Upscaling 720p to 1080p for Bluray remaster - recommendations?

[wst]

I am creating a Bluray master from 720p source digital intermediate that was previously only mastered for DVD. I thought it would make sense to upscale it to 1080p before encoding.

I am frameserving from AVS to Premiere Pro, so there are many upscaling solutions. I was going to run a suite of tests, but if anyone with experience could make a recommendation, I would appreciate it.

I am considering: the various bicubic, lanczos, & spline scalers; tritical's EDIUpsizer, Red Giant InstantHD, and Infognition Super Resolution.

The source is 720p30 HDV 4:2:0 material converted to 720p30 4:2:2 CineForm AspectHD digital intermediate for editing. The footage is from a documentary, so it's mostly handheld live shots and tripod interviews. The perfect ideal output would be indistinguishable from 1080p source material. I'm not looking to add sharpness, smoothenss, or enhancements - just upscaling with maximum clarity and minimal artifacts. This is a one time thing, so render time is not an issue.

Thanks!

[vampiredom]

You may want to try NNEDI3. Perhaps something like this:

avisource("cineform.avi")
nnedi3_rpow2(rfactor=2)
Sharpen(.25)
Spline36Resize(1920,1080)

I am sure that others have other ideas, but this is an approach I like. The "Sharpen" bit is optional, of course, but I find that clean sources can stand a bit of sharpening. And, since you are scaling down (from 2560x1440, in this case) afterward, you can mitigate some of the would-be sharpening artifacts.

[wst]

Thanks vampiredom, I like this solution. Will give it a try...

[ChiDragon]

The source is 720p30 HDV 4:2:0 material converted to 720p30 4:2:2 CineForm AspectHD digital intermediate for editing. The footage is from a documentary, so it's mostly handheld live shots and tripod interviews. The perfect ideal output would be indistinguishable from 1080p source material. I'm not looking to add sharpness, smoothenss, or enhancements - just upscaling with maximum clarity and minimal artifacts.

I would leave it at 720p so you can put it on disc at 720p60 with 2x frame duplication. Blu-ray only supports 1080p at 23.976 and 24.0 fps, so you would have to do some funky frame rate conversion if you upscale it.

[MatLz]

Blu-ray only supports 1080p at 23.976 and 24.0 fpsYou forgot 25 and 29.97 fps, using fake interlaced should work.

[vampiredom]

Blu-ray only supports 1080p at 23.976 and 24.0 fps

Actually, that is true: There is (stupidly) no official BluRay spec for 30p. In that case, I would suggest 1080/30p-over-60i. Perhaps using this instead of my previous example (and assuming that what you are using to encode the BluRay doesn't do any RGB<->YV12 conversions of its own)

avisource("cineform.avi")
nnedi3_rpow2(rfactor=2)
ConvertToRGB24(matrix="rec709")
Sharpen(.25)
Spline36Resize(1920,1080)
ConvertToYV12(matrix="rec709", interlaced=true)

If you are using something like Adobe Media Encoder, which MUCH prefers RGB input and sort of does its own thing with regard to YV12 output for BluRay/DVD, etc., you'd be wiser to keep it RGB:

avisource("cineform.avi")
nnedi3_rpow2(rfactor=2)
ConvertToRGB24(matrix="rec709")
Sharpen(.25)
Spline36Resize(1920,1080)

[wonkey_monkey]

The perfect ideal output would be indistinguishable from 1080p source material. I'm not looking to add sharpness, smoothenss, or enhancements - just upscaling with maximum clarity and minimal artifacts.

I'd leave it at 720p and let the display device do the upscaling. Most TVs are good at this, some are excellent, and the bits you save on resolution (~56%) can be spent on video quality.

David

[wst]

Interesting. I guess they decided it was coming from TV at 1080i60 or 720p30, or movies at 1080p24, so no need for 1080p30.

I was planning on AME, but I could use TMPGEnc or something else. I ran several encodes for the DVD and just picked the one that subjectively looked best.

I assume by fake interlaced you mean just encode 30p as 60i? Do the fields get progressive flags? I'm curious how Bluray players will handle it.

Originally, I used a Teranex to go out to 1080p24 tape master, but the frame judder was terrible. I considered trying interpolating 30p to 120p and back down to 24p, which I'm sure would be better, but still probably pretty distracting. And back then I didn't have hardware that could get that done in a reasonable timeframe anyway.

