Resizing (Upscaling) is Removing Details?!...

[2Bdecided]

Come on DJ Bobo - even your own avatar benefits from better upsampling than bicubic!

See attached pic (when cleared by mods) - your avatar resized by x2.

left = nnedi2
right = bicubic

Of course, when you're backing up your own DVDs, it doesn't matter how you upscale because you can always go back to your master SD copy if you later find that you can do better. ;)

Cheers,
David.

[*.mp4 guy]

If your mind is set on upsampling, and you want advice on that, you should post a completely unprocessed sample cut directly from the .VOB.

[Typhoon859]

I'm stunned to see people giving this guy help on upscaling a 4:3 DVD source to 16:9 720p!
Typhoon, what you're doing is the biggest mistake of all times! You want the perfect rip? Encode at 704x480 (by cropping the black side bars), apply a gentle temporal smoother* (eventually a light spatial smoother too) and encode at the highest bitrate you can afford.
Just make sure you specify 4:3 as aspect ratio when muxing to mkv.
Will look 1000 times better than what you're showing here and detail loss will be minimal. Make sure to enable Bicubic Resizing within MPC HC to ensure a sharp look while playback in full screen.

*something like this: TemporalSoften(2,4,8,15,2)

It's not 4:3... Where did you get that the VOB source is 4:3? Look, I already showed a capture of an encoder who upscaled to 720p, same as me, and the result was phenomenal. The only thing that I felt was a problem was that he used too high settings for warpsharp. Otherwise, the result was great and it had none of the problems that mine had due to the resize. After I get my AVS script correct, I will post the non-upscaled encode with those settings and then the upscaled one. That's when we'll see whose right or wrong. At this point, you would appear to be right considering the mess that happened now, but, since i know it's possible for this not to happen, I will continue to try to get it right. Till then...

*If you want, I can upload the VOB which is only 47.5MB and you can try some things out for yourself and compare with that same frame. Or a different one, doesn't matter.

[Typhoon859]

While I'll be impressed if it turns out that way, you can upscale anime far better than a simple bicubic resize!

Did anyone mention EEDI2 or NNEDI yet?

Cheers,
David.

Yes, NNEDI has been mentioned. Here's a script that was recommended for me to try, as opposed to mine.
ConvertToYV12()

Toon(0.25)
dfttest(sigma=1.6, tbsize=3)
AAA(chroma=true)
NNEDI(1,dh=true).TurnLeft().NNEDI(1,dh=true).TurnRight()
aWarpSharp(24,4,0.3,1)
LimitedSharpenFaster(edgemode=1,strength=200,ss_x=1,ss_y=1)
spline36Resize(1280,720)

I'm having trouble dfttest to work because I don't know how to install FFTW. I feel slow...

[DJ Bobo]

*looooooooool*
Typhoon, you wanna teach me something about DBZ????
Want me to be specific? The screenshot you posted is from the 9th movie "Bojack", 32nd minute. Do I hear jingle bells?
Go check your DGIndex infos again, you'll see that the aspect ratio is 4:3.

[Typhoon859]

*looooooooool*
Typhoon, you wanna teach me something about DBZ????
Want me to be specific? The screenshot you posted is from the 9th movie "Bojack", 32nd minute. Do I hear jingle bells?
Go check your DGIndex infos again, you'll see that the aspect ratio is 4:3.

It's not... It's 16:9... And who said anything about teaching you about DBZ?... I just said I could post the trailer VOB so that you can try encoding it if you wanted...

[DJ Bobo]

Oh crap, on a second thought, you seem to have a different DVD from mine.
Here a screenshot from mine:
http://img93.imageshack.us/img93/8793/bojackscreenshotaw2.th.jpg (http://img93.imageshack.us/my.php?image=bojackscreenshotaw2.jpg)
Yours seems to be cropped. Damn Funimation, truly! worst company ever! the "new" release got worse than the original one!

[Typhoon859]

Oh crap, on a second thought, you seem to have a different DVD from mine.
Here a screenshot from mine:
http://img93.imageshack.us/img93/8793/bojackscreenshotaw2.th.jpg (http://img93.imageshack.us/my.php?image=bojackscreenshotaw2.jpg)
Yours seems to be cropped. Damn Funimation, truly! worst company ever! the "new" release got worse than the original one!

Lol, that's absolutely not true. It has more footage on the sides though and the Remastered quality of these DVDs are amazing.

