Upscaling 1080p footage to 4k

[JahBoolean]

Hello everyone,

As part of a personal project, I have been undusting my trusty ol canon 6D and for most intent and purposes it has been as enjoyable a machine as it has ever been.

My only gripe is the ceiling of 1080p during video capture, sheer resolution that I could best using my phone, but I somehow feel extremely attached to shooting with a dslr.

Wishing to continue the experience, and with the ubiquity of UHD video in my desired publishing ecosystem one could expect to replace the body for something more modern in order to capture and therefore publish at a higher resolution. This may come in time.

But for the moment, I wondered if anyone in this forum had used any framework to upscale footage after the fact.

Are there any open-source solutions, where would one gather resources on the subject, do you have workflows that you would be willing to share.

With all the best,
JB.

 

[ColdCase]

I put all my video on a 4k timeline in FCP regardless of source. I then share in whatever format I need. Suits my purpose.

Your 1080 video will look like tweaked 1080 video, regardless of what you use.

 

[Wando64]

Upscaling from 1080p to 4k will just make the file bigger without adding any detail.
That said, I would bet some of my good money that you have better detail in your 1080p footage from the 6D than in the 4k footage from your phone anyway.

 

[bogdanw]

Topaz Video Enhance AI has a free trial https://www.topazlabs.com/video-enhance-ai
Free, but not updated - waifu2x-video-mac https://github.com/SuperMarcus/waifu2x-video-mac
Free, but requires Monterey - waifuExtension https://github.com/Vaida12345/waifuExtension

 

[JahBoolean]

Topaz Video Enhance AI has a free trial https://www.topazlabs.com/video-enhance-ai
Free, but not updated - waifu2x-video-mac https://github.com/SuperMarcus/waifu2x-video-mac
Free, but requires Monterey - waifuExtension https://github.com/Vaida12345/waifuExtension

thank you !

 

[orionquest]

I've taken a premiere project and used Media Encoder to render a 4K version of a 1080 project. Works just fine. Similar with FCP exporting as 4K instead of 1080. If your source is of decent quality then I wouldn't worry to much about rendering up to a higher 4K resolution since it just is pixel doubling everything.

 

[ColdCase]

Topaz is pretty good (and slow) improving old home movies or video with one defect or another. If your 1080 video is decent quality it doesn't do much. But the trial is free.

 

[JahBoolean]

I'm extremely novice, thank you for all the feedback !

 

[orionquest]

I'm extremely novice, thank you for all the feedback !

Meh don't over think this, just experiment with the software you have. Make some test footage and run it through various workflows, see what works. Also think about your audience will they care if it is 4k or 1080. Content is about the content not so much the specs.

 

[NLLV]

Hello everyone,

As part of a personal project, I have been undusting my trusty ol canon 6D and for most intent and purposes it has been as enjoyable a machine as it has ever been.

My only gripe is the ceiling of 1080p during video capture, sheer resolution that I could best using my phone, but I somehow feel extremely attached to shooting with a dslr.

Wishing to continue the experience, and with the ubiquity of UHD video in my desired publishing ecosystem one could expect to replace the body for something more modern in order to capture and therefore publish at a higher resolution. This may come in time.

But for the moment, I wondered if anyone in this forum had used any framework to upscale footage after the fact.

Are there any open-source solutions, where would one gather resources on the subject, do you have workflows that you would be willing to share.

With all the best,
JB.

The best bet is either using After Effects or Topaz Video Enhance.

Video Enhance is GREAT at creating 4k video, however it is very SLOW on most all Mac computers because it is written nativelty for NVIDIA GPU setups.

There is an M1 version but I do not have that, a friend gave me a copy to use.

This was made from 1080p to 4k... Using my M1 even though I have the Intel version, it was significantly faster but also still took about 50 minutes.

Another clip I used in this video at this exact timestamp took about 35 minutes. The entire clip that did not make it into the video is about 90 seconds long, so we are talking a lot of waiting depending on how complicated the footage us.

