DVD Upconversion

[Shurman292]

I've searched off and on for at least a year now, tried a few things, and still have no idea how to do it on my PC. I am very frustrated because I can watch a DVD with great clarity on my friend's upconverting, stand-alone Blu-ray player, however when I put a DVD into my rig (with a pretty amazing graphics card that can still play BF3 at 50+ fps maxed out) I get a grainy video that looks like the 480p that it is.

 

I've tried the ffdshow thing, but I'm either a moron or it doesn't do what I want.

 

So, I broke down and had to ask: how do I do it on my PC?? Surely there is a way to do it on a computer with a GPU that's more expensive than two Blu-ray players!

[90sgamer]

Upconverting on your Blu-ray player is the essentially the same thing as clicking "full screen" when playing the DVD on your PC. Thats all. The decoder you use your PC (or the blu ray players firmware) will calculate the differences between pixels to fill in the gaps when you enlarge the picture on your monitor (or play the DVD upconverted on your HDTV). Microsoft's MPEG decoder in Win 7 is adequate, but I usually use ffdshow as well, from within the K-Lite codec pack. (I believe both of these decoders utilize GPU acceleration as well, so it should be using your graphics card in the upscaling process) That's generally the best you can get.

 

It can look crappy on your PC because your face is two feet away from it. Try this - Stand up and take a few steps back from your monitor while the DVD playing. Looks way better right? Its harder to see compression artifacts when you are farther away from the picture. That is essentially what's happening when you are watching the DVD on on your HD TV from your couch. If the HDTV's resolution is smaller than your monitor, that will make it look better too. If you had a 720x480 image on your PC and enlarged it to 1280x720 it will start to look blurry, but if you take that same image and enlarge it to say 1920x1200, it will look even worse.

 

(Anyone feel free to correct me here, I have a blu ray disc drive on my PC, but never used a blu ray player and HD TV.)

Edited March 26, 2012 by 90sgamer

[Waco]

You're sitting too close. That's pretty much all there is to it.

[90sgamer]

You're sitting too close. That's pretty much all there is to it.

 

Yep. Way to render my overly complicated *makes-me-feel-smart* explanation of everything pretty much moot.

Edited March 26, 2012 by 90sgamer

[Waco]

Yep. Way to render my overly complicated *makes-me-feel-smart* explanation of everything pretty much moot.

[ir_cow]

if you use VLC player you can set advance up converting options. using media player, you aren't upscaling at all lol.

[90sgamer]

if you use VLC player you can set advance up converting options. using media player, you aren't upscaling at all lol.

Are you sure? I can barely tell any difference between WMP, MPC (k-lite), and VLC when a 480p source is set to full screen. Where exactly do you find the upconvertion option? Shouldn't it look pretty nastily pixelated if there wasn't any kind of upconversion processing at work?

[Shurman292]

Upconverting on your Blu-ray player is the essentially the same thing as clicking "full screen" when playing the DVD on your PC. Thats all. The decoder you use your PC (or the blu ray players firmware) will calculate the differences between pixels to fill in the gaps when you enlarge the picture on your monitor (or play the DVD upconverted on your HDTV). Microsoft's MPEG decoder in Win 7 is adequate, but I usually use ffdshow as well, from within the K-Lite codec pack. (I believe both of these decoders utilize GPU acceleration as well, so it should be using your graphics card in the upscaling process) That's generally the best you can get.

 

It can look crappy on your PC because your face is two feet away from it. Try this - Stand up and take a few steps back from your monitor while the DVD playing. Looks way better right? Its harder to see compression artifacts when you are farther away from the picture. That is essentially what's happening when you are watching the DVD on on your HD TV from your couch. If the HDTV's resolution is smaller than your monitor, that will make it look better too. If you had a 720x480 image on your PC and enlarged it to 1280x720 it will start to look blurry, but if you take that same image and enlarge it to say 1920x1200, it will look even worse.

 

(Anyone feel free to correct me here, I have a blu ray disc drive on my PC, but never used a blu ray player and HD TV.)

