4k Video Upscaling Software
Most stills cameras already give us more resolution than we generally need and most images I produce end up being downscaled to a more user friendly resolution. The delivery is likely to be on a phone in many cases so a long edge resolution of 2000px is just fine. Upscaling is just not usually done, unless by mistake on a e.g. Poorly designed website or maybe on an icon where the vector version just wasn’t available (a pet hate of mine).Upscaling in video is a little different.
There are very specific frame sizes and standards which need to be stuck to for, among other reasons. Acceptance for broadcast. Compatibility with video hosting sites.
Encoder efficiency (multiples of 2, 4, 8, 16). User viewability (black bars or, even worse, portrait videos)As we begin to move through the transition from HD (pretty much standard on major channels in the UK in 2016) to 4K (still a long way off, particularly via terrestrial broadcasting) upscaling may be needed whether that be from SD to HD, 720p to 1080p or, as in this example, the extremes of going from 720p to 2160p UHD.
A project may be filmed in 4K as that’s what a client needs but one essential piece of library footage may be in 1080p and require upscaling in the edit. The Trade OffSo many things are about trade off. What we’re doing here is what any good engineer would do and try to go for the best balance of all components within a trade off. This method can be used in almost any NLE and doesn’t use costly third party plugins (we use FilmConvert in the video but you can also use ).There’s really no good way to do this so it’s just about trying different methods to get acceptable results. It will never look great because even the best computer cannot make things up even with the complex scaling algorithms used. Remember the increase we’re talking aboutOriginal Resolution 720p = 921,600 pixels Delivery Resolution 2160p = 8,294,400 pixels ‘Made Up’ Pixel Count = 7,372,800 pixelsIn other words, 89% of what you are watching on the sample below has been completely made up with guess work based on e.g. Color and brightness levels of adjacent pixels.
That’s a lot of data! Fortunately, the human brain is pretty forgiving. If the content is good, you’ll still enjoy the film. We’re just being picky and technical here:-). 3 Step ProcessI walk through the steps in the video but if you’re happy about how to do this Premiere Pro, here they are for you.
Upscale the footage to fill the frame in your NLE. In our case, this was a setting of 300%. I find that scaling using this method is just fine. Apply Unsharp Mask to your footage but only with very gentle sharpening. You’re sharpening rubbish (almost like trying to sharpen out of focus footage) so just apply a tiny amount to give the impression of better quality. Level for 4K about 100, Radius 0.5 and Threshold 2-3.
Whatever looks right. Apply a subtle to hide the imperfections with more natural imperfections. If something looks like a video, you kind of expect it to look perfect.
It works better if you add that organic feel.what a crap word that is but I couldn’t think of anything better.
Upscaling 1920x1080 HD to 4k video.ok, who's done it? How'd it work out for you?OBVIOUSLY, no one is going to GAIN any real resolution or detail doing this, and it just gets bigger and fuzzier. We all know this, so let's not dwell on that, but. How well did Vegas Pro do it for you?I rendered a 4 second clip from HD in 4k and it looked exactly like the HD on playback - at a choppy 1 frame per second on my crap PC. But I'm thinking about upscaling my next project jsut for fun.Any tips or advice?I need to figure out a realistic format because whatever I did, my 4 seconds ended up like 4 gigs in the file! Im also interested in this.
The Boris plugin says its 'SD to HD', not HD to 4k. So does anyone know if this plugin can do that too?Just as a side note, dont forget Skyfall was shot with Arri Alexa cameras in 2k and up-scaled to 4k for cinema projection. So if you want your HD on the silver screen at any time - this may be a good move. But probably more interesting is the up-scale for 4k TV as mentioned. I think there is merit getting converted to 4k and not just relying on the projector or TV to do it for you. Some would have better conversions than others.Paul. K, more stuff:- using the smaller YUV (like the SD or low HD version) does make smaller files, but you must manaully switch the resolution in the setup to 4k.- after some PLAYBACK testing:Windows Media Player: plays a frame afterwhile here and there, audio kinda worksQuicktime: see aboveVLC: seems a little quicker but still like aboveMEDIA PLAYER CLASSIC WORKS!
I'm sure it is not played as FULL 4k, but it does playback a 4k file near or at full speed with some artifacts and interlace issues. But it DOES play it, which is a plus.Vegas 12 Pro plays it back, but choppy. Still better than WMP, QT, VLCTook a couple stills from 1920 and 4k versions, and I DO think there is something good coming out of doubling the pixel count. Even on HD playback. The chroma and/or color changes seem to be smoothed out on close inspection.
Yes, I KNOW it is not adding any extra pixels to the color, but I think maybe rendering out smooths the color flow in the pictures. Might even be helpful in color grading. Not that that is hurting today at all.It is not just taking each HD pixel and doubling it up - well maybe it is I don't know - but seems to check and fill better.I should have test it in 32 bit mode but I did not.:(. 'I'd like to be in control of the end to end quality.
Making sure I have the best 4k image possible'Your goals of higher pixel dimensions and then reducing file size are completely at odds.Let's say you have 1920x1080 AVCHD at 16Mbps. You upsample it to 4096x2304 or thereabouts. If you keep the same codec, you will need 72.6 Mbps bitrate just to keep the same quality as your original (minus encoding losses). IOW, your new file will be 4.54x larger than your original. Anything less than that and you have thrown away quality (especially in motion scenes) that was in your original 1920x1080 file.
It's just math.Quality or Size. Musicvid wrote: Your goals of higher pixel dimensions and then reducing file size are completely at odds.But consider Ben Waggoner's 'power of 0.75' rule, discussed towards the bottom of and others (I think Dorkyman's comment on it has relevance too).wwjd, AviSynth gives a choice of resizing algorithms that might be better for upscaling, including Lanczos4, Spline36 and Spline64. You could sharpen after the upscale using, which attempts to sharpen without increasing ringing.But, keeping things simple, do the upscale in Vegas and then apply a simple sharpen to it with a value of zero and see how that looks. Make sure the sharpen happens AFTER the upscale, which probably means writing an intermediate.
4k Video Upscaling Software Free
Nick, thanks for the info regarding AviSynth. I have just successfully created a 10 second video clip from 1080p into 4K.
4k Video Upscaling Software For Pc
After the installation of AviSynth (this is new to me) i also installed VirtualDubMod for its GUI. With the resize filter set to Lanczos3, i seem to be getting pretty good scaling quality. Still need to get zoomed in up close to see the real results but for now it looks promising. No sharpening as yet, will test that later.So current workflow is:Vegas (or any other NLE) render to none compressed AVI 1080p.Import clip into VirtualDubMod and rescale to 4k using Lanczos 3.Save as new 4k AVI.The only thing is, as predicted, the files are huge. Something like 6 gigs for 10 seconds. Its all uncompressed AVIs.
Im looking into compression now.An interesting experiment, thanks for the info.Paul.