BD-Rebuilder: To upscale or not to upscale, that is the question.

[hbenthow]

I have a 720p HD MP4 file. Since it is in a non Blu-ray compliant aspect ratio (1280 x 544), it will have have to be re-encoded in the process of converting it to Blu-ray format with BD-Rebuilder.

My question is this: would it be better to author the Blu-ray in 720p resolution, or to upscale it to 1080p (using BD-RB's "Resize - 1280 x 720 to 1920 x 1080" option)?

Also, the file has a 320 kbps AAC audio track, which BD-Rebuilder has automatically converted to a 192 kbps AC3 file (during the preliminary pseudo-BD conversion process). I tried checking the "Use 448 Kbs for AC3 encoding" option, but it still converts the file into 192 kbps. Will this result in a significant loss in audio quality?

[gonca]

Check your thread at VideoHelp

http://forum.videohelp.com/threads/375834-BD-Rebuilder-To-upscale-or-not-to-upscale-that-is-the-question?p=2423548&viewfull=1#post2423548

[jdobbs]

In most cases upscaling is going to happen either way. So the choice is: 1) Do I leave it at 720p and let my hardware device (playback unit) do the upscaling during playback or 2) Let BD Rebuilder do the upscaling during the encoding.

My experience has been that the upscaling available via AVISYNTH (used in BD Rebuilder) is better in most cases. So I do it during encoding (at the expense of a little more storage space). If you have a high-end playback unit, though, the difference in upscaling may not even be noticable. My Sony BD Player does a really good job of converting 720p to 1080p. But you never know what kind of unit it may be played upon in the future (I've seen some that are terrible) -- so why not just do it right from the start?

[hbenthow]

In most cases upscaling is going to happen either way. So the choice is: 1) Do I leave it at 720p and let my hardware device (playback unit) do the upscaling during playback or 2) Let BD Rebuilder do the upscaling during the encoding.

My experience has been that the upscaling available via AVISYNTH (used in BD Rebuilder) is better in most cases. So I do it during encoding (at the expense of a little more storage space). If you have a high-end playback unit, though, the difference in upscaling may not even be noticable. My Sony BD Player does a really good job of converting 720p to 1080p. But you never know what kind of unit it may be played upon in the future (I've seen some that are terrible) -- so why not just do it right from the start?Thank you for the reply. I've already authored the Blu-ray (in 720p), and the result looked satisfactory to me.

[jdobbs]

Thank you for the reply. I've already authored the Blu-ray (in 720p), and the result looked satisfactory to me.Yeah, I figured as much since it had been a while since the post. I was just answering for the future or other readers who may have the same question.

[mparade]

In most cases upscaling is going to happen either way. So the choice is: 1) Do I leave it at 720p and let my hardware device (playback unit) do the upscaling during playback or 2) Let BD Rebuilder do the upscaling during the encoding.

My experience has been that the upscaling available via AVISYNTH (used in BD Rebuilder) is better in most cases. So I do it during encoding (at the expense of a little more storage space). If you have a high-end playback unit, though, the difference in upscaling may not even be noticable. My Sony BD Player does a really good job of converting 720p to 1080p. But you never know what kind of unit it may be played upon in the future (I've seen some that are terrible) -- so why not just do it right from the start?

What do you think about to incorporate into BD-RB additional resizer options like Spline36Resize and Lanczos4Resize as well? According to some "general" test results they are one of the "best" resizers besides nnedi3 (in one test I checked the results were based on the similarity of the upscaled variant to the original variant).

Thank you for your answer in advance and thank you very much for the great software!

[jdobbs]

That's easy enough. There are already hidden options to change the resize method (UPRESIZE and DOWNRESIZE, see HIDDENOPTS.TXT). I'll just add more to the list of accepted parameters.

[Edit] Ok, I've added every resize method from AVISYNTH to the list (see here (http://avisynth.nl/index.php/Resize)). They'll be available in the next release.

[mparade]

That's easy enough. There are already hidden options to change the resize method (UPRESIZE and DOWNRESIZE, see HIDDENOPTS.TXT). I'll just add more to the list of accepted parameters.

[Edit] Ok, I've added every resize method from AVISYNTH to the list (see here (http://avisynth.nl/index.php/Resize)). They'll be available in the next release.

Thank you very much, but I still do not know how to return your fast efforts until donation through paypal is frozen....:(

[mparade]

That's easy enough. There are already hidden options to change the resize method (UPRESIZE and DOWNRESIZE, see HIDDENOPTS.TXT). I'll just add more to the list of accepted parameters.

[Edit] Ok, I've added every resize method from AVISYNTH to the list (see here (http://avisynth.nl/index.php/Resize)). They'll be available in the next release.

When upscaling a true interlaced source would be there any improvement/loss in quality when using such a method?:

AssumeTFF()
Bob(0,0)
LanczosResize()
AssumeTFF()
SeparateFields()
SelectEvery(4,0,3)
Weave()

to that one:

SeparateFields()
Lanczosresize()
Weave()

I would really appreciate your expertise. There are a lot of various explanations in the internet. It seems people prefer the first way (bobbing) to the second (without deinterlacing).

Thank you very much in advance.

[mparade]

That's easy enough. There are already hidden options to change the resize method (UPRESIZE and DOWNRESIZE, see HIDDENOPTS.TXT). I'll just add more to the list of accepted parameters.

[Edit] Ok, I've added every resize method from AVISYNTH to the list (see here (http://avisynth.nl/index.php/Resize)). They'll be available in the next release.

What do you think about to allow for the user to determine the order of filters to be used? In such a case, I think this option would be useful. What I mean:

- I would want BD-RB to use it's upresize option;
- Before the upresize filter I would use (using the avs filter editor) an other filter, e.g. for noise reduction;
-After the noise reduction and upresizing occured I would want to use an other filter, e.g. for adding a little grain back to the video or sharpening it a bit more.

I think, having the option to be able to determine the order of the filters would be useful if there would be any mean of using a certain order of filters.

As far as I know, it is currently not possible in BD-RB. Do you see any good of it?

[Edit] the best methode here is to use the avs filter editor to write the complete filter-chain with upresize to HD unchecked in the settings window.
But, in this case --sar parameter should be overwritten due to the different sample aspect ration between the source and output.

Thank you very much!