(as of posting this is still in 1080p as it is a recent upload)

 

[Kastu Parameswaran]

I created a video in iphone XS and some shots taken through 13 pro. i found the XS had more natural colours. I have used Davinci resolve to colour grade but the darker areas of dusty mountains appear a bit grainy. These were shot at 1080p. Any suggestions to improve the quality? Overall the software has enhanced the footage, no doubt.

 

[JW5566]

the darker areas of dusty mountains appear a bit grainy. These were shot at 1080p. Any suggestions to improve the quality?

You can only push a phone so far when it comes to quality. I've found on my iPhone that even manually shooting in Filmic Pro and using the lowest ISO, there is still some noise in dark areas. Suggestions include: 1. Accept some noise is going to be in some shots, it's a small sensor. 2. Light the scenes better. 3. Ensure you're using manual control so you can keep the ISO low (the phone might default to a higher ISO if left in auto). 4. Invest in a better camera. 5. Do some noise reduction on your footage. Resolve might have some built in option to do this?

I should also say, when YouTube is your target audience, half or more people are watching on their mobiles, so I would not obsess over eliminating noise.

 

[Kastu Parameswaran]

You can only push a phone so far when it comes to quality. I've found on my iPhone that even manually shooting in Filmic Pro and using the lowest ISO, there is still some noise in dark areas. Suggestions include: 1. Accept some noise is going to be in some shots, it's a small sensor. 2. Light the scenes better. 3. Ensure you're using manual control so you can keep the ISO low (the phone might default to a higher ISO if left in auto). 4. Invest in a better camera. 5. Do some noise reduction on your footage. Resolve might have some built in option to do this?

I should also say, when YouTube is your target audience, half or more people are watching on their mobiles, so I would not obsess over eliminating noise.

Thank you for your suggestions. Yes you are right--its a small sensor. That's the biggest drawback!

 

[bogdanw]

New app – Drovp https://drovp.app/
plugin: upscale - Drovp plugin for upscaling images and videos with waifu2x neural network
https://www.npmjs.com/package/@drovp/upscale

 

[orionquest]

Thank you for your suggestions. Yes you are right--its a small sensor. That's the biggest drawback!

Besides yourself and a few video snobs, will anyone care? I know it's a craft and you possible want the best results but when it comes to fine tuning stuff which no one will notice is it worth it?

 

[sevoneone]

Old thread, but want to chime in as a fellow original Canon 6D owner.

If you have not taken a look at Magic Lantern, or not recently, it might be worth checking out. If you are not familiar ML is a software that runs from the SD card to enable functionality to exposed in the regular Canon firmware. In the past couple of years it has become very stable and fun to play around with if you like to shoot video for fun or a hobby and want to get . There are a ton of useful features it enables, but the big one is recording up to 14bit raw video. You can record up to 2.5k or 3k footage in short bursts, but it can record 1080p continuously and the quality is an order of magnitude better than the All-I h.264. It blows up to 4k beautiful too because there is so much more fine detail and 10x the color data.

I don't have an example from my 6D online, but I use ML on my EOS M mirrorless camera also and it gives results you'd never expect from a cheap 10 year old camera:

It is not all roses. The workflow does take getting used to as you have to transcode the footage to a more standard format like ProRes or CDNG. The software is community supported, so it is not super polished. BUT, Counter to what many people say, it does only run from the SD card and does not actually modify your camera's firmware. Going back to standard Canon firmware is as easy as swapping to a different SD card and restarting the camera.

It's not right for everyone, but for the right person you can get results that look like $5000 digital cinema camera.

 

[chaosbunny]

Blackmagic DaVinci Resolve actually does a great job upscaling footage. I often mix 2160p Clips with 1080p (for slow motion) Clips from my Sony a7 IV - after color grading and rendering you can't really tell which is which. I happily use the commercial version of DaVinci for all my editing jobs, but there is a free version too.

 

[ColdCase]

Yeah, I happily use FCP to do the same when needed, and the free iMovie. I typically publish for web streaming, however, so is the compression and downgrading resolution where 99% of my work is.