Toei's Dragon Ball Kai remaster

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jaisonas
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Re: Toei's Dragon Ball Kai remaster

Post by jaisonas » Wed Aug 28, 2019 3:16 am

Looks like topaz ai gigapixel. Its a really good software but its a bit hit or miss with animated stuff, especially the darker ones. Also it only does single frames/photos so you'd have to deconstruct the episode run every frame through it and then reconstruct it again
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Re: Toei's Dragon Ball Kai remaster

Post by SpiritBombTriumphant » Thu Aug 29, 2019 1:28 am

Trachta10 wrote: Tue Aug 27, 2019 1:47 am What do you think about this? I tried to eliminate the blur and upscaled it
zoom

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God those screenshots look delicious! I would love to watch Kai like that.

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Re: Toei's Dragon Ball Kai remaster

Post by Trachta10 » Thu Aug 29, 2019 1:46 am

jjgp1112 wrote: Tue Aug 27, 2019 6:07 pm
Trachta10 wrote: Tue Aug 27, 2019 1:47 am
Ajay wrote: Mon Apr 15, 2019 9:42 pm The majority of Dragon Ball Z was shot on 16mm film compared to the more standard 35mm. QTEC who remastered the series applied some fairly liberal DNR to the footage, which when combined with the already smaller format 16mm film resulted in pretty soft overall image quality.

However, there were a few episodes of Z shot on 35mm film, and in Kai, those episodes are pretty damn sharp as a result.

16mm:
35mm:
So in answer to your question: yes, it's true HD, it's just not the sharpest thing ever on the whole.
What do you think about this? I tried to eliminate the blur and upscaled it
zoom

Other examples
Whoa. That looks a helluva lot better than a standard sharpening filter. What did you do?!
Is a software called Topaz Gigapixel that uses artificial intelligence to improve the image.
But I think a better option could be this
https://github.com/xinntao/ESRGAN

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Re: Toei's Dragon Ball Kai remaster

Post by sumpter360 » Tue Sep 03, 2019 5:02 pm

Trachta10 wrote: Thu Aug 29, 2019 1:46 am
jjgp1112 wrote: Tue Aug 27, 2019 6:07 pm
Trachta10 wrote: Tue Aug 27, 2019 1:47 am
What do you think about this? I tried to eliminate the blur and upscaled it
zoom

Other examples
Whoa. That looks a helluva lot better than a standard sharpening filter. What did you do?!
Is a software called Topaz Gigapixel that uses artificial intelligence to improve the image.
But I think a better option could be this
https://github.com/xinntao/ESRGAN
Can you share what settings you used to get such great results from those Kai screens? I assume the input was HD files, and you set the program to upscale to 4K? How about the Suppress Noise and Remove Banding and Face Refinement settings?

I'm playing around with the free trial of the software now. It really is pretty spectacular! Quite intensive work, though. It's utilizing my 1080ti GPU and it only renders ~100 frames per 10 minutes. Though, I should specify that I'm upping SD content to 4K.
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Re: Toei's Dragon Ball Kai remaster

Post by Trachta10 » Wed Sep 04, 2019 10:57 pm

sumpter360 wrote: Tue Sep 03, 2019 5:02 pm
Trachta10 wrote: Thu Aug 29, 2019 1:46 am
jjgp1112 wrote: Tue Aug 27, 2019 6:07 pm

Whoa. That looks a helluva lot better than a standard sharpening filter. What did you do?!
Is a software called Topaz Gigapixel that uses artificial intelligence to improve the image.
But I think a better option could be this
https://github.com/xinntao/ESRGAN
Can you share what settings you used to get such great results from those Kai screens? I assume the input was HD files, and you set the program to upscale to 4K? How about the Suppress Noise and Remove Banding and Face Refinement settings?

I'm playing around with the free trial of the software now. It really is pretty spectacular! Quite intensive work, though. It's utilizing my 1080ti GPU and it only renders ~100 frames per 10 minutes. Though, I should specify that I'm upping SD content to 4K.
Hi, the screenshots were 720p, then I upscaled to 4K and with the automatic settings.

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Jesta'
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Re: Toei's Dragon Ball Kai remaster

Post by Jesta' » Thu Sep 12, 2019 7:42 pm

I've had some luck upscaling some screenshots

Image Image

Image Image

Some shots do not fare as well as others

Image Image

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Re: Toei's Dragon Ball Kai remaster

Post by Robo4900 » Thu Sep 12, 2019 8:08 pm

I don't think any of them are faring all that well honestly.
In the small-size thumbnails that show up in your post, they look fine. But look at them in full-size, and it's a distorted, blurry, smeary mess.

Image
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Re: Toei's Dragon Ball Kai remaster

Post by Jesta' » Thu Sep 12, 2019 8:12 pm

I wholeheartedly agree, although it seems like it's only a matter of time before those artifacts can be ironed out. Perhaps even with the Funimation-Smear™ technique.

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Re: Toei's Dragon Ball Kai remaster

Post by Robo4900 » Thu Sep 12, 2019 8:35 pm

Jesta' wrote: Thu Sep 12, 2019 8:12 pm I wholeheartedly agree, although it seems like it's only a matter of time before those artifacts can be ironed out. Perhaps even with the Funimation-Smear™ technique.
It's not artifacts, it's the entire image being obliterated by the destructive filtering. :P
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Re: Toei's Dragon Ball Kai remaster

Post by Jesta' » Thu Sep 12, 2019 8:52 pm

Robo4900 wrote: Thu Sep 12, 2019 8:35 pmIt's not artifacts, it's the entire image being obliterated by the destructive filtering. :P
That's not entirely true, but I understand what you mean. The only genuine destruction I can see though is the shading on Vegetas cheeks, the rest is simply the upscaler mistaking the black linework to be more detailed than it actually is.

