Software to upscale video for re-encoding?

[niko084]

I have some video files I would like to upscale, and not just while playing on my dvd player.

Does anyone know of a software that I can use to open a video up say 720x480 and upscale it and re-encode it to say 1920x1080 or even 1280x720?

This should be possible, the question is does the software exist?
I know you wont gain quality, but stopping bad looking video on screens that don't have up scaling would be nice.

 

[mullered07]

im sure most encoding software will let you set the res manually ?

 

[mullered07]

thats tmpgenc but most software will let you change the res, although it would look really quite poor imo

 

[niko084]

im sure most encoding software will let you set the res manually ?

Never looked at that, didn't figure it would actually do it, trying it with Nero Recode now.
I really wish I could get software that would let my video card do it!

I ran a 320x240 400mb AVI movie through it on a 1080p tv and it was next to perfect up scaling, blew my mind.

 

[mullered07]

Never looked at that, didn't figure it would actually do it, trying it with Nero Recode now.
I really wish I could get software that would let my video card do it!

I ran a 320x240 400mb AVI movie through it on a 1080p tv and it was next to perfect up scaling, blew my mind.

you sure it was upscaled and didnt just stretch it ? if its a good avi it will still look good stretched albeit to a certain extent

 

[niko084]

you sure it was upscaled and didnt just stretch it ? if its a good avi it will still look good stretched albeit to a certain extent

Ya, the HD4850 will up scale anything when connected HDMI, including games and your desktop. Does a very good job also, better than any dvd player I have ever seen.

 

[OnBoard]

Hmh, so what are you playing it with then? DVD players can only do 720x and TV must upscale it. Upscaling DVD players support bigger resolution, but they already upscale, that's the whole point of them. Now if you play any video on computer connected to TV surely you'll do just extra work for nothing.

No way does 320x240 look good in 1080p, didn't even look good on old SD TV. Anything under 640x is already blurry in 720p. The difference between outputting the signal from you computer through DVI/HDMI is that you can use ffdshow for example and that does wonders to the image. Removes aliasing and blockiness, but if the resolution isn't there to begin with it won't be when upscaled.

edit: oh and VirtualDub & NanDub can do what you want if the video files are AVI. NanDub is needed for xvid/divx format.

I really wish I could get software that would let my video card do it!

So are you trying to use some DVD player software to output the signal? Those use their own decoders and will generally look like poop. Try something like VLC player, or BSplayer + ffdshow or just WMP + ffdshow.

edit2: something good looking for your full HD screen in the mean time http://www.apple.com/trailers/#section=justhd
You might need this to watch them: http://www.free-codecs.com/download/quicktime_alternative.htm

 

[niko084]

Hmh, so what are you playing it with then? DVD players can only do 720x and TV must upscale it. Upscaling DVD players support bigger resolution, but they already upscale, that's the whole point of them. Now if you play any video on computer connected to TV surely you'll do just extra work for nothing.

No way does 320x240 look good in 1080p, didn't even look good on old SD TV. Anything under 640x is already blurry in 720p. The difference between outputting the signal from you computer through DVI/HDMI is that you can use ffdshow for example and that does wonders to the image. Removes aliasing and blockiness, but if the resolution isn't there to begin with it won't be when upscaled.

Alright first off, only cheap DVD players can only upscale to 720...
A grand majority of DVD players out today that do upscale will do 1080.

Next off, some hardware that upscales does a MUCH better job then others.
Upsacle of a 320x240 isn't really that big of a reach, it wasn't perfect, but my god it looked about as good as you would expect a standard dvd to look on a standard screen.

You need to learn a little more about how upscaling really works to start with, it doesn't just make a movie full screen. To add, not all TV's support upscaling built in, and as said before, some hardware is better than others.

End point being, I have an HD screen in another room and a TON of standard movies that I want to play from the media server I'm building, nothing supports upscale in between, so needless to say it all looks like trash. I want to re-encode the movies with them upscaled already.

