Backup disintegrating DVDs up scaling and fixing plus convert to mkv (x265)

[Quantumleap]

Hello,

I wanted to backup my DVD collection where the DVDs are slowly disintegrate due to the weather.
At the same time I wanted to upscale the DVDs to 1280x720 or 1920x1080.

All DVDs have already been successfully backed to my HDD.
For the next step I wanted to use Handbrake to upscale and convert but it seems there is no option to do that.
Looking into Avisynth I am a bit overwhelmed with all the setting and plugins.
Also some of the DVD material has a lot of grain, like Stargate SG-1 Season 1 to 3 as far as I can tell.
My DVDs are in PAL and NTSC depending on the series / movie.

How do I go about the up scaling and removal of the grain?
I saw that there are GPU supported Avisynth plugins that use the GPU to upscale.
For encoding I prefer to use the CPU as I been reading that the encoded result would look better compared to GPU encoding.

Another strange thing I noticed is that some DVDs seem to have a color mismatch or bad white balance.
I noticed that with my Buffy and Dr Quinn collection.
Is it possible to remove / fix that problem / issue?

My system configuration if needed
CPU: Intel Core I9-9900K
RAM: 64 GB
Windows 10 64 Bit
GPU 1: Intel UHD 630
GPU 2: Nvidia RTX 2060
GPU 3: AMD RX 570 series

[jagabo]

Handbrake no longer allows upscaling. I believe VidCoder does (though not especially well) and uses Handbrake's encoding engine.

[dellsam34]

Or you can slowly upgrade to Blu-ray and get a better version, I've done the same with my DVD's until I got them all replaced, I usually get them for as low as $1 a disc online, though I had only like 300 DVD's. It might be a hassle if you have over a 1000.

[lordsmurf]

where the DVDs are slowly disintegrate due to the weather.

Where are you storing these?
Tip: Don't store DVDs in the attic, garage, non-temp-controlled storage, the dog house etc.

BTW, the more likely reason the discs are "disintegrating" is because the discs were always bad.
What is the media ID of these? CMC, Princo, etc?

You gain nothing by upscaling, and in fact can damage the visual quality.

All of my DVDs are ISOs on 5tb HDD, to watch on my WDTVs.
And those are backed up onto 16tb drives. The original discs are in boxes in a storage closet.

[Quantumleap]

@jagabo - will have to take a look at the program

@dellsam34 - some of them are not available on BluRay

@lordsmurf

They are kept under the TV in a cupboard.
This are all original pressed DVDs, I assume its the weather as its very hot and humid here in the region where I live.

I got all DVDs as ISOs on my internal HDD for now.
For playing media I would usually use my Nvidia Shield but I never tested that with ISOs before.

[ProWo]

My 2 cents. No upscaling (the TV integrated upscaler does a good job), so there is no quality loss by reencoding. You could joining the vts.vob junks to one movie.vob, then remux this vob to mkv, all without quality loss with my clever Ffmpeg-GUI.

[dellsam34]

I've played ISO DVD files on the Shield using Kodi perfectly, I was amazed on how fast the access speed compared to the actual physical disc in a DVD player. those are the DVD's that never made it to Blu-ray, Everything else is BD ISO's. So yes no need to re-encode anything, just playback the DVD ISO files.

[lordsmurf]

They are kept under the TV in a cupboard. .

Heat nearby (TV). Not good idea.

[Quantumleap]

I've played ISO DVD files on the Shield using Kodi perfectly, I was amazed on how fast the access speed compared to the actual physical disc in a DVD player. those are the DVD's that never made it to Blu-ray, Everything else is BD ISO's. So yes no need to re-encode anything, just playback the DVD ISO files.

I tried that and it looks really bad.
I tried activating the Nvidia up scaling which doesn't work for this content.
Also changed the setting to display actual frame-rate in Kodi.
But the picture doesn't get better.

They are kept under the TV in a cupboard. .

Heat nearby (TV). Not good idea.

Its always 29 degrees Celsius or hotter here.


Is there any way to convert it and remove the grain make it a bit sharper or not recommended?
I saw somewhere to increase the frame rate by factor 2 (to 59.xx fps) to get progressive video, which will look better, but I have no idea if that will work for real.

[jagabo]

Is there any way to convert it and remove the grain make it a bit sharper...?

Yes.

I saw somewhere to increase the frame rate by factor 2 (to 59.xx fps) to get progressive video, which will look better, but I have no idea if that will work for real.

If you don't know what you're doing I recommend you stick with Handbrake or Vidcoder and deinterlace with Yadif+bob.

[dellsam34]

I've played ISO DVD files on the Shield using Kodi perfectly, I was amazed on how fast the access speed compared to the actual physical disc in a DVD player. those are the DVD's that never made it to Blu-ray, Everything else is BD ISO's. So yes no need to re-encode anything, just playback the DVD ISO files.

I tried that and it looks really bad.
I tried activating the Nvidia up scaling which doesn't work for this content.
Also changed the setting to display actual frame-rate in Kodi.
But the picture doesn't get better.