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Re: Toei's Dragon Ball Kai remaster

Post by Kuwabara » Fri Sep 13, 2019 12:44 am

This is seriously fascinating technology, but there are definitely a ton of kinks that still need to be worked out before it's a viable upscaling option.
This is the episode of when Gokuh enrages himself after Freezer talk shit about Kuririn

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Re: Toei's Dragon Ball Kai remaster

Post by Jesta' » Fri Sep 20, 2019 6:25 pm

Image
Image
Image
Image

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Re: Toei's Dragon Ball Kai remaster

Post by Robo4900 » Fri Sep 20, 2019 8:46 pm

Still doesn't look good to me.

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Re: Toei's Dragon Ball Kai remaster

Post by Zestanor » Fri Sep 20, 2019 9:14 pm

We have to admit that only in a very rare number of cases is intentional detail (so, not little air bubbles and grit in the cel paint, though those are very nice to see) obscured when the 16mm film is transferred to well-encoded 480p. If they transferred the film to 1080p and you displayed it on your screen, you wouldn't actually see a more detailed picture. It would be sharper, but not more detailed. What this here filter does, to my eyes, is simulate what a very high resolution photograph of an animation cel painting would look like, and reinterpret the image that way. It works surprisingly well with nearly no human input. It's almost like reanimating the show. If some professionals got on this, they could probably teach the filter to make each frame look nearly identical to the frames of animation when they were first photographed. Yes it's a fabrication, but how much of a fabrication is it? Some of these look they made a high-res scan of a cel; you can see the line widths change as pressure to the brush was altered, and you can see the shadow of the transparencies. It's a fabrication of the original, but to my eyes it's a correct fabrication. With a human element of quality control, this could work quite well for animated media.

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Re: Toei's Dragon Ball Kai remaster

Post by ronaldnorth_03 » Sat Sep 21, 2019 8:43 am

What are you waiting for? I want this! :D

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jaisonas
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Re: Toei's Dragon Ball Kai remaster

Post by jaisonas » Sat Sep 21, 2019 1:29 pm

I really like the way it approaches the linework. It looks like a line and not like a smeared mess like most upscalers. I'm sure that various artifacts caused by grain or whatever can be ironed out.
I enjoy tinkering with video and audio.

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Re: Toei's Dragon Ball Kai remaster

Post by ronaldnorth_03 » Sat Sep 21, 2019 7:00 pm

Can't we take apart an episode, apply that effect to each frame and then mount it as a release? Eliminating filler scenes, for example, would cut work by half.

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Re: Toei's Dragon Ball Kai remaster

Post by sumpter360 » Sun Sep 22, 2019 12:51 am

Robo4900 wrote: Fri Sep 20, 2019 8:46 pm Still doesn't look good to me.

Image
If you're sitting so close to your screen that this is your entire field of vision, I'd say you're sitting too close. No video will look good if this is your whole frame of view. How about also zooming this close to a 480p screenshot of the DragonBox Z footage? I'd bet it would also look like crap, but be less clear and show considerably less overall detail.

Yes, this tech is imperfect. It's not claiming to recover lost detail. It is essentially inferring what detail might be there. And does a terrific job of it, especially if you're just comparing it to rote sharpening or traditional upscaling w/DNR. For a series like DBZ, it may be an exercise in futility, since we may ONE DAY get a competently mastered HD release. But look at series we're far less likely to receive such a release, such as original Dragon Ball or GT. For those and many other non-DB anime out there, I think this tech is seriously exciting.

They just need to make the program more cooperative with video. As it stands you essentially have to break the episode down into individual frames (something like 40,000), then feed them into the program (which only takes something like 5,000 at a time and takes like 5-10 minutes to load that handful in). Then once all frames are loaded in and you finally start the program, it only converts them at like 100 frames per 9 minutes or so (on an RTX 2080ti). It's painstakingly slow, takes up HUGE amounts of space and time. But it's so nice catching at glimpse at what HD could look like.
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Re: Toei's Dragon Ball Kai remaster

Post by LostTimeLord » Sun Sep 22, 2019 5:46 am

sumpter360 wrote: Sun Sep 22, 2019 12:51 am If you're sitting so close to your screen that this is your entire field of vision, I'd say you're sitting too close. No video will look good if this is your whole frame of view.
Even just looking at those screenshots on my PC monitor, the artifacting is noticeable. That being said, the technology certainly looks promising.

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Re: Toei's Dragon Ball Kai remaster

Post by sumpter360 » Sun Sep 22, 2019 8:41 am

It also stands to be said that this program can do the AI upscaling without the digital cleanup. I wonder if the above posters wouldn't mind showing us the same screenshots uprezzed, but keep the "Suppress Noise" option turned off. Frames from Kai may not fair much better since the source frames were already DNR'd, but a frame from original Z would certainly keep more grain intact. Then again, a source of lower resolution gives the AI less to work with, so may get a lesser resulting output.

If someone can send me lossless .png frames from Z in SD and Kai in HD, I'd be happy to run them through and make a frame-compare link of the original screens, AI Upped without DNR and AI Upped with DNR. png only, though, since the AI program relies on the source to be lossless.

EDIT: Found the episode from my Dragon Box Z rips. Here's a framecompare of that Dr. Gero screen (no original Kai frame, though, as I don't have that in my collection):
http://www.framecompare.com/image-compa ... n/JF2E1NNU
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