I few threads ago, I noticed Jim3535 mention “upscaling” in regards to DVD players. I had never heard the term before, but in the context I assumed it meant trying to get a sharper image out of a DVD than what is usually available so as to take advantage of HD sets without the need for second-gen DVDs.
The DVD’s I had always looked kinda rough when I played them on my monitor, so it only seemed natural that there had to be a way to do upscaling in software. Well, a little bit of googling and spidering, and I came across How to upscale using ffdshow. Haven’t had a chance to try it yet, but I have all the tools (including Zoom Player Pro). I’m setting up an anime night with some friends, and I have a 720p HD projector, so I’m going to need to see if I can get this working.
Well, I finally got around to trying this out. I needed to install a newer version of ffdshow than what came with the DefilerPak, and I used nVidia’s decoder instead of Sonics (although I tried - I couldn’t get it to work with ffdshow). I also wasn’t able to use the denoise at anything other than the DVD’s default resolution - it stuttered very badly. But I did notice a subtle but still distinct improvement in image quality. If you watch it first in it’s regular form, then quickly switch to the filtered version, the improvement is jarring. We aren’t talking about earth-shattering - I still noticed blocks of color when looking closely - but it was a marked improvement for me. The images were much sharper.
The mplayer temporal noise reducer had some interesting effects. The default settings don’t improve the image, but I think if I tweak the settings it could result in higher framerates. People should try it out just to see the neat effect.
I’m going to keep working on it and see if I can get the colors to be a little less blocky. But I do suggest people give this a go.
Not really. I simply haven’t gotten around to messing with it too much. I have an new flat-panel TV that’ll be easier to work with than the projector, so maybe over the New Year’s weekend I’ll play around with it.