Windows 7 - upscaling best quality

what software is thew best for improving the quality of a SD quality to near HD
or to make the video look better

I wouldn't recommend trying because it can make it worse, but as far as my experience goes, I recommend Cyberlink Media Converter. It has some of it's own options to make the quality feel better.

To encode as HD or view as HD?

To upscale a file to HD, FFDshow has a built in resizer. Also, many players can do this.



To encode as HD, heres how I do it: (I use MeGUI)

When creating the AviSynth script, you want to use a Square pixel resize.
For example, a widescreen DVD is a anamorpic 720x480 resolution.
So, make it 720x400 so its 16:9 Square.
I also do not crop black bars if present.


For the resizer choose one that does well with upscaling.
Lanczos4 (4tap) is good, or Spline64 Sharp (10tap)
Spline64 is slower, but yields slightly better results IMHO.


Once you have everything setup in your script, De-Interlacing etc, go to your Script TAB and change to resolution manually to 1280x720 or 1920x1080.

If using FFDSHOW, you can make some changes there as well to help a bit.
Picture Properties : Luminance Fix+Full range
Sharpen- UnsharpMask (but use lower levels like 6-10. You want subtle shapening, not a lot.


Then, encode the video with x264. probably want at least a 4600-5000 bitrate for 720p, VS 1500-2000 at DVD.




The result will indeed be a better looking image than recoding at DVD resolutions.
But it will not be that much better.
And it will not be no where near as good as a true BluRay.

If your after the absolute best quality you can get, it may be worth it.
If space is a concern, then certainly not.
The increase you do gain from the upscale does not always justify the file being nearly twice the size, so it really depends on whether it is worth it to you.



Also, for this to work right, you must have an original source. Upscaling a already lossy file will not yield good results.

Wishmaster has some good tips, and good advice too.
Personally, I don't see the point in upscaling videos and tweaking the original clips to achieve a "fake" HD quality. You'll just waste HDD space for nothing but slight improvements. There are always exceptions, of course, but IMHO, it's not worth it.

I agree. Its not worth the extended encoding time nor the extra space it takes up for the minimal gain you get.

Better off just being generous with the bitrate at original res. & letting the player scale IMHO.

I found hardware upscaling works better than software upscaling. But that's a little more difficult if you're using the PC as the media player. But cyber links power dvd does a decent job. But any software can only do so much if the source material is not up to par.

Well, yeah, upscaling a video means changing its resolution to a bigger one than the original clip is in, which is (almost) always bad.

Basically, yes.

When encoding video, you can never get better results than the original was.

When your talking about moving up to HD from DVD resolutions, theres just so much detail the original source (in this case DVD) missing that will never be present in the upscaled version.

Sure, you can enhance it and make it look slightly better (or percieved as such), but its alot of time and effort. And youll never really achieve HD results.
Simply because the original lacks the detail true HD should have.

Quite often in fact, for most to notice the difference would need to analyse both frame by frame to see any.



Now, if going from 1080P HD down to 720P HD or even DVD resolutions, the results can be very good.
But, the source material itself is of excellent HD quality.

You can always go down, and retain a good deal of the detail. But going up, doesn't work as well.

The key here is the original source material you are working with.

Though it can be done, I too agree, its just not worth it in the end.

Hi there
while upscaling can attempt to create better quality it won't in the long run be successful.

You can't improve on what's not there -- this is my problem also with most mp3 audio tracks --compared to the original they usually sound horrible and are full of "artifacts" especially at 128 kb/s or lower rates of compression.

The best solution is just to watch the DVD etc on a TV that's not too large (or even on a laptop).

Most compressed videos look HORRIBLE on a large 60 CM full HD TV.

Cheers
jimbo