would look like this) i guess Marketing thought they would need something impressive for the visualization a more blurry looking image would have better shown the real difference the HQV test bellow is more accurate on the expectable quality :) (no halloing compared to other resizer, sharper result) and here is how it works sort of http://www.thedeemon.com/articles/what_is_super_resolution.html (they might use a slightly modified algorithm, also new ones are quiete good even with Mobile Phone Videos ;) see MotionDSPs Vreveal its currently even optimized for that Scenario). Compareable Quality wise currently in Avisynth would be Triticals Nedi :)

[DJ Bobo]

Cruncher, you and me may see through it, but a newbie would just say "WOW!", and bang! 110$ are off the table!
At least, Corel is being honest and posting a real demonstration (check the features, you'll find a picture with a (+) sign) Also they're only demanding 60$ for the Plus version (or 80 for the Plus Blu-Ray version)

[CruNcher]

That's how Marketing works and yeah the Corel Demonstration is really more true to their results though as we saw in your example they have to fight with halloing they also dont show that in their results ;) And i fully agree with you about the GPU Power :) though in the end you do much more tasks and so the Power usage becomes sort of acceptable compared to the same on the CPU alone that would be capable only doing 1 task :D

[DJ Bobo]

That's how Marketing works
No, that's how liers work ;)
There is nothing about lying to people in the marketing mix. They got the promotion part wrong, they should go back to the university and get their concepts right :p

[ReinerSchweinlin]

It´s a little off topic, but I just can´t find the correct hints on google or here... With the super resolution technique it should be possible to construct a higher resolution picture from a video-sequence of one scene, maybe a pan over a landscape. The only thing I found was "QE Super Resolution" which seems to do just about that. It´s very outdated and doesn´t seem to be supported anymore.
Doese anyone have some hints or pointers where to look for more infos on this topic or better is there some software to create still images from video footage? Thanx for your help guys.

[CruNcher]

Arcsoft released a new Video showing off SimHD in a side by side compare again, i can't test it because i have some major issue with their application it reboots my PC dunno why that is.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Si678Cbru-8 of course it's also pretty hard to judge anything from a compressed video :)

[deekey777]

http://www.arcsoft.com/forum/forum_posts.asp?TID=2954

SIMHD is now available for HD4000 series, you can download the demo, then install the patch.

But it looks like crap, and PowerDVD9 isn't much better. I get a better picture with DXVA and a little sharpness over CCC (10-15).

[potatochobit]

I tried the ALL2HD in winDVD awhile ago and I really liked it
doesn't work with all DVDs but it is just outstanding for some
and it is only 50$ on amazon atm

but are any of the players able to do the same with AVI and or MKV files? winDVD can play AVI files but the all2HD feature is disabled. Is it because the video files are compressed?

EDIT:
@ DJ bobo
Oh, I wanted to add
powerDVD9 had a bug early this year where the screen was black when using an ATI card
the reason was due to AVIVO compatibility, so if u get the black screen with PowerDVD9 go into the player options and change AVIVO manually to something like vivid. update your player and your ATI drivers, the issue should have been resolved

[nm]

but are any of the players able to do the same with AVI and or MKV files?
mplayer -vf unsharp=l3x3:0.7 ;)

or use the unsharp mask or msharpen filter in ffdshow, they should produce results similar to this sharpening feature in WinDVD. Reducing noise/grain first may also be a good idea.

To avoid haloing and other unwanted artifacts, use one of the sophisticated AviSynth filters (LimitedSharpenFaster, LSFmod, SeeSaw, ...) through ffdshow.