Upscaling/remastering methods

[MrBenjamino_]

hi everyone!! just wanted to ask what the best way of upscaling old footage would be. I'm making a video/documentary about Dragon Ball GT and its production, I have footage from the D-box but I want to upscale it to 1080p, but I don't really know any interesting methods

[Jesta']

Send me some screenshots and I'll see what I can do.

[sunsetshimmer]

waifu2x is great algortihm for upscaling anime screenshots and arts, although i don't know if there is any version of this algorithm for videos:
http://waifu2x.udp.jp/

[Shaddy]

There isn't a really great method that actually keeps the detail. Stuff like waifu2x usually runs into the Funimation problem of smudging off all the grain and losing a lot of the actual visual information in the process, while a lot of AI-based upscaling tools like ESRGAN tend to add detail where there isn't supposed to be any, or else interpret things about what the image might have looked like falsely, leading to a wholly different problem. See this guy's thread for some instances of it not looking so hot, and the color correction thread for other attempts at visually reconstructing the series.

If none of that matters to you, sure, go wild with any random upscaler. Most of us aren't gonna think it looks very good, but you can do whatever.

[Robo4900]

waifu2x is great algortihm for upscaling anime screenshots and arts, although i don't know if there is any version of this algorithm for videos:
http://waifu2x.udp.jp/

It's TERRIBLE for any kind of analogue medium. Digital stuff, it's not too bad, but any kind of film-based media, such as Dragon Ball, it'll produce results on the same level as Funi's awful "remastered" releases.

@OP
To get the best results, just run some basic deblocking if there's noticeable MPEG video artefacts, but otherwise leave your video alone, just let your TV/media player handle it. Results will probably look good.

If you want to go fancier, your best bet for any kind of fan "upscale"/"remaster" is just a normal resizer like Lanczos. Then maybe run a light sharpening filter. Just be careful, and use a light hand; any filtering like this is inherently destructive to the picture, despite the artifically sharper image. It's a difficult balance, and particularly with footage as blurry as Dragon Box, you're gonna have a hard time getting anything good out of it that has any kind of noticeable "improvement". You're trying to introduce detail into the picture that simply isn't there, so you can't expect to easily get any kind of decent-looking result.
As I say, best results, just deblock a little and put the standard-def footage on your TV.