Using Waifu2x to upscale FMVs?

  • Thread starter Thread starter Jahiliyyah
  • Start date Start date
Status
Not open for further replies.
J

Jahiliyyah

Guest
Why am I awake? Well I was really impressed by the background upscales that have been made with waifu, and someone just made this guide for using waifu2x on videos, so I was wondering if we could get some HD quality versions of the old FMVs.

http://pastebin.com/JzgNfHS4

Before i decide to release this im going to let you see it on youtube first. im using the original jp psx intro with it and please tell me if you feel its worth releasing by watch the vid first
 
Mediafire links
Upscaled Verson http://www.mediafire.com/?oq9ikhnnirs5n9f Rename This One Opening

Original Jp quality http://www.mediafire.com/?wrmufd962wa74o7
Click to expand...
I think I'll play around with it and see if the results are any better than Protoman's were.

Writing... 45 minutes for a 2 minute video upscaled from 224p to 448p jesus christ. This better be good.

Done
http://www.mediafire.com/watch/52mt62l9l19eg4n/Waifu2x_Test_1.avi

Initial thoughts, it looks ok. Most impressive thing is the file size is actually less than the original and more than half Proto's upscale though he's obviously used a different original file. It's not as sharp, but may be worth playing with the settings. I'm going to try increasing the noise reduction next.

Writing... 50 minutes this time. Not a huge increase, but on let's say a half hour clip 10% longer could be hours more. I should mention I have a GTX 760 2 GB. From the guides the deep convolution neural networks used for training are only really useful with topline graphics cards. Mine is already last generation (I have another I'm going to put in SLI soon), but the recommended GTX Titans cost a grand each. I imagine as this project grows people will share their compiled training for various media.

Done
http://www.mediafire.com/watch/wmoxqvm1s46ctqb/Waifu2x_Test_2.avi

I'll look at it later, too tired. It's even smaller this time.

If someone can figure out how to insert training into the waifu2x plugin for AVIutl that may work better: https://github.com/nagadomi/waifu2x

http://forum.videohelp.com/threads/...ithm-waifu2x?p=2393889&viewfull=1#post2393889
It seems you can only do training on a linux based system with Nvidia GPUs for now. The plugin won't have training until that component gets ported at least.

Either way I'm going to bed now, I have to be up at like 6. This was not a good time to look into this.

Alternative OpenGL plugin: https://github.com/MaverickTse/aviutl-waifu2x-gl
 
Last edited:
The increased noise reduction on the second one makes it really smudgy.
 
Agreed, until training get implemented it's probably not worth bothering with.
 
Not bad, I guess you used the original PSX video as a source?

You could take DLPB's opening.avi from his "Goblin's Bar" project (which uses parts of the infamous 1997 FFVII-Toshiba DVD) to get even better results. He uploaded the whole intro once but the file seems file is no longer available and will only be re-upped until the whole project is finished.

Someone uploaded it to Youtube though:

You could try using the waifu filter on that. :)
 
I didn't even know about the FF7 Toshiba DVD. So we had HD FMVs already? I'll give it a try, but that's already a 1028x720 video and it's an mp4 container. I think I can get that into an avi, but without the doubling it's mainly just denoising so I don't know if it will help much. I found a playlist of it here: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLKRZrzcZOFU5EgBycX61mkSRSgsrYOW2l

Well it took more time finding the mp4 plugin than to denoise it, so I guess I'll try doubling to 2160x1440. This will probably take awhile. I should mention it's really not intended for upscaling already HD media.

4 hours 23 minutes Oh boy
 
Last edited:
I didn't even know about the FF7 Toshiba DVD. So we had HD FMVs already?
Click to expand...
Only a select few FMVs and I'd hardly called DVD video HD. At best it's 480i. That is still better than the 240 barf-colored rapid slideshow we got on the PC.
 
That makes sense to upscale then. Does anyone know where I could get the originals? All the one's on youtube are already upscaled to 720p.

http://thelifestream.net/forums/showthread.php?t=12781&page=2
I will not sell my copy and I will not share an ISO. Doing that would be equal to giving out the original DVD. Sharing the full DVD for free would diminish its value and I will not be the one responsible for this.

At the bottom of the review you will find download links to the FMVs. By using those, plus the menu snapshots provided and the detailed description of the DVD, you should be able to recreate a 90% accurate version of the Toshiba DVD for yourself, if you so desire. =)
Click to expand...
d*ck

http://thelifestream.net/review-the-toshiba-ffvii-dvd/#reflections
You may also right-click -> save the links below to download every video without any decrease in quality.
Click to expand...
Now I'm just confused


Well this is what I was able to do with DLPBs remaster. If someone has a 1440p or higher screen, they can see if there's any difference.
http://www.mediafire.com/watch/1b3h959f4gjabsb/Waifu2x_Test_3.avi

https://www.ff7catalog.com/threads/10293/

All the other links are dead, and youtube does it's own reencoding. I'll try with the mpg from lifestream now. I won't bother splicing together the original videos because I suck at video editing. I'm just trying to see if this upscaling method is viable.