[kemuri-_9]

what's this source again, one of the DBZ movies?

iirc, Funimation has released the movies on Blu-ray, so why not use those to get 720p rather than upscaling to 720p from 480p?

[Typhoon859]

what's this source again, one of the DBZ movies?

iirc, Funimation has released the movies on Blu-ray, so why not use those to get 720p rather than upscaling to 720p from 480p?

I don't have a Blu-Ray player drive on my computer, one, and two, they put the same exact footage on DVD as they did on Blu-Ray. The difference is, they upscaled for me. Plus, that's besides the point. The picture is just an example.

[DJ Bobo]

@ 2bdecided
Looks better of course, but I don't think that the result is worth the pain. You would have to put 2 screens side by side for me to see the difference, but Bicubic on its own looks sharp enough for me.
I would upscale only if I have to. Like if I've got a 512x384 video that I need to get on DVD-Video or something like that.

@ Typhoon
OK, guess I'm gonna have to show you everything in detail.
Here is a side by side comparison:
http://img258.imageshack.us/img258/6923/comparebojackqv9.th.jpg (http://img258.imageshack.us/my.php?image=comparebojackqv9.jpg)
See how much is missing from your picture on the upper and lower parts? About 96 pixels, that's 20% of the original height!
Normally they would crop 25% to get the 16:9 image, but I guess they worked on a slightly bigger image for the remaster (less crop margin), that's why I have a few pixels missing on the left and right sides.

By the way, the blu-ray is not an upscale from the DVD, it is true 1080p, but as mutilated as the DVD of course, since the 20% are missing on the blu-ray as well.
I invite you to read this review (http://bluray.highdefdigest.com/1519/dragonballz_history_bardock.html) about one of the blu-ray releases. It says:
Worse still, the "widescreen" presentation has been achieved by cropping the original 4:3 image. Not only is this an absolute disservice to diehard fans of the material, it's grossly negligent of the animators' original intent
See how much fun you get when you buy Funimation discs? :mad:

[Typhoon859]

@ 2bdecided
Looks better of course, but I don't think that the result is worth the pain. You would have to put 2 screens side by side for me to see the difference, but Bicubic on its own looks sharp enough for me.
I would upscale only if I have to. Like if I've got a 512x384 video that I need to get on DVD-Video or something like that.

@ Typhoon
OK, guess I'm gonna have to show you everything in detail.
Here is a side by side comparison:
http://img258.imageshack.us/img258/6923/comparebojackqv9.th.jpg (http://img258.imageshack.us/my.php?image=comparebojackqv9.jpg)
See how much is missing from your picture on the upper and lower parts? About 96 pixels, that's 20% of the original height!
Normally they would crop 25% to get the 16:9 image, but I guess they worked on a slightly bigger image for the remaster (less crop margin), that's why I have a few pixels missing on the left and right sides.

By the way, the blu-ray is not an upscale from the DVD, it is true 1080p, but as mutilated as the DVD of course, since the 20% are missing on the blu-ray as well.
I invite you to read this review (http://bluray.highdefdigest.com/1519/dragonballz_history_bardock.html) about one of the blu-ray releases. It says:

See how much fun you get when you buy Funimation discs? :mad:

I know all this. Trust me - this takes me way back to February 2007 when they released the first Season of this remastered product. Personally, I love the widescreen, no matter the 20% cost. The quality is phenomenal and the widescreen gives such a cinematic and much more powerful experience. Say what you want but I support this all the way. I'm not complimenting FUNimation in any way because they're total cheap-asses and take every shortcut. In any case, more people like this than hate this.

EDIT: Btw, the link you sent me for the Blu-Ray review, I would've given the same rating. The quality in that movie was garbage. They screwed up on that one, idk... The rest of the movies are great.

[Typhoon859]

I did some more testing and the reason for the quality loss is the one that I thought. It's pretty much what Didee said. The detail loss is due to the x264 codec processing 1280x720 pixels vs. 720x480 at the same bitrate. That's why there's no loss without the resize - just the x264 codec. I'm an idiot for not realizing that. I always knew this but for some reason, the way I was seeing this process was that the image is processed with the codec and then the resize takes place. That's stupid, I know, but that's the order I was thinking in, due to all the factors that conflicted with the logic, probably also due to the fact that before I was doing this, I was applying the filters in FFDShow (for real-time filtering) where the image isn't reprocessed with the resize, obviously.