It doesn't look any worse than the DVD format itself even on my 120" projection screen, But hey if you get some free time and want to get your hands dirty have at it. Good luck and have fun.

[Quantumleap]

Is there any way to convert it and remove the grain make it a bit sharper...?

Yes.

I saw somewhere to increase the frame rate by factor 2 (to 59.xx fps) to get progressive video, which will look better, but I have no idea if that will work for real.

If you don't know what you're doing I recommend you stick with Handbrake or Vidcoder and deinterlace with Yadif+bob.

Ok, I will give that a try.
Thank you.

I've played ISO DVD files on the Shield using Kodi perfectly, I was amazed on how fast the access speed compared to the actual physical disc in a DVD player. those are the DVD's that never made it to Blu-ray, Everything else is BD ISO's. So yes no need to re-encode anything, just playback the DVD ISO files.

I tried that and it looks really bad.
I tried activating the Nvidia up scaling which doesn't work for this content.
Also changed the setting to display actual frame-rate in Kodi.
But the picture doesn't get better.

It doesn't look any worse than the DVD format itself even on my 120" projection screen, But hey if you get some free time and want to get your hands dirty have at it. Good luck and have fun.

Could it be that my old DVD player was better with up scaling?
Cause on the 40" (FullHD TV) it looked ok with the DVD player but on the 55" (4K TV) with the Shield not really.
So I thought there might be some settings wrong or is it the difference in pixels it has to upscale FHD compared to 4k?

[dellsam34]

Yes that's the reason, 55" is bigger therefore the image is blurrier, pretty simple. But like I said DVD is an SD format, it can't get any better even with re-encoding it which you will loose quality in the process of doing it. That's the reason why I upgraded my library to Blu-ray and stopped buying DVD's 10 years ago.

[abolibibelot]

I saw somewhere to increase the frame rate by factor 2 (to 59.xx fps) to get progressive video, which will look better, but I have no idea if that will work for real.

If you don't know what you're doing I recommend you stick with Handbrake or Vidcoder and deinterlace with Yadif+bob.

That's a bit harsh... For someone eager to learn, the deinterlacing quality obtained with QTGMC is generally considered way better than the likes of Yadif (samples). Granted, it's more difficult to setup, and it's slower, but once it works, it works, and if the goal is to compress to x265 it's gonna be slow anyway, so if going through that hassle, might as well use the best available conversion process. QTGMC also includes an optional denoiser, and the output tends to be slightly sharper than the source (at least at slower settings), some have even stated that the output (encoded with a high enough bitrate) could look subjectively better than the source. But you have to be certain that the source is actually interlaced, otherwise it will do more harm than good. MeGUI works with Avisynth scripts (Handbrake doesn't) and has a module which analyses each source to determine the best way to pre-process it : deinterlacing, inverse telecine, etc. (that's a good start although it's not perfectly reliable and should be double-checked before proceeding).

Yadif

[Attachment 47392 - Click to enlarge]
QTGMC (from)

[Attachment 47393 - Click to enlarge]

Could it be that my old DVD player was better with up scaling?

Don't know much about that, but that wouldn't be surprising. DVD is now an antiquated format, so it's possible that DVD-specific chips on newer devices are deliberately chosen on the cheap side of low-end, since it's no longer a relevant argument de vente, as it used to be a decade ago.

[Quantumleap]

Thank you all for your feedback.

I run into an issue with one of the DVDs I tried to upscale.
Its the Yentl Directors Cut

So far what I did with the source is in the below script

MPEG2Source("trimmer.d2v")
QTGMC(preset="Medium")
ConvertBits(8)
ConvertToRGB32(matrix="Rec601")

I used the QTGMC as it shows that the source is Hybrid after scanning it.

However I run into issues with the up-scaling and there seem to be some artifacts which I do not know what they are called, or maybe its just me or the script introduced something?

[jagabo]

I don't know what artifacts you're talking about. But that's a film source it should be inverse telecined with TFM().TDecimate(), not QTGMC'd. Be sure to build your d2v index using Honor Pulldown Flags mode.

[Quantumleap]

@jagabo

Thank you for the information. I did not realize that.
I updated my script with the up-scaling and adjusted the color matrix conversion.
I think it looks better now and no more artifacts.
The only things I notice is that there seems to be noise and the colour, in my opinion looks brownish, but maybe that is intentional?
Am I sharpening to much and introducing unnecessary noise?

MPEG2Source("trimmer.d2v", cpu=0)

TFM().TDecimate()

ColorMatrix(mode="rec.601->rec.709")

Crop(24, 0, -24, -0)

Spline36Resize(1280, 720)
Sharpen(0.3, 0.0)

Spline36Resize(1920, 1080)
Sharpen(0.2)

[jagabo]

The video is intentionally sepia toned to make it look old fashioned. Make sure you're viewing it properly too -- with a rec.709 matrix on display. To verify the colors, add ConvertToRGB(matrix="rec709") to the end of the script.

And yes the video is pretty grainy. Probably also a production choice. You can try some light noise reduction but you will lose fine detail too.