EDIT: Also if you have a rec for MPEG encoding with AME/TMPGEnc/Sorensen, etc. it's been a while since I've done anything out of editing DI. Thanks again....

[wst]

David, I was under the impression that there are bitrate limits, and I couldn't just crank the 720p bitrate to get more quality.

[osgZach]

Why not just leave it alone as is, no re-encoding (unless you actually do need to do some filtering) and burn a test to see how it looks.
I'd tend to agree, let the TV upscale. They can do a pretty decent job these days.

[vampiredom]

If you are using Adobe Media Encoder, also be careful about frame blending. For example, if you have a 30p source and you output to 720/60p, AME may attempt to "smooth" this conversion by creating a 50/50% blended frame between each original frame. Make sure Frame Blending is disabled.

[Stereodude]

David, I was under the impression that there are bitrate limits, and I couldn't just crank the 720p bitrate to get more quality.The bitrate can be just as high for 720p60 as 1080p24.

[2Bdecided]

Interesting. I guess they decided it was coming from TV at 1080i60 or 720p30, or movies at 1080p24, so no need for 1080p30.Sony just didn't listen. Not including 1080p25 was criminal - most European TV drama is created in this format.

I know about 1080p25-in-1080i50, but that relies on the player deinterlacing it properly. Most people claim it "always" works just fine, but I bet it's possible to include very high frequency vertical details that confuse the heck out of it.

Cheers,
David.

[wst]

Thanks, I'll do tests at 1080p60i and 720p30, and try to get some samples posted.

[ChiDragon]

You forgot 25 and 29.97 fps, using fake interlaced should work.

No I didn't. I said 1080p.

I trust my TV's scaler a lot more than I trust its deinterlacer not to to mistake sharp lines for interlacing.

[wst]

This is odd. Adobe Media Encoder (which I'm pretty sure uses MainConcept for MPEG) offers unusual options for encoding to H.264 Bluray.

For the 720p30 (29.97 drop-frame) timeline, it only gives as options 23.976, 24, and 59.94fps, and defaults to progressive (with no options to interlace).

For the 1080p30 (29.97 drop-frame) timeline, upscaled using the above suggestion, it gives as options 23.976, 24, and 29.97, and defaults to interlaced output (with no options for progressive).

This has tripped me up, and I'm unable to create a 720p30 clip (just 720p60 with doubled frames) to compare to the 1080i60 one. Any suggestions?

[vampiredom]

I'm unable to create a 720p30 clip (just 720p60 with doubled frames)

Why can't you do this? Just choose a 720p60 BluRay setting and make sure Frame Blending is not checked.

[Ghitulescu]

Is this project for you? Or is it intended for distribution?
If it's for you only, then you can do a test to see if your player supports non-standard formats (some are more resilient than the others).
If it's for distribution, then you should ensure the maximum compatibility, that is either 720p59.94 or 1080i59.94 ("fake" interlaced). Strange enough, all other HDV resolutions have been included in the BD standard.
http://oi40.tinypic.com/bj5nv9.jpg

[wst]

Is this project for you? Or is it intended for distribution?

Thanks for this chart.

This will not be for wide distribution. It is intended for a screening archive. It does not need to have maximum compatibility, but it should be able to play on most decent players.

Why can't you do this? Just choose a 720p60 BluRay setting and make sure Frame Blending is not checked.

I assumed that 720p30->720p60 and doubling frames would be a waste of bandwidth. But maybe H.264 is smarter than I'm giving it credit.

I think I will need to produce both a 720p59.94 and a 1080i59.94 disc at the same bitrates to compare quality, and try them in a few players to see if they handle the 1080i without screwing up the deinterlacing.

[ChiDragon]

If you're able to use x264 to do the encoding, you can just enable "--pulldown double" on the 720p29.97 video: http://www.x264bluray.com/home/720p-encoding

For your proposed comparison, I think most players will pass 1080i through (I know the PS3 does but can't remember how my other players have handled it). So you might instead need to test the deinterlacing of the displays rather than the players.

[Sharc]

If you're able to use x264 to do the encoding, you can just enable "--pulldown double" on the 720p29.97 video: http://www.x264bluray.com/home/720p-encoding

--pulldown does unfortunately not work with tsmuxer.

[Ghitulescu]

There is no 30i/p in BD specs. Is it yours pure 30p or "marketing" 30p (meaning actually 29.97p)?
If it's 30p you can simply change the fps in the encoded file and stretch the audio a lil'bit. :)