I know this technically doesn’t really qualify as !piracy@lemmy.dbzer0.com, but I figured if anybody on Lemmy would know, it’s you guys.
I have some old DVDs that never got a proper Blu-ray release. With all the fuzz about and the recent advancements in AI, what is the definitive best way to upscale to 1080p in 2023?
Before I built this machine, I had 32gb of RAM. You should be fine with 16gb as it isn’t that RAM heavy. Just close out anything not Topaz. Topaz is going to 100% your machine (like it does mine) anyways so you do not need anything else up. On that note, I recommend upscaling over night. A 1080p-4k upscale can easily take my machine 7-11 hours to do. You shouldn’t have that long since you are only trying to bring something to 1080p, but still be aware your computer may be occupied for a couple of hours.
Yes there are profiles, but they are better for keeping things persistent between series (like I have a Sabrina profile just for Sabrina) rather than a one size fit all. I do have one I found to upscale BRs to 4k with only slight adjustments. I will post in a follow up comment once I get off work. In general though you want to make slight adjustments, render a few seconds of video, review it, then make more adjustments.
I will also throw in my Sabrina preset since I managed to use it to upscale some other DvDs with minor tweaking as well. It should provide a good starting place for your DvDs.
I do not know Linux, sorry :(
The amount of commercial AI upscaling software is rather limited (at least when I started searching this May) and focused towards a Windows and maybe Mac audience. That being said, I know there are AI upscaling software on Github so I would not be surprised if someone ported something like Waifu2x (an open source AI trained to upscale anime) to Linux. As to their quality, I do not know. All I can vouch for is that of the commercial software, Topaz was the best when I bought it in June.
I do have a program to deinterlace (remove the annoying lines) which I will also provide you the name of when I give you my profiles. Topaz can also do decent deinterlacing, but my program is better (and also free).
It is going to depend on how clear your source is. If your input has a lot of compression artifacts, then that means more guesswork for the AI, and more chances for Topaz to guess wrong. Upscaling to 720p is going to be a lot more successful in general since its borderline HD, but if you have a good source and don’t mind the occasional weirdness really only noticeable if you know what to look for, then 1080p is doable for even something like 360p.
One thing I like to do (to the anger of many film purists) is add my own film grain in post. There is something about film grain that helps our brains not notice small errors in the upscaling process. Holy Grain is a very good film grain in 1080 and 4k. Sadly I never found a torrent of it so I ended up spending the cash to buy it myself.
Thanks for the detailed answer!
I am back. So the program for deinterlacing is called Hybrid. Steps to download and use are on this external forum thread here.
Here is the setting for my Sabrina Profile in text form. I did forget to add in scaling that my final output is 1440x1080. I only gave the percentages there.