Nearest neighbor scaling (sampling) - simple and vital

​@TaranVH For Taran an anyone else interested, about two years ago I became frustrated and decicded I was going to learn SIMD/AVX, CUDA, OpenCV, on top of my existing C/C++ and shader knowledge, I'm about 10 months into working on this framework + plugin. 

(Framework is actually much larger, but the plugin is more of an effect of having a robust framework for handling resize. It was the trigger though.) 

Short version, I'm hoping to release the plugin soon in beta to a few testers who can help me with bugs or features. The final product will be paid (Extremely cheap, under $20 likely), but a resolution limited version will be available for free.  

The shipping kernels will be bilinear, various forms of bicubic, lanczos and similar kernels (ideally anti-ring will be done for launch), nearest/integer, and a special bilinear-sharp that will upscale by integer for multiples, and do the final pass with bilinear/bicubic to prevent shimmering.

Beta may just be cuda only, since I haven’t spent a lot of time optimizing the CPU fallback as much as I'd like. Which already has a lot of SIMD/AVX2 optimization I've spent a lot of time on lately. If I can get enough sales, I’ll buy a mac and work on porting it to there. I've already done some superficial work for Metal, so it shouldn’t take long once I have the Mac. 


Anyone interested is free to message me here, or post a comment on what features you'd like to see. 

And while the core plugin won't be open-source, I'm going to work on open-sourcing as much as the core framework and libraries as possible. I've worked on this for a long time, 1500+ hours I've tracked. So I hope everyone can be respectful on my choice there, I’ll likely open-source earlier versions eventually or all of them…. Once it HOPEFULLY isn’t needed with adobe adding fixes. 

This isn't advertising, but I'm resurrecting an old account of mine for the development of this. 
You can follow me on Twitter/X here for updates, or if you’d prefer to message me there. 

https://x.com/OSSnorry

I absolutely agree, this simplest scaling algorithm MUST be available as it's the only algorithm to preserve actual pixels in integer upscaling. I'm quite surprised that Adobe employees have such limited knowledge of the basics of image processing and editors' needs. 
If it were possible to upvote 1000 times for this suggestion, I would do this. it is VERY important for anyone who edits screencasts.

One possible workaround for editing screen recordings that require integer zoom, is to use Photoshop (!) for editing the screen sequence. Yes, Photoshop can edit videos and has keyframes for transformation. To be able to use transformation keyframes it's necessary to convert the video layer to Smart Object. Also, change the default interpolation method to the nearest neighbor in Edit → Preferences → General → Image Interpolation. 
Output video parameters are limited but it's something better than Premiere's blurry mess anyway. 

Absolutely second this! For ANYONE recording anything game related, nearest neighbor scaling is the way most people prefer to see the footage. Allowing us to use the simplest upscale would be a win for Adobe.

cmon adobe, give us nearest neighbor scaling!

@Francis-Crossman17221443 Lanczos scaling looks atrocious on pixelart, sprites, crisp UI, low res art in general. Nearest-neighbour interpolation is highly useful for those making videos about games and pixelart

@ThioJoe  Great to see more tips on how to get around this, thanks! Another option, that I have already mentioned I believe, is VirtualDub where you can also resize with Nearest Neighbour.

If you have an image sequence you can also use XnView MP where you can use the UI to batch convert and resize using Nearest Neighbour.

But yeah, as you say, it's still a pain!

Yes please add nearest neighbor scaling! It's essential for scaling really any small computer graphic including desktop icons, screenshots, etc.

The closest workaround I could come up with is something like a batch file like this that uses Image Magick to scale to whatever percentage you set. You can drag and drop an image onto it:

@2846721 off
set "filepath=%~1"
set "dirname=%~dp1"
set "filename=%~n1"
set "extension=%~x1"

magick "%filepath%" -filter Point -resize 300%% "%dirname%%filename%-300%extension%"

That at least makes the image large enough where it should only have to be scaled down from its native size. Obviously still a pain to have to create a separate scaled version of the file!

Bumping this thread again so Adobe will add Bicubic scaling as an option in Premiere Pro. We need this feature. (It has always been an option in After Effects.) Not having it as an option in Premiere Pro is unbelievable. 

And in case anyone at Adobe does not understand exactly what I am referring to, checkout the explanation of Bilinear and Bicubic sampling from the After Effects user guide.


Roundtripping each clip I need scaled bicubically in Premiere Pro to After Effects and then back to Premiere Pro isn't a viable option. And it is a maddening workflow. The year is 2024. Please give us this feature in Premiere Pro. 

Most of us are aware of it, but it and GPUresize are way too slow and not stable enough in larger projects.

It's such a basic feature we shouldn't need to use plug-ins to achieve it, or expect to.

i use this as the adobe mailing list