Improving Quality of (YouTube) MP4 Videos?

[meeshu]

I came across a video on YouTube sometime ago that (supposedly) had its MP4 video resolution increased to something like 720p from an original video with a resolution of something like 360p or 4870p. I don't recall the exact resolution figures (as this was awhile back now), and I don't recall the particular video either (sorry).

The higher resolution video looked really clear on playback with no obvious signs of any artifacts.

Now I have doubts as to whether it is actually possible to improve the resolution of videos to the extent that the higher resolution videos are artifact free and look as though they was encoded at this higher resolution?

I vaguely recall that the re-encoding of this video may have been done on professional software/hardware as mentioned by the video creator?

So, is it possible to improve video resolution to produce higher quality videos from lower quality (low resolution) videos without the presence of any obvious artifacts within the higher resolution videos?

If so, how? Any particular software/hardware requirements?

[themaster1]

You can try topaz video Ai https://www.topazlabs.com/topaz-video-ai
there are others, you need a clean source to begin with, if you're starting with an old vhs badly encoded etc.. that's gonna be a mission

[meeshu]

Thanks for the suggestion! I'll look into this Topaz product.

[meeshu]

Tried Topaz Video AI, but it didn't seem to do a good job on a 480p MP4 test video when trying to increase resolution to around 720p. Maybe I didn't try enough variations of Topaz settings?

On some internet searches, other possible video improvement software included AVCLabs Video Enhancer AI and Adobe Premiere Pro. But on trying these two alternative programs, they both failed to load the test video! Possibly because the MP4 video was encoded using "HVEC" coding (as discovered by using MedaInfo on the test MP4 test file)? I don't have HVEC codecs installed on my Windows 7 64 bit system.

I still can't find which video I saw previously where the video uploader mentioned the software used to improve video resolution though!

Any further suggestions for video improvement software?

[Selur]

Learn to filter with Avisynth or Vapoursynth, both can do some incredible filtering which can help to improve subjective quality.
The downside is, that both require some understanding and are not some 'easy solution'.

Regarding hardware: only depends on how much time you have, the faster the hardware, the faster the processing.

[azmoth]

Avisynth can work wonders, but an immense learning curve!