Upscaling options

Topaz Video AI General
1

Hi all. I have a bunch of 720p and 1080p movies I’d like to upscale for my 4K TV. Figured I should just use the “Upscale to 4K” option and that seems to work, but create HUGE files. For instance, a 90 minute moves that was 16gb at 1080p becomes a 107G. I was figuring 4X, so a 64GB file.

The TV does a decent, if not great, job at showing 1080p, but 720p is pretty bad. Should I just leave the 1080p movies alone and use the “Upscale to HD resolution” on the 720s??? Obviously runs a lot faster.

Playing around with DLNA servers as well. I was using SmartShare from LG, since I have an older LG 4K TV. Found it stuttered badly dealing with the 4K output files that Topaz generates, like 10 seconds of film, and 5 of buffer, rince and repeat. About to just let Windows stream to see if its any better. In any case, if anyone has come across this problem and figured a solution, would appreciate sharing. Note the TV and PC are gigabit hard wired to the same switch.

Thanks in Advance!

3

You can change the Encoder to H265 or AV1 and set the export quality to low, it will reduce the file size significantly.

4

I understand that H265 does a lot better storage wise, but was unsure about compatibility with my 2018ish TV? Or is that a function of the streaming software? Just starting to look at Plex for that job.

Regarding setting export quality to low - that kind of defeats the purpose of upscaling doesn’t it?

6

hevc decoding is well supported on most devices post 2015.
As for the file size, it’s a natural tradeoff that can’t really be mitigated

7

For 4k resolution, most people won’t notice the different between CQP value of 28 or CQP value of 25, unless you exam screenshot side by side carefully.

What do you think about watching those 4k video from Youtube ?
Can you see compression artifact or blockiness when watching Youtube 4k video on TV? If no, then you should be fine setting export quality to low, which is similar to Youtube compression ratio.

This is becasue the bit rate of your exported video is too high.

8

Running an h.265 upscale now to verify all the pieces can handle it. Should be ready for testing tomorrow. Thanks for the 2015 timeline.

9

Indeed. I’m guessing my TV only has a 100 mbps connection. When I converted to H265, it lowered both the size and the bitrate and works wonderfully.

1 Like
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H.265 was the answer to all my problems. Saves space, reduces bitrate, and eliminated all stuttering.

11

Use also a dedicated Mediaplayer instead of the built-in TV Mediaplayer, only a suggestion.

12

Thanks… I started with the Plex media player, but can’t seem to get it to ONLY show me my local media - it seems rather intent on showing me a lot of streaming sources I’m not interested in. Fortunately the Plex server software has a DLNA option which seems to work just fine, allowing me to use the TV’s WebOS DLNA viewer, which does in fact only show me my local media.

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I also thought that was super annoying.
On the machine you are running the Plex Server on, you have to go into settings and disable all the options in the ‘Online Media Sources’ tab. Maybe you can do it anywhere, but that’s where I found in.

14

Thanks! I still had “Movies & TV” enabled since those were my media catagories. Turned that off and will check it out later.

I do have the Plex application loaded into my WebOS TV. Any advantage to viewing via it vs. the DLNA services?

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Plex serves it to your TV in the way a popular streaming service would—through an app. It can also serve it outside your house, if you set it up that way. It can do things like trasncoding if the device cannot play the original video, or you don’t have the bandwidth. It does a lot of ‘nice to have’ things like keeping track of what episode comes next and where you left off.
I don’t know much about DLNA, except that it’s been included with Windows since like 2007 and it can let you view what’s in your videos folder, and such.