Question regarding making an existing video larger

[snafubaby]

I have a video that is a small size, for an Archos Gmini 400. I was thinking there could be a way to enlarge it. I bought something about 10 years ago that helps convert 8mm films to VHS/DVD. It involves a little gadget with a mirror and like a magnefying glass to make the playing 8mm large enough to record with the VHS/DVD camcorder. Now i was thinking if someone could make a similiar module for making a small video very large so you could record it in that screen size. How difficult would it be?

[thecoalman]

Your gadget isn't creating any detail in the original film and isn't any different than what a projector does.

Same goes for small resolution digital video, you can't add what's not there to begin with.

[guns1inger]

The difference between what your analogue magnifying device does, and what you want to do in the digital domain, is the source. Film source has much finer grain. Yes, if you blow it up enough it will loose the image and get the detail of the grain, and if you blow it up further, eventually you will get down to the emulsion and beyond. But it is all there to begin with.

With your digital file you are starting with an image made up of 352 x 240 discrete squares of colour (maybe more, maybe less - I don't know exactly what resolution you have to work with) and that is all. If you zoom in using a magnifying glass, all you do is make these squares bigger. You see any new detail. If you try to digitally zoom in you can interpolate to a degree, but you still don't create any more detail, because it simply isn't there. Interpolation, for the most part, simply fills in the gaps with a blur.

[lordsmurf]

if you blow it up enough .

Shall we use dynamite? :P