Intense, slower-than-realtime (time-is-no-issue) DVD upscaling: is it feasible?

[A.Fenderson]

I have access to a 1080p TV connected to a Sony BDP-s350 which has been tested to successfully play AVCHD discs quite well.

The upscaling on this player for standard DVDs is supposedly mediocre, yet I have many DVDs and few BDs.

I'm wondering if there is a method whereby I can rip a DVD, do a very slow, laborious, computationally-intense high-quality deinterlacing and upscaling using free software on a PC, then reencode into MPEG4/AVC and structure for AVCHD, burn to DVD media and play back in the above setup and--at least potentially--have the results look noticeably better than the realtime, hardware-based (and decidedly mediocre) upscaling of the BD player in question.

If this has been asked or done before, any links to the appropriate thread(s) would be much appreciated.

Thank you!

[Dark Shikari]

Deinterlacing (if necessary, remember, most DVDs aren't interlaced): TempGaussMC

Upscaling: NNEDI2

Sharpening: LimitedSharpenFaster

[A.Fenderson]

Thanks for the quick reply, I'll look into each of the mentioned applications. Have you actually performed this type of operation or something similar to enhance SD-quality videos?

As for DVDs being interlaced or not: I keep getting conflicting information on this. Some sources claim that all (NTSC) DVD-Video discs are 480i, end of story, some such as yourself claim that most are not interlaced (presumably since most DVDs are movies shot at 24p), and the in-betweens. Where might I find a list of all the possible DVD-Video compliant encoding options or something similar to this?

[Dark Shikari]

As for DVDs being interlaced or not: I keep getting conflicting information on this. Some sources claim that all (NTSC) DVD-Video discs are 480i, end of story, some such as yourself claim that most are not interlaced (presumably since most DVDs are movies shot at 24p), and the in-betweens. Where might I find a list of all the possible DVD-Video compliant encoding options or something similar to this?480i is how it's coded, not necessarily the format of the source. Most DVDs are telecined, not interlaced.

[A.Fenderson]

Ah, that makes sense. So with film-based, telecined, 480i-encoded DVDs, is inverse telecine trivial and done properly in most decoding software?

[manono]

All NTSC DVD players output 480i. All of them output 59.94 fields per second. If progressive scan is set then that 480i output is "intercepted" and it's converted to 480p (and 59.94 frames per second) one way or another. Afterwards it may also be upscaled.
So with film-based, telecined, 480i-encoded DVDs, is inverse telecine trivial and done properly in most decoding software?
Depends on the player. If 3:2 pulldown has been applied (with the movie having been encoded as progressive 23.976fps), and the player is set for progressive scan then it'll output all progressive frames in a 3-2-3-2-3-2 pattern. If it's hard telecined then some can perform an on-the-fly IVTC. Other inferior flag-reading players (which is the majority) will deinterlace the movie with varying results, most of them bad.

If, as you say, your player does poor upscaling, why not output 480i or p and let the TV upscale it for you? Perhaps its upscaling is better. It'll save you a very long encode.

[A.Fenderson]

Thanks for your reply, good info there.

The scaler in the TV, subjectively to me, seems to be about on-par with the scaler in the player: I've tried going into the TV with 480p and 480i, no noticeable difference from the scaling in the player.

As for the long encode: I'm bored and just making projects for myself at this point, plus I like putting my PC to work when it's otherwise not very occupied. And, if it has a chance of looking superior to the scaler in the player or TV, it might be kinda nice.

So has anyone ever done this? If so, care to share your thoughts on the results?

edit: BTW: I think to get the DVD output to the TV in 480i I used another player and it might even have been via component instead of HDMI as I don't think the BDP-s350 will output DVDs in 480i over HDMI and I never had it connected to this TV via anything other than HDMI.

[manono]

Sure, it's worth a try. Experimentation is always good, if only to prove to yourself that you can't improve on the TV or player upscaling, even if they are deficient. Never know till you try.

I've never reencoded an SD source to Hi-Def. I have a good upscaling DVD player (an Oppo). I'm sure others have tried and maybe someone that has will respond.

[A.Fenderson]

Cool. I've got an Oppo DV-981 HD myself, but the setup I described is actually at my parents', and we have a weekly movie night over there. Which model Oppo do you have?

[manono]

I have the same one.

[m3mbran3]

Probably worth your while having a dig around the avisynth forums as this will have all the information you want. If you use the avs script creator in megui you should be able to setup a base avisynth script with the correct cropping, deinterlacing, IVTC etc.
Once that is done you can preview your script in something like virtualdubmod and experiment with various filters and scripts. ie NNEDI2 for upscaling and MCTemporalDenoise for cleaning up the source and sharpening.

Be prepared for epic encoding times if using max quality settings though. (~1-2fps)