I started just by upscaling all this video straight from 1080p up to 4K. I then watched
it through it and highlighted which bits I’d need to upscale from a lower resolution.
You see, upscaling from the original 1080p works when that original footage is full 1080p.
But there were a lot of scenes in this video that were zoomed in. Trying to upscale these
ends up just upscaling the blur, so for these I need to shrink the resolution to remove
the blur, and then to upscale that instead. There’s a trade-off with upscaling. The
lower the base resolution, the ‘blobbier’ and ‘specklier’ the result is. So in this
example it’s a big giveaway that it’s been upscaled- but I still much prefer it
to how it looked originally. The whole intro was a bit zoomed in, and when
combined with the low bitrate leading to artifacts and blobby areas, I felt I got a better result
to upscale all of this intro from 540p instead. This lets it fill the walls with what appears
to be more detail. The only downside is on the rows of roof tiles, which can sometimes
be reduced to a fuzzy mess when the resolution is lower.
You can see how it ‘flips’ the direction the tiles are facing in this example, where
there’s no longer a high enough resolution to draw each row separately. Fortunately this
is harder to see in motion because it’s displaying 60 rapidly updating images a second.
And we can see this compromise is well worth it elsewhere in the picture, like on the tree
here, or on the edges of the post and cables. Or even simply on the writing! Upscaling helps
define the edges of things a lot better. Another big win for upscaling in this example-
the walls and bells have been given a very convincing texture, whereas before they were
just a blurry mess. Watching the whole video upscaled, I think it’s easy to forget how
blurred the original was. I think the upscaling does an excellent job of mimicking how 4K
would have looked in this example. This is a clip from an EVEN EARLIER video!
The upscaled version here is a lot brighter- which I did for artistic reasons, cos the
older video codec I used to use washed out the image quite badly. Again, the upscaling
works wonders on the plants and walls in this image.
But as you can see from the original, I then zoom in FURTHER STILL! 540p upscaled will
no longer cut it on such a blurry image. So I upscaled from an even smaller resolution
and slowly transitioned from 540p upscaled to 270p upscaled as the camera zoomed in.
There comes a time when you can go too far with upscaling- and this is it. But I argue:
while no one would have noticed I had done this had I not said, people WOULD have noticed
had I not done it. I wanted for this video to demonstrate how good upscaling could be
when combined with manual adjustments and tweaks. The true merging of man and machine!
Just look at it zooming into his eyepiece. The resolution of the end of this clip is
just 80x45 pixels- yet I think you’ll agree it’s a substantial improvement over the
1080p original. Upscaling is a compromise, because it means
rendering the video again which loses some detail in darker spots, as well as subtly
shifting the colours. In this example you can see the original image looks a bit redder.
This is something you’ll only really spot in comparisons though, and I’m banking on
the upscaling adding in more detail than it does away with. Zooming in on the darker patches
of this shot, I’m happy with the result. And yes, I’m aware the new version of Gigapixel
Video AI has the option to export all frames as png files, which would preserve quality…
but it would add another stage to an already complicated process, meaning you’d have
to deal with tens of thousands of image files, which is never too enjoyable and can lead
to problems of its own. But that being said… I’ll probably do this in future.
In this shot, let’s zoom in on the writing. As we’re able to read, we can spot more
problems with how it upscales writing- and indeed when we look closely we can see the
writing is just gobbledygook. But it passes at a glance, which is what you’ll be doing
when watching the video. Upscaling also likes websites, with its bold
colours and sharp edges to writing. In cases like these where the text is big enough to
be readable, the upscaling has no problem making it look sharper. You can see it really
wants to try upscaling these thumbnail images too.
An unusual real-life clip! This being from 2010 it was unlikely to be worthy of full
HD, so I crushed this down to 540p which I think looks better on the trees. I think the
rooftops look better too. The text isn’t quite so hot. And some of the lines in the
distance get a bit drunk. Ehh, maybe I should have left it as-is. Can’t be bothered to
re-render for this though. Doesn’t look too different in my opinion.
But then, these textures are meant to be simple- do I really want to create details which weren’t
there in the map in the first place? This is the shot I’m proudest of. I upscaled
this from something stupidly small like 320x180? So although it’s very clearly upscaled because
it all looks a bit grainy, it’s forgivable when you see the sorry state of the original
footage. And again here. I am blown away with the result,
especially on the fountain. Upscaling loves being given the space to be creative! But
really, everything looks better here- with a possible exception being the distant roof
tiles. Which we’ve already covered. This is an interesting comparison- it’s
one where I dabbled with sharpening to try and make the original look as close to the
upscaled as possible. And looking at the image as a whole, I thought I got close. But zooming
in showed just how much detail the upscaling was ‘adding’ to surfaces- which can be
appreciated in long still camera shots like this one.
Coming towards the end now, I love what upscaling’s done with this wooden post. Doesn’t do much
with the dark spots, which never had much detail in the original recording either.
I’ll just upscale from 540p to see what difference it would have made. Ehh, it would
have been better here. But other bits, like the balcony and TERRORIST’S FACE would have
gotten worse. Not great, but not terrible. This was another extremely zoomed-in sequence.
Colours change drastically, but it connects the dots about as well as it could have done
on the flashbang and on the CT’s kneepad. Adds grain to the background, which might
not be accurate but the alternative was just to leave it as a blur.
And lastly, the moment the CT knows he’s messed up. I upscaled each of these bits as
an image, and I think you’ll agree, this final shot is a helelllalwllot better. It
even cuts down on the way the red bleeds out across the image. Just for fun let’s zoom
in on his eye’s reflection. ENHANCE!
ENHANCE!
Brilliant.