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Question

Upscale video hi-8mm to 2k?

Forum|Forum|4 years ago
November 11, 2021
3 replies
3723 views

Hi!
Working on an older project and shot on Hi-8mm and DV, framed for widescreen and wondering if it's better to upscale to 2k in Boris or PP directly and then what additional filters to use to "clean it up" and make 24p, etc?

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Andy 1968

Inspiring

What did you use to import the Hi-8 video tapes? Does the final output have to be 2K at 24P?

It might be best to export at 60P. You can upscale at 80%, 150% or even 300% but instead of seeing individual strands of hair it might start to look like rabbit fur. I see people use cheap USB capture devices along with Virtual Dub and Handbrake with horrible results. They jump through a lot of hoops but in the end the hair turns to rabbit fur when upscaled and the whites are to bright and the shadows get crushed to black. The video below at eight minutes has a few sample clips of VHS tapes using a DV converter upscaled to HD. I am not saying my method is the best method. I am just showing the end results when using Premiere Pro and a Firewire based DV converter. Your method might produce much better results. That being said I would like to see some sample clips from people using Topaz. If the results look amazing maybe I will invest in Topaz and change my method.

FlyingFourFun

Inspiring

Also; this video shows off the deinterlace from an old 480i tape;

Can A.I. Tool Turn Old Video into Crispy 4K? - YouTube

FlyingFourFun

Inspiring

I have borisFX and Topaz Video Enhance AI.

I would strongly suggest you use Topaz (it's not much money) - it does miracles with old footage. It now can deinterlace and upscale same time, it also removes noise etc.... You can scale up to 8k if you want. They have a trial version if you want to take it for a spin.

They also now have a slomo AI engine that can change frame rates if you want to try that. If you want to stay inside of premier and BorisFX for this, I'll let others answers as I stopped using BorisFX for this type of work a few years back because Topaz is so much better.

Its also on sale, I dont think the price is expesive... $199 right now for a few more days... I also use Edge, and it always seems to prompt me to enter a coupon code it has for an extra 15%. The nice thing about this software the reasonable upfront costs, and optional $99 for renewals annual, but if not you own the version when you stop the 'update' program payments. so not subscription based if you dont want.

S

Steve Griffiths

Inspiring

When you say 'Boris' what do you mean? If 'Boris 'Continuum' installed in Premiere Pro then use the 'upscale' plugin to upscale in a Premiere Pro 1920x1080 sequence. There's also Boris Dropout Fixer (going to need a lot of that with Hi-8 :),

Boris Video noise reduction. + Boris DV Fixer etc.

One of my older favorite tools for upscaling old SD interlaced footage is Revision FX deinterlacer.

But lately I've been using Topaz Video Enhance AI. It does a pretty amazing job in getting SD material to HD & 4K. Not cheap though ... but then none of these tools are.

If cost is constrained and you want to use tools you probably already have - process your footage through After Effects. It has very good temporal noise reduction and a 'detail preserving upscale' plugin.

FlyingFourFun

Inspiring

Steve, Have you tried latest versions of Topaz with the built in Deinterlace - Miracle level for a workflow now that you can do it all in in one pass (an options for another pass if you want something else). I was desperate a few years back to turn some old blackberry 3gp video into something usable and was amazed. Started trying out other footage like old 8mm, and digital8 wedding video friends had and shocking good results in most cases. Early versions had some issues with faces, but the latest versions work well. The Chronos framerate/Slomo has also been helpful, still must be careful with Chronos with some trial and error but it's been handy.

I would LOVE to see Adobe buy out Topaz and put some serious money behind the tech, or at least work with them to get a plug-in option. NVIDIA worked with them last year to recode for Cuda performance updates, to get onto NVidia radar means they are goign places.

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Steve Griffiths

Inspiring

Yes, I noted Topaz in the previous post ... it's pretty great. Used recently to upscale 1960's Black&White Vietnam War film footage (SD) to 4K and then scaled back down to HD for a documentary. Simply amazing results. Looking closely, Topaz was adding detail that could barely previously be seen. Looking like it's algorithm was doing some sort of temporal detail analysis (not sure how it *really* works).

It sharpened jagged low resolution edges into sharp diagonal lines (some Tank scenes for instance) and made faces much clearer.

Some scenes caused Topaz to have issues - mind you some of the footage was very poor original quality - but overall - very, very impressed.*

Same too for Zoom recordings - not quite as impressive, but taking a 640x360 zoom recording to HD is never going to be perfect .. but again made it significantly better. Faces (on zoom recordings) did not get any real resolution boost but the backgrounds looked almost full HD res.

* I do not work for Topaz and I paid full price for the app (missed out on the discount).

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