2 hours 31 minutes Yeah that makes sense for a 1440x960 video. This also seems like the exact format the upscaler was intended for, turning old DVDs (480i-576p) into HD quality videos (720p-1080p). You could in theory quadruple to 2880x1920 UHD near 4K, but that's beyond this plugin and I imagine running the upscale twice will have diminishing returns.
 
Last edited:
That makes sense to upscale then. Does anyone know where I could get the originals? All the one's on youtube are already upscaled to 720p.

http://thelifestream.net/forums/showthread.php?t=12781&page=2
d*ck

http://thelifestream.net/review-the-toshiba-ffvii-dvd/#reflections
Now I'm just confused


Well this is what I was able to do with DLPBs remaster. If someone has a 1440p or higher screen, they can see if there's any difference.
http://www.mediafire.com/watch/1b3h959f4gjabsb/Waifu2x_Test_3.avi

https://www.ff7catalog.com/threads/10293/

All the other links are dead, and youtube does it's own reencoding. I'll try with the mpg from lifestream now. I won't bother splicing together the original videos because I suck at video editing. I'm just trying to see if this upscaling method is viable.

2 hours 31 minutes Yeah that makes sense for a 1440x960 video. This also seems like the exact format the upscaler was intended for, turning old DVDs (480i-576p) into HD quality videos (720p-1080p). You could in theory quadruple to 2880x1920 UHD near 4K, but that's beyond this plugin and I imagine running the upscale twice will have diminishing returns.
Click to expand...
Wow that actually looks pretty good, I noticed a minor stutter I thought was the video buffering but I replayed it and seemed to still see it. It's very slight though, and the quality looks improved :). Good work
 
http://www.mediafire.com/watch/um68wrxf0uke078/Waifu2x_Test_4.avi

That's pretty much it. Should I set up a poll for which encoding method works best? Bear in mind the time it took encoding even such short videos, and that if we wanted to encode all the FMVs we'd be working with 320×224, 640×448, and 717×456 RAWs so trying to upscale everything to UHD is probably going to make huge differences in quality between sources.

I think the ideal method to go from there would be first upscaling the PSX RAWS that are needed to 640x448, color correcting and desaturating on the DVD RAWS for uniformity, editing them together losslessly, and then upscaling with waifu and other filters.
 
Last edited:
@Jahiliyyah
Compared to any previous effort to enhance the opening video, that's probably the best result I've seen so far.

Now if you combine it with the previous version from Youtube, just for the complete beginning, the "Original DVD..." text and the white fade at the end, it would be PERFECT.
 
To be honest this is already way beyond my field of expertise, and there are others that would do a better job with it than me. I just wanted to show you guys a shiny new tool I found. If someone's willing to remaster everything, I can upscale the DVD videos at least.
 
Last edited:
The Toshiba DVD videos are no panacea, sadly.  I mean they can be made through a lot of messing into something better than what we had, as you've seen me do.  And I'll be continuing with Goblin's Bar soon.  But some are chopped too early and it gets frustrating.  Also the colour is totally shot and they are all interlaced.  So you also need to correct that.  Correcting the colour is a ballache.  This is another example of Square's useless archiving.  i.e, nonexistent.  They shouldn't have dismantled everything.  Now we have no other higher renders.

I will not sell my copy and I will not share an ISO. Doing that would be equal to giving out the original DVD. Sharing the full DVD for free would diminish its value and I will not be the one responsible for this.

At the bottom of the review you will find download links to the FMVs. By using those, plus the menu snapshots provided and the detailed description of the DVD, you should be able to recreate a 90% accurate version of the Toshiba DVD for yourself, if you so desire. =)
Click to expand...
Shademp promised me a copy of the DVD videos.  I showed him how to losslessly rip them from the disc, but then he went back on his word.  But now Shademp appears to have popped the videos up anyway (assuming he hasn't added watermarks?).
 
Last edited:
I downloaded one for test #4. I didn't see any watermarks. I totally agree with you though. Cutting between the original and the DVD will be jarring at anything above 720p if you know what you're looking for.

EDIT: I did also learn a bit about interpolating videos in Avisynth from my research into HTPCs.
The only other method is converting the original animation files to 60 fps by re-encoding using an interpolation script like SVP or MVTools2 for AviSynth.

http://www.spirton.com/convert-videos-to-60fps/
http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?t=164554
http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?p=1486831
https://www.svp-team.com/wiki/Plugins:_SVPflow

I don't actually know the architecture of the animation files. If I could load them in Avisynth, I think I could make a higher framerate animation.
Click to expand...
So theoretically we have the tools now to upscale the videos to HD and smoother playback. 960p@60Hz seems plausible provided the game engine can handle that.
 
Last edited:
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top