Quality Upscaling from 240 to 1080p

[brouillette]

I want to "remaster" my old travel movies (made with Ulead then) to VSX5 Bluray movies. I still have the old VSP file ; the photos taken with an old camera then had high enough resolution but my videos were at 240 lines then. I know that VSX5 upscales automatically to Bluray at rendering phase but what is the best way to enhance my videos to 1080 ; if done prior to rendering, will it yield a better quality movie (and if so, how do I do that ?) or do I have to leave it to VSX5 rendering phase as the only/best process . My 240 videos look ok at 240 but are currently "pixelly" when I view them on my current hdmi PC monitor at native 1080 ?

[Ken Berry]

Maybe someone else will have a good suggestion. But I am afraid I can't think of anything that is going to improve your video at all. Even going from SD video of a standard DVD size of 720 x 576 (PAL) or 480 (NTSC) and upgrading it to Blu-Ray 1920 x 1080 or even only 1280 x 720, is going to suffer a fairly significant quality hit. As they say, you can't make a silk purse from a sow's ear. While VS X5 and X4 (and earlier versions too) might "upscale" in one sense -- that of simply increasing the frame size and bitrate used -- that does not at all mean the video will also be magically upscaled in terms of quality to anything close to true HD video. If you have a Blu-Ray player which offers a quality upscale, like the PlayStation 3, the quality will appear better on the HDTV screen, but still will not be anywhere near as clear and crisp as a true HD video, whether AVCHD or Blu-Ray mpeg-2.

And remember I am talking about going from 720 x 576/480 up to a higher resolution... So imagine what will happen to a video which is only about a third the resolution of that...

In any case, do you still have the original movies? Having the VSP files is useless unless they still have the original video to link to. A VSP file itself contains no video. It is only a small text file which tells VS what video is included in a project, where it is stored and what editing has been done to it.

[brouillette]

Yes Ken, fortunately I still have all original photos, videos and music in one folder so I was successfull in relinking everything.

I thought that when VS was rendering to higher resolution (like 480 video to 1080) it was increasing the frame size by not doubling lines but by "intrapolating" and then enhancing the video by "smoothing" edges like a video enhancing software would do, or, for example , a Faroudja chip and software would do in a Yamaha AV Receiver (does my PS3 do that , don't know ?)

I know that it will never be like a video shot in HD with my newer Sony HD camera , but I was wondering if VSX5 Ultimate did not have video filters that combined together would result in a better quality video once rendered.

I was also wondering if using the "create a video" feature (in Share tab) to convert/upscale to bluray each video prior to rendering, would do anything more or if I will end up with the same result (I unfortunately don't know what the VS architecture is and what it does when it converts or renders a video) ?

[canuck]

Why not do a short test and see uf the "upscaled" video quality is satisfactory. In my opinion you will not get better quality and most likely even worse. Any "imperfections" will be amplified.

[Ken Berry]

Yes, VS interpolates when upscaling size. But if you think about it, if, say, you are going from 240 horizontal lines to 1080 lines, it has to interpolate 840 new lines. And essentially it does that by replicating existing lines. So I really don't think you would get a very satisfactory result at all. As Canuck said, any existing imperfections will be replicated and amplified. And no amount of filters can really correct that except by probably making them more soft and thus blurry...

As Canuck also suggested, try a small project with your original video in VS 5, render it up to Blu-Ray then play it and see what the quality is like. A fallback, which might give slightly better results, would be instead to burn a new DVD, perhaps using the standard 720 x 576/480 format, and then use the upscaling ability of your PS3 and compare that quality with the full HD product.

[brouillette]

Thanks guys for your advice !

I will do some testing in the new year and let you know if it improves my video quality.

All the best for the New Year !