Added filters are of course going to help but.. In order to actually get any gain from this upscale, the AVS script would have to be perfect. This frame that I showed of another encoder where the effect didn't happen actually was encoded with a higher bitrate (now that I payed attention to the codec), though, the encoder's script also helped a lot. Without it, as I've tested, the x264 codec still would've destroyed a lot of the details.

*Also, I want to give an apology to you, Didee, for the dispute. I misunderstood the way in which you told me the statement due to the phenomenon of thought's conversion to text XD

[Guest]

I did some more testing and the reason for the quality loss is the one that I thought.
Actually, that's not what you thought. You fought that thesis all the way, claiming that the encoder had no effect. Just for the record. :)

Your gracious capitulation, however, can be an example for us all.

[Typhoon859]

Actually, that's not what you thought. You fought that thesis all the way, claiming that the encoder had no effect. Just for the record. :)

Your gracious capitulation, however, can be an example for us all.

No, I mean, out of all the different reasons thrown at me here, that's the one I thought it most likely to be. I responded with reasons why it wasn't the codec earlier. Those reasons that I gave are what confused me. Now that I sorted it out, I know it to be true.

[2Bdecided]

Your gracious capitulation, however, can be an example for us all.It's nice to see a sense of humour creeping in here. ;)

FWIW, I thought one of the benefits of many _good_ BluRay discs so far (not that I have any!) is that most transfers maintain the aspect ratio correctly - i.e. they're not afraid to include black bars at the sides for 1.333 and 1.667 content, or at the top for 1.8, 2.35, 2.4 etc etc content. It's quite a contrast from certain TV stations around here which try to crop everything to 16x9, no matter how much picture they're removing, or how small the black bars would be.

I think the more BluRay discs are differentiated from other sources by maintaining the correct aspect ratio, the better.

Cheers,
David.

[2Bdecided]

I've been playing around with this for an older animation (http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?t=145102).

I think it makes a useful difference. AVIsynth magic* on the left, original DVD bicubic resize on the right.

* - just temporalsoften, nnedi twice, limitedsharpenfaster twice, spline36resize to final resolution, and limitedsharpenfaster again! Hardly optimal, but it's not bad for a first attempt. Will try harder when I've removed the gate weave.

Cheers,
David.

[Typhoon859]

Alright guys.. Here's the final result.

Original
http://www.mybloop.com/get/3435212/Original.png

Final Result
http://fs10.mybloop.com/image-handler/optimized/48/3511771

[DJ Bobo]

@ 2bdecided
Definitely crisper (w/ appearant edge enhancement though), but doesn't throw me from my chair ;)
But the colors look different, you didn't just upscale, did you? :rolleyes:

@ typhoon
I told you, you're wasting your time. The only noticeable difference is the filtering, definition is practically the same.
PS: FUNimation DVDs are not good start material. Compression artefacts are always "on the house" by them :D
Wanna get blown off? Get the japanese DVDs, these are something! ZERO compression artefacts! And since you're so fond of upscaling, just get yourself a nice DVD player with good upscaling capabilities and then, and only then will you be in for a treat!

[Typhoon859]

@ 2bdecided
Definitely crisper, but doesn't throw me from my chair ;)
But the colors look different, you didn't just upscale, did you? :rolleyes:

@ typhoon
I told you, you're wasting your time. The only noticeable difference is the filtering, definition is practically the same.
PS: FUNimation DVDs are not good start material. Compression artefacts are always "on the house" by them :D
Wanna get blown off? Get the japanese DVDs, these are something! ZERO compression artefacts! And since you're so fond of upscaling, just get yourself a nice DVD player with good upscaling capabilities and then, and only then will you be in for a treat!

Dragon Box you mean? The Remastered DBZ DVDs by FUNimation look way better than the Japanese DVDs. That's because I think a different person made these than normally. Seriously, ask any encoder that has done both. The main encoder from the release group at irc.immortal-anime.net, #DBZ-The-Next-Level, Triforce, says the same thing. The Remastered Dragon Ball Z box sets are great. I only upscale the trailers, otherwise, the gain isn't worth the huge file sizes for full episodes.

The definition does help a little bit in comparison to the original BUT, it's much more noticeable when you encode to 704x396 vs. 1280x720, though of course with a higher bitrate. The lines are much less jittery.

-Normally though, all the other FUNimation DVDs, yes, of course they're not close to as good as the Japanese. These Remastered Box Sets are one thing they finally did right, although they have their fair share of problems as well, mostly not video related..

[Guest]

@Typhoon859

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