Thanks for the replies, everyone! Unfortunately, I know what you're talking about and I can still say that my friend's picture quality is superior. He has a 47" tv and we're sitting about 7-8 feet away from it, so the perspective size would be about the same as me sitting 4-5 feet away from my 23" monitor. I've tried sitting further back from my monitor, and yes, by the time you get far enough away it looks very clear. The problem is it looks like a smartphone screen at that point lol

 

hornybluecow - I've tried VLC before, but I couldn't find any of the upconverting options. Where might I find these?

[TheyCallMeGunny]

Thanks for the replies, everyone! Unfortunately, I know what you're talking about and I can still say that my friend's picture quality is superior. He has a 47" tv and we're sitting about 7-8 feet away from it, so the perspective size would be about the same as me sitting 4-5 feet away from my 23" monitor. I've tried sitting further back from my monitor, and yes, by the time you get far enough away it looks very clear. The problem is it looks like a smartphone screen at that point lol

 

hornybluecow - I've tried VLC before, but I couldn't find any of the upconverting options. Where might I find these?

 

 

Not sure how it affects 480p. But it should smooth out some of the blocks apparent from stretching it, and generally improve playback:

 

Settings I use:

 

Tools> Preferences> Inputs and Codecs> Enable "GPU accelerated decoding"

Tools> Preferences> Inputs and Codecs> x264 preset and tuning selection: Ultrafast and film

Tools> Preferences> Inputs and Codecs> x264 profile and level selection high444

Tools> Preferences> Video> Deinterlace "On" and "X" or "film NTSC (IVTC)

Tools> Preferences> Video> Force Aspect Ratio (to match your monitor, mine's 16:9 @ 1920x1080)

 

If you go to preferences, the setting to actually upscale would be in the "advanced" version (bottom left, click a checkbox from "simple" to "all". Then under Video>Codecs. Though I don't know which settings would have the effect you're looking for, I at least know that's where to find them.

 

 

--I'm working on a copy of men in tights to see if i can figure out how to upscale. if i find good settings, i'll post again.

Edited March 26, 2012 by dragonsdontfly

[TheyCallMeGunny]

Make SURE to check my previous post, btw.. It has the option to enable GPU video decoding (as it doesn't use your GPU by default.)

 

Found a decent setting:

Note that the "Luma bicubic / chroma bilimear" video scaling filter doesn't work for some people, I don't know why. If it doesn't work for you, just set it back to default "bicubic" and disable video scaling filters. If it doesn't work for you, I don't know what to offer. I don't know a whole ton about this, but it works for me.

 

 

Tools> Preferences> (select "ALL" at bottom left)> Video> Filters(select, not expand) Enable the following two checkboxes in both the top and bottom segments:

Wave Video Filter, Video Scaling Filter.

 

 

Tools> Preferences> (select "ALL" at bottom left)> Video> Filters (expand this time)> Swscale: Scaling mode: Luma bicubic / chroma bilimear.

 

Watching Robin Hood Men in tights with this setting enabled (and previous ones mentioned in last post) and it's removed most of the blockiness around people and near edges. This video is even smaller than 480p, being stretched to 1080p.

 

Hope this helps, best settings I've found so far.

 

This video is 360p in a 3:4 ratio, I sit about 18" from my 22" monitor, and it's being stretch to 1080p and 16:9 ratio.. And it's actually pretty decentwith all these settings enabled. I only notice the fuzziness if I really look for it. Let me know if this works for you.

Edited March 26, 2012 by dragonsdontfly

[Shurman292]

Thank you so much for the reply, I will give this a shot tonight when I get home from meetings. Definitely some good information here, so I should be able to find some way of making it look good

[Shurman292]

I gave it a shot just now and I think I will be keeping VLC around for a while. I tried all the suggestions you gave and thought I was on a psychadellic trip or something...but then I turned off the Wave Video Filter and it was fine haha. My personal preference was when the GPU acceleration was turned on, with no other settings tweaked. But the video overall looked better than MPC can produce. It was not quite on par with the upconverting DVD players though :/