AI Upscale proof based discussion

Upscaling has no point imo. Ive seen multiple upscaled videos and they atmost seem 10% better. Just shoot in 8K camera and u won't need to do any of this upscaling nonsense that barely works.

doublevr So if I understand correctly, there is no "noticeable" improvement for videos "beyond" 4k, right? (never tested, not having the use of more, I can not say).

(be careful, my message is not to make anyone angry, I'm just trying to untangle things to understand them )

doublevr That the video is "normally" delivered at the maximum resolution of the camera, I fully agree, especially that beyond 6k, do we really see a difference with current headsets?

Nevertheless, in my opinion (which only concerns me), I do not completely agree that upscaling does not bring anything.

The example I showed above shows it quite well.

In 1920p upscale, the video is clearly sharper and more pleasant to watch (original video in 1440p, it does not officially exist in higher resolution).

Well, personally, beyond 4k videos (1920p, max 2048p), I don't care, not that I wouldn't like to have a better quality (5k or 6k max), but having all this on your hard drives, it requires a lot of space, so 4k is a good compromise between weight and quality.

that title

Upscale brings no quality improvements

is just wrong

upscaling can bring some improvements but they are not dramatic improvements like filming in higher resolution. are the relatively minor improvements from upscaling enough to justify the time and cost of doing it? maybe they are maybe they arent but to say that it brings no improvement totally isnt true.

doublevr No, don't worry, I just went ahead to avoid any misunderstanding, since I imagine that with u/thejinx2Na, since it annoyed you for more than a year, it must have annoyed you.

So, it was just a 15-second test I did in December.

My PC has been used for several months for re-encoding, so unfortunately it doesn't have the time to manage this upscalling for the moment.

I agree that making a comparison on a simple image is not the most representative, but with a video, you need the time to go back to the user interface, restart the new video, come back to exactly the same passage ... personally, I take for granted that just by going back to the user interface, the eye has lost the information of comparison of the video (unless there is a "really" flagrant difference as if we went for example from a video with a lot of block of visible pixels to a super clean video.

I'd have to take a moment to make the video, but not easy.

Translated with www.DeepL.com/Translator (free version)

doublevr

Can upscaling bring higher perceptual quality?

Well this is highly subjective. Upscaling can not bring any more real details, but in can render the available details in a way that is subjectively more pleasing to the eye.

And in fact, your comparison that should prove it does nothing actually shows that upscaling can do a lot.

The edges are a lot better defined, the railings on the ceiling look much better, and the mesh on the ceiling actually seems to have even more details. Whatever upscaling algorithm has been used seems to do a great job in detecting and filling up patterns. Even the pink lights, which look terrible in the original picture look while far from perfect quite a bit better.

It does that at the cost of quite some sharpening halos, so it might be subjective which one is better, especially as most of the improvement seems to happen in the background, while the sharpening halos are most disturbing around the model and the lingerie.

But you certainly can not say it does nothing.

Also WankzVR did some AI upscaling of their old scenes some still shot with 2k and they improved a ton. Especially the actresses look so much better in their upscaled versions, unlike the background which still looks like paintings, which made me wonder if they actually used the photoshootings of the girls they do with their videos to train the NN.

Are the comparable to scenes shot in real with the same pixelcount? Of course not and by a large mile.
But do they look better then the originals? Hell yes.

So you can not say, upscaling never ever can bring anything. The amount and if there even is an improvement varies highly on the algorithms used and scenes, but there are definitely some that show visible improvements, although of course they are no match to scenes already shot with much higher pixelcounts.

You could argue, that it is not upscaling that does the improvement, and you could get the same with the original file and post processing during playback, which of course is true, but with offline upscaling you have basically infinitely more computing power available to do so, so the end result can and in most cases will be better.

I don't do any AI upscaling myself, but to me, I can definitely see the difference between an older NA 3k video file with a AI-enhanced 8k video file (done by a fan, not by NA themselves).

Here is a screenshot of my own for comparison. Both are from the same frame and both from the "left" lens.
(Left 8k, AI-enhanced) || (Right 3k, original)

https://i.imgur.com/5DRclv7.png
The left side (remaster) is definitely clearer and has more detail (look at the guy's hair between his belly and dick), and it is smooth (it doesn't have the jaggies on the edges like common "upscale" videos do). The right side (original) also has some compression artifacts (look at Karla's cheekbones) and lots of jagged edges that the remaster removed.

But it's the AI-enhanced that makes all the difference. I do agree with what @doublevr is saying regarding how many studios are simply exporting lower res files to higher res (like 7k and 8k) and all they are doing is using some basic "sharpening" filters. I don't like this practice, as it is false advertising and just balloons the file size. But from my experience, seeing the few really well-done AI enhanced remasters are pretty cool for those legacy scenes from years back.

doublevr Sure thing. I'll DM you on reddit because it is a "free" link and I don't want to support those on these forums =)

doublevr

None of that is seen in the headset ¯(ツ)/¯

You can when you know where to look. As the benefit is mostly seen in the background it is still very subjective if the upscale is really better, but it is there and in some parts undenieable.
Also the pink lights show less jaggies in the upscaled picture, and they are a huge distraction in an otherwise great video. Unfortunately they are still there, so it is not a huge improvement, but a slight one nonetheless.

I am wondering if and how much it would be better if the upscaling would have been done on the "RAW" material and not an already sharpened final output. This already has some slight sharpening artifacts which usually get worse with upscaling, and also limit how aggressive you can use sharpening during upscaling before it becomes too much.