Upscaling to 4k

[ABoyBrushedRed]

Thought i post here rather than the general porn section but i thought about upscaling my porn to 4k for better quality especially for the old pre hd ones. I know there are some expensive ones online to do this but for someone like me i can't tell the difference in quality.

I've just been using the free ones online to mess about with lil clips and pictures etc and i don't notice anything and i'm not sure why. Is it cause it's a cheap online one or something else .

I also spotted 2 types one being normal upscale and the other AI upscale? Whats the difference and using this as a focus point example what looks more pleasing to the eye. Hope using Ava Addams helps do it justice etc

Normal Image (Still from a scene)




Normal Upscale




AI Upscale



Her body looks amazing and meaty but again in terms of 4k upscale quality what shows it off better

[DarkRaven671]

Most pre-HD content doesn't have the necessary source quality to upscale it to 4k with todays technology. HD-era content might, but if it's already available in high quality 720p or even 1080p, then there isn't much to gain from upscaling it. And then we're in the era where 4k native content is available, so, as far as upscaling goes, 4k upscaled resolution isn't really that relevant at the moment.

[ABoyBrushedRed]

It's a shame as i seen some content around and the quality is so nice and crisp

[DarkRaven671]

It works well for up to 1080p, depending on input quality. Above that you'll definitely have exponential diminishing returns. It's ok though, you don't need it to be 4k to be all nice and crisp.

Or, if you're really determined, find the right settings that work for you and make it worthwhile. This will take a lot of time, more time for processing once you've adjusted all the settings, and more storage space for the 4k file, compared with 1080p or below.

[ABoyBrushedRed]

Originally Posted by DarkRaven671

It works well for up to 1080p, depending on input quality. Above that you'll definitely have exponential diminishing returns. It's ok though, you don't need it to be 4k to be all nice and crisp.

Or, if you're really determined, find the right settings that work for you and make it worthwhile. This will take a lot of time, more time for processing once you've adjusted all the settings, and more storage space for the 4k file, compared with 1080p or below.

What is a good alternative than investing in software? Would a 4k tv automatically do it justice, or perhaps any video players?

[DarkRaven671]

Not sure where you want to go with this. Maybe you're misunderstanding the concept?

There is no alternative. If you want to do upscaling, then you need a software to do it and beefy hardware to process it. This requires a lot of raw processing power to be done in more or less acceptable time.

And then you need a screen to play the video on. Upscaling older material is a thing, because it looks much better on modern, high resolution screens. Old fashioned, low resolution and low bitrate DVD rips looked okay-ish on ancient low resolution screens, but they're terrible on modern, large and high resolution screens.

Feeding a bad quality video to a high end screen won't magically make it look much better. TVs and computer screens have built-in upscalers, they fit the signal to their native resolution, if your input resolution is lower than the native resolution of the screen. This has little to no effect on the video your playing though and especially not a positive effect. If it's a good upscaler, then it's able to mostly remove the inherent quality loss associated with matching a, let's say, 1920x1080 resolution to a native 3840x2160 screen. This has no effect on the content within the video stream.

[SynchroDub]

Some modern 4K TVs actually DO have settings for upscaling 1080p (I never use it, as even 1080p content look already good on a 4K TV) or lower resolution DVDs/videos, but it's all a trial and error thing, most of the time.
No setting is 100% great, some content "may" benefit from it, while other simply not.

It all comes down to the source material you have in your hands.
Certainly upscaling a full-bitrate original double-layer DVD will look almost as good as if it was shot in HD compared to, say, a 240p or a lower compressed vid, due to the higher bitrate.

But a compressed 480p or 240p video will always look just pixelated, no matter what program or setting you use in your TV.
And upscaling it to 4K you're only "enhancing" compression artifacts and blurriness.
No point in investing in some software and PC hardware, only to end with the same result.

Just my 2 cents.

[Qwerty987]

You have uploaded the same upscaled picture twice (both looks the same and have the same hash, zip the file and you will see that have the same CRC32).
The final result depends of the source.
NonAI methods doesn't improve the result compared with your conventional TV or monitor, so you have a higher size vid with the same on-screen quality than your old lower resolution vid. Basically the interpolate pixels based on mathematical formulas.
(The below examples are from jpg files, but is analogous for films)
"input" ---->output

AI methods trains the model doing the reverse process with patterns and estimates how should be the pattern with the current source, creates a model and then compares the results with the original. The better the model, the better the resemblance. As they are several types of quality degradation, they are several models to apply, so you should preview with a sample which model/process best fits your needs.

Training --->degraded ----> modeled

AI models improve the overall quality of the film, but have their limitations and require a modern graphic card and time.

[OddBa11]

Originally Posted by SynchroDub

Some modern 4K TVs actually DO have settings for upscaling 1080p (I never use it, as even 1080p content look already good on a 4K TV) or lower resolution DVDs/videos, but it's all a trial and error thing, most of the time.
No setting is 100% great, some content "may" benefit from it, while other simply not.

It all comes down to the source material you have in your hands.
Certainly upscaling a full-bitrate original double-layer DVD will look almost as good as if it was shot in HD compared to, say, a 240p or a lower compressed vid, due to the higher bitrate.

But a compressed 480p or 240p video will always look just pixelated, no matter what program or setting you use in your TV.
And upscaling it to 4K you're only "enhancing" compression artifacts and blurriness.
No point in investing in some software and PC hardware, only to end with the same result.

Just my 2 cents.

All modern TVs process and scale ALL input that is not the screens native resolution. The results will vary based on the TV and the source.

So if you have quality 1080P files, for instance, and a good TV, you should get very good results.

[ANDREWSILV]

online converters aren't going to do anything really. depending on resolution you're upscaling from i know alot of people seem to like Topaz Video AI. just a forewarning though- your filesize is going to increase dramatically and can sometimes take a very long time to process even with something like a 3090 and decent processor. i'll try to find an old peter north clip i upscaled recently and post it along with the original. the difference is noticeable to me- usually lol