Upscale 480i to 720i

[kalemvar1]

Hello everyone

Quick question about upscale hire, if I want to upscale video from 480i to 720i using TMPGenc Video Mastering Works 6, am I going to get an lost of quality? I run few test on a Plasma 50 inch TV 1920x1080 and I don't see any difference between the rip and the dvd itseft. And if I don't do it right, what's the best way to do so ?

Thanks

[smrpix]

Any recompression will lead to a loss of quality. The main question isn't how, but why?
If I understand correctly, you've ripped a DVD to your computer. Why not just play the rip and let your TV do the upscaling?

If you insist on upscaling VMW6 isn't a terrible choice. It has an good deinterlacer if you need it, and a number of different upscaling methods. You should test them on a short segment of medium to high action material and see what you like best.

[LigH.de]

You would probably not rescale to 720i, but to 720p with double rate, using a "bob" algorithm. One of the most elaborate you can use (including the upscaling internally) is the QTGMC script for AviSynth, but setting it up with all matching plugins is not that trivial.

Keeping the original material without recompression is probably favourable, as smrpix already said. But it may depend on your TV set's firmware which container formats it supports to play a DVD rip as one file from external media instead. Maybe a continuous "PGC VOB", try that.

[pandy]

To perform this in a proper way you need first to deinterlace source (480i) later you can apply resize (upscale) to 720 and finally if you not mistaken reinterlace (but i think 720p is your goal).
To deinterlace fast but with sufficient quality you may use yadif then i would recommend to upscale video by 2 (so 960p) and later downscale to 720p.
If you need higher quality then you should consider https://ffmpeg.org/ffmpeg-filters.html#nnedi or perhaps http://avisynth.nl/index.php/QTGMC also nnedi offer higher upscale quality (usually) than classical resize algorithms.

[poisondeathray]

What kind of DVD is it ?

If the "480i" was really progressive content (e.g. a theatrical movie) , then you would actually need to inverse telecine first

[TimA-C]

What are you playing the file on? DVD/Bluray player, media player, PC/Laptop or the TV itself? Unless you have a cheap noname Supermarket TV, the TV will probably do a better job of upscaling than you will. And if your current TV doesn't then your next TV almost certainly will.

[kalemvar1]

Thanks for your answers guys,

My main goal is to convert tv shows in .mkv format (dvd & Blu-ray and btw they are all NTSC).

For DVD I've old show in 4:3 format and they convert pretty easily (resolution: 640x480) and (aspect ratio: 4:3), on TV perfect result.
For DVD most recent shows, they are all encoded in 16:9 and that's the main problem here, I encode them (resolution: 720x470) and (aspect ratio: 16:9), they work perfectly fine on my Blu-ray connected to my TV, but for those in 720x480 I've to stretch the picture to get the real aspect, problem I don't have with 4:3 tv-show and Blu-ray TV-Show.

Is there a way to automatically stretch the picture? or something I do wrong in the encoding setting ? I'm using TMPGenc Video Mastering Works 6

Thanks

[jagabo]

Encode 720x404.

[kalemvar1]

Thanks jagabo,

with 720x404, I've a full screen this I will have a tiny little bar on each sides of the TV, not a full image. I tried with option ''picture position'' at ''Full Screen (No Margin)'' same result.

[TimA-C]

If they're NTSC TV shows then why don't you just encode at the original resolution (presumably 704x480)? Why do so many people want to make their lives more difficult?

[manono]

Thanks jagabo,
with 720x404, I've a full screen this I will have a tiny little bar on each sides of the TV, not a full image

Not correct. Assuming you have a widescreen 16:9 (1.777778:1 ratio) television, 720x404 is 1.782178:1 and slightly greater than is your television's screen ratio. If you get black bars anywhere it'll be infinitesimally small ones top and bottom. And you probably won't even see them because of your television's overscan. So, if you're seeing something on the sides, you're doing something wrong, perhaps setting a wrong SAR. It should be 1:1. Maybe you're still using 4:3 from your previous encodes.

[jagabo]

Or maybe the source is black at the edges.

[davejavu]

Or maybe the source is black at the edges.

I encountered this frequently on the DVB broadcast recordings I have made. Depending on the video source obtained by the broadcaster and whether or not they are trying to maintain the original aspect ratio, or the competence of the person preparing the video for broadcast, black bars to the sides and/or top/bottom are quite common and not always evenly distributed. I have had black bars on the left twice as thick as the one on the right.

[manono]

Except this is a DVD and black bars on the sides of 16:9 DVDs are fairly rare unless, maybe, it's a 16:9 DVD of a 1.66:1 ratio film. Unless shown a sample or even a picture, we can only guess, but my own guess is something else is going on besides black bars on the sides of the DVD video.

[davejavu]

Except this is a DVD and black bars on the sides of 16:9 DVDs are fairly rare unless, maybe, it's a 16:9 DVD of a 1.66:1 ratio film. Unless shown a sample or even a picture, we can only guess, but my own guess is something else is going on besides black bars on the sides of the DVD video.

True enough but while less common on DVD it does happen, even on modern releases. I will admit that most of the instances I have seen on DVD are the result of the studio/production company putting a 704 picture in a 720 frame with small black bars, but the quality of the result is sometimes surprising with the picture being off-centre in places or seeming to migrate along the screen from 1 scene to the next changing the thickness of the black bars.

kalemvar1 - If you have abandonned the idea of upscaling the DVD's you may get better results if you do as TimA-C suggested and just reencode the video at the same resolution and aspect ratio as the source. Leave the 4:3 videos at 720x480 with an aspect ratio flag set to 4:3 and leave the 16:9 ones at 720x480 with a 16:9 aspect ratio flag. Any processing of the video before encoding, like resizing, introduces another step that changes the video and could degrade the picture quality, even if only a little. HOWEVER, to completely eliminate any black bars at the sides of the 16:9 DVD's you will need to check the video preview in your editting software to see if any exist as part of the video on the DVD and crop the video to get rid of them before reencoding.