SD video becomes dull when upscaling to HD

[Alwyn]

Install the Colormill plugin for VDub and use the Levels sliders (lows/mids/highs). Works well.

Get Colormill from here:

https://github.com/Bassquake/ColorMill

Drop the VDF into the appropriate 32bit or 64bit Plugins folder.

[jagabo]

the white shirts are blown out

Isn't there a filter to consider only the whites and grey them out a bit in Avisynth?

AviSynth has a Levels() filter:

http://avisynth.nl/index.php/Levels

Tweak(), SmoothTweak(), and ColorYUV() use the terms contrast and brightness but the really mean gain (multiply) and offset (add).

For example SmoothTweak(contrast=0.9) will mulitiply all Y values by 0.9. 16 will become 14 (rounded down from 16*0.9=14.4), 235 will become 212 (rounded up from 235*0.9=211.5). So the black level will come down a little bit, and the white level will come down a lot. If you don't want that small drop in black level you can add the brightness option to bring everything up by 2 or so; 16 will remain 16 (14+2), 235 will drop to 214 (212+2).

The problem with your video is that the brights are already blown out. You can lower them even more but there will still be no detail in them. You'll just be left with a duller looking picture.

[Selur]

One could use some luma limit masking to only change the gamma of the whites,... (https://pastebin.com/0JeCXENq)
But yeah, not much one can do,..
https://imgsli.com/MzEyMjY3

[jagabo]

Wasn't this

SmoothTweak(contrast=1.08, brightness=-20)

meant to boost the contrast?

Yes, it boosts the contrast but does so by keeping the white level about where it was and moving the black level down.

[Bencuri]

In the end I solved it in a way that I set the levels as suggested and described a few comments before in Vegas, then I frameserved to Avisynth, and did the rest of the adjustments there. Now whites as lower, the rest of the image is more or less unaffected by the "greying".

[jagabo]

It's not a problem for that particular video but beware that VirtualDub likes to convert incoming YUV to RGB with a rec.601 matrix before filtering (some filters do work in YUV though). If you had super-whites (Y>235) or super-blacks Y<16) they would be crushed by the conversion, making it impossible to properly fix those areas. I believe Vegas also converts to RGB with a rec.601 matrix when frame serving making it a problem there too.

[Bencuri]

It is just that I wanted to make those areas greyer, I did not want to go for getting detail in those areas at first place. That was successful. If I compare the original and the incoming in Avisynth, it can be seen. However I also set Studio RGB to Computer RGB in Levels in Vegas. I guess that helped, or is that setting independent of what you refer to?

[jagabo]

Studio RGB (aka limited range) is an RGB colorspace where R=G=B=16 is black, R=G=B=235 is white, whereas Computer RGB (aka full range) has R=G=B=0 as black and R=G=B=255 is white. I don't know enough about Vegas (I've never used it) so I don't know if the setting is about how the video is displayed on the screen, how it's handled internally, or how it's converted on output to a YUV video. Note that all commercial/streaming formats are limited range.

Note that all commerical/streaming formats use limited range YUV (Y=16=black, Y=235=white). When displayed on a TV or computer monitor that is contrast stretched to RGB=0=black, RGB=255=white.

[Bencuri]

But in case the file converted through framserving from Vegas and the file that was converted by opening directly in Avisynth match by colors when played back after conversion, I guess they are identical in this sense, aren't they? Or it can happen that the two files have different color codes actually?