I know I can accomplish this by outputing from my video cards hdmi into a digital video recorder and then output that back into an hd capture card and re-encode it from there but that takes too long..

I would also like to watch the videos on my monitor from time to time without them looking like garbage as soon as I try to go full screen...

****
I tried to work with a video with Nero Recode, it changed the size and with the dual pass it worked, but not as well as I would have liked to see.

 

[WC Annihilus]

I say VirtualDubMod + Avisynth

 

[niko084]

Upscale shown here-

Obviously you can see a difference with a decent up scale.

Image is taken from a standard DVD format 720x480 blown up to 1920x1080.

Top image is up scaled, bottom image is just stretched.

It's still not HD quality, but it look a LOT better than it would.

 

[WC Annihilus]

Again, I suggest Virtualdubmod + Avisynth. This gives you flexibility. With a bit of knowledge, you can use Avisynth to filter the footage to make the upscale look cleaner and closer to the original source. Hell, if you REALLY know what you're doing, you might even be able to make it look better

 

[niko084]

Again, I suggest Virtualdubmod + Avisynth. This gives you flexibility. With a bit of knowledge, you can use Avisynth to filter the footage to make the upscale look cleaner and closer to the original source. Hell, if you REALLY know what you're doing, you might even be able to make it look better

I got those, try them out tomorrow evening. I have heard good things about Avisynth before.

 

[Deusxmachina]

I have some video files I would like to upscale, and not just while playing on my dvd player.

Does anyone know of a software that I can use to open a video up say 720x480 and upscale it and re-encode it to say 1920x1080 or even 1280x720?

This should be possible, the question is does the software exist?
I know you wont gain quality, but stopping bad looking video on screens that don't have up scaling would be nice.

The easiest one I can think of that you might be looking for is AVIdemux. It's generally considered the VirtualDub for Windows 2000/XP/Vista since VD uses a hack or two to play/edit some files with newer operating systems. Just go in there and play with the filters. Generally, a resize and a sharpness filter will get the job done. You can do denoise and smoothing and stuff like that, but I usually don't find such things worth the bother/time, but of course it depends. Play around with a one-minute clip and see what you like.

Other programs do a similar thing, but most require knowing how to use avisynth or they can only do one or two filters at a time, etc.

There's plenty of FFdshow before/after threads around various forums if people are curious what can be accomplished even on-the-fly. I used to put a filter or two even on HD stuff while watching TV, but now I mainly just use it to resize and sharpen anything less than HD resolution. The difference can be quite amazing.

 

[OnBoard]

End point being, I have an HD screen in another room and a TON of standard movies that I want to play from the media server I'm building, nothing supports upscale in between, so needless to say it all looks like trash. I want to re-encode the movies with them upscaled already.

That's why I asked what are you trying to play it with. The media server obviously haven't got a software to support videosmoothing + other stuff. There adding more pixels IS usefull, as it will remove the big blocks. With a HTPC setup there wouldn't be need to re-encode.

I would also like to watch the videos on my monitor from time to time without them looking like garbage as soon as I try to go full screen...

If they look blocky (like the bottom pic) on your monitor, you are doing something wrong (wrong videoplayer/codec). Everything should be like the upper picture, only something very old low quality youtube videos played full screen should look something like the bottom picture. You can also get that sort of blocky video with wrong video rendering mode selected on you player. VLC player had it on the default renderer (don't remember it's name).

Upscale shown here-

Obviously you can see a difference with a decent up scale.

Image is taken from a standard DVD format 720x480 blown up to 1920x1080.

Top image is up scaled, bottom image is just stretched.

It's still not HD quality, but it look a LOT better than it would.

Yep, that's sort of how it look if I play low resolution low bitrate (avi)videos on my dvd-player. Doesn't upscale and don't know how to deblock. If I take the same video and output it from my computer to my TV fullscreen in 720p it looks like the upper picture. With 1080p it would be even worse of course.