Upscaling CGI Specific Footage

I am currently mostly looking at Star Trek at the moment, but this question really will be similar for any of the 90’s space shows that have space CGI elements so hopefully may help others too.

I have noticed from experience, that if I want the best possible looking upscale, the CG elements and the Filmed elements usually have to be treated differently. The same process can work “ok” on both, but usually I find for me anyway to treat them separately.

I have had some good results using older (pre 1.7) Gaia CG models and I suspect I may have to keep doing so, but, I haven’t been able to find a fantastic pre-process and upscale method to really make the CG look great.

By this I mean I have seen some other people post examples, and even example scripts, but I cannot replicate them - so I know some great looking upscales are possible, but i can’t seem to get to that level of detail.

Does anyone here have any example pre-processing scripts (am using Avisynth atm) and upscale methods (regardless of version of TVEAI) that they may be able to share that I could re-produce?

As an example, I have seen this image and script on Facebooks posts from a previous discussion I had:

But even having the script and version of TVEAI, I could not replicate it, despite a lot of effort trying.
My current best is this:

What baffles me is this is the exact same script copy pasted, but i am clearly not following a step OR the source is from a season earlier than maybe a later one that might be clearer.

Anyway, I know many of you won’t have Voyager Source files, so I have uploaded an extract of just the opening titles which is all CGI in its original DVD extract (no processing whatsoever done to this clip). Would anyone be willing to experiment with this and see what they can do?

NOTES:

  • You don’t need to upload a fully converted video, if you have a script that looks fantastic, screenshots are fine, so don’t stress about converting the entire thing and needing to share it ^
  • Audio can be dropped entirely, not caring about it
  • FPS adjustments don’t matter, albeit shouldn’t be required for this (source is ultimately VFR when in full)
  • Any version of TVEAI, any Model, any script that I can get running in Avisynth for pre-processing.
  • I know everyone is busy, and I have no rush (been working on these for months already), so many thanks and appreciation in advance should you spend any of your time looking at this ^^. If you need any help in return on something, or even looking at a footage example of yours that you are trying to find a good result with, happy to look at this in return for your time as well ^^
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All I can recommend for your project is Dione Interlaced TV v3 because your source is interlaced (bad) that Gaia CG cannot compensate. I believe this source is from torrent that was re-encoded which is terrible. If you want to have a good project, invest in real DVD from the main manufacturer and then use Gaia CG again. You will be amazed by its result.

  1. Source is VFR encoded NTSC content with the majority needing IVTC pulldown. This isn’t an issue with this request.

  2. The worst option of all is to attempt to “deinterlace” it with the Dione model itself, I won’t be doing that.

  3. THIS IS an extract from the original DVD, untouched and unmodified - I said that in the first post. You are looking at the best quality available from the source DVD and it is not a downloaded torrent. None of my files I work on for this are torrents - I had to wait 2x months for the DVD’s to arrive to get them to work on specifically because all my DVD’s are PAL and I wanted the source NTSC ones that had the least processing done on them.

  4. The avisynth scripting being used removes all “intralcing” before being run through Gaia CG - what script is used before Gaia CG is what I am asking others to look at, as it does have a large effect on the output. For reference, the script used for the example I uploaded was:

D2VSource("D:\Video\Voyager\S04E03 Demuxed\S0105 VFR.mkv.d2v")

SetFilterMTMode("QTGMC", 2)
  tfm(input="D:\Video\Voyager\S04E03 Demuxed\tfm_out.txt")
  tdecimate(mode=5, hybrid=2, cycleR=1, vfrDec=0, input="D:\Video\Voyager\S04E03 Demuxed\tdecimate_metrics.txt", tfmIn="D:\Video\Voyager\S04E03 Demuxed\tfm_out.txt", mkvOut="D:\Video\Voyager\S04E03 Demuxed\timestamps.txt")
#FixBlendIVTC(post=6)

checkmate(tthr2 = 0)

QTGMC2=QTGMC(Preset="Very Slow", InputType=2, SourceMatch=3, Lossless=2, MatchEnhance=0.75, MatchPreset="Very Slow", MatchPreset2="Very Slow", sharpness=0.7, SMode=2, Rep0=11, Rep1=9, Rep2=9, RepChroma=True, EdiMode="EEDI3+NNEDI3", Sbb=0, NoiseProcess=1, DenoiseMC=True, NoiseTR=2, GrainRestore=1.0, NoiseRestore=0.8, NoiseDeint="Generate", StabilizeNoise=True)
QTGMC3=QTGMC(Preset="Very Slow", InputType=3, SourceMatch=3, Lossless=2, MatchEnhance=0.75, MatchPreset="Very Slow", MatchPreset2="Very Slow", sharpness=0.7, SMode=2, Rep0=11, Rep1=9, Rep2=9, RepChroma=True, EdiMode="EEDI3+NNEDI3", Sbb=0, NoiseProcess=1, DenoiseMC=True, NoiseTR=2, GrainRestore=1.0, NoiseRestore=0.8, NoiseDeint="Generate", StabilizeNoise=True)
Repair (QTGMC2, QTGMC3, 9)
Santiag()

pSharpen(strength=75, threshold=90, ss_x=4.0, ss_y=4.0)
MAA2(mask=1, chroma=true, ss=4.0, aa=128, aac=128, threads=8, show=0)
GradFun3(smode=2)
Prefetch(16)

Spline16Resize(720,540)
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