HD upscaled pre-2009 Top Gear

[Phat_J]

Hey everyone,

So I've recently come across this software called Video Enhance A.I., which can take a lower resolution video, apply some magic, and makes it into resolutions up to 8k.
I thought this would be great for the 2002-2009 era of Top Gear that wasn't broadcast in HD.

I experimented with a clip, Jeremy reviewing the Lamborghini Gallardo Spyder from 2006 and I have to say I'm pretty impressed with the results.

There are a few drawbacks:
The processing time - It took about 1 hour for every 1 minute of video on my PC with a 6 core processor and 16 GB of RAM, and that was only to upscale it to 720p
The limited options - Can't adjust the bitrate, fine-tune the resolution, or crop videos properly
It wrecks the audio - I had to remux the original MP3 audio. The program re-encoded it to AAC, it sounded very "tinny"
It doesn't work miracles - When you look at the screenshots, it doesn't look that much better. But to my eyes, when I watch it as a video, it does feel significantly better.

Screenshots You can highlight over the 720p ones to see it full resolution

Original 360p video clip

Upscaled 720p video clip

What does everyone think? Worth the effort or no? I could try a 1080p version, but I doubt it would look any better.

Over the next while I'm going to run a few of my favorite old clips (like the challenges) through this encoder. It would take ages to do all the episodes.
It could find its way into a torrent one day

 

[93Flareside]

Honestly, I can’t tell much difference. If it screws with the audio, I’m not interested in throwing the old audio and new video into an editor for each and every episode. It’s a shame but since we don’t have original recordings, the odds of decent up scaling will be very hard to find without getting the expensive equipment to do it. I’ve worked with professional upscalers for cheapskates who don’t want to replace SD cameras, while it is better, there are limitations and thousands of dollars worth of equipment. This was for broadcast levels. Again, it was ok, but not something I’d consider for full movement, spoken word with one guy, sure.

 

[47]

Hey everyone,

So I've recently come across this software called Video Enhance A.I., which can take a lower resolution video, apply some magic, and makes it into resolutions up to 8k.
I thought this would be great for the 2002-2009 era of Top Gear that wasn't broadcast in HD.

I experimented with a clip, Jeremy reviewing the Lamborghini Gallardo Spyder from 2006 and I have to say I'm pretty impressed with the results.

There are a few drawbacks:
The processing time - It took about 1 hour for every 1 minute of video on my PC with a 6 core processor and 16 GB of RAM, and that was only to upscale it to 720p
The limited options - Can't adjust the bitrate, fine-tune the resolution, or crop videos properly
It wrecks the audio - I had to remux the original MP3 audio. The program re-encoded it to AAC, it sounded very "tinny"
It doesn't work miracles - When you look at the screenshots, it doesn't look that much better. But to my eyes, when I watch it as a video, it does feel significantly better.

Screenshots You can highlight over the 720p ones to see it full resolution

Original 360p video clip

Upscaled 720p video clip

What does everyone think? Worth the effort or no? I could try a 1080p version, but I doubt it would look any better.

Over the next while I'm going to run a few of my favorite old clips (like the challenges) through this encoder. It would take ages to do all the episodes.
It could find its way into a torrent one day

I like the clip you posted. I've not watched the old episodes on a while but the video quality is probably much better.
If not for the whole episodes, having at least some tests and challenges upscaled would be really nice. Kudos to you.
Also, this clip reminded me just how fun Top Gear used to be, I think I'll have to go and revisitit a bit, thx

 

[Phat_J]

So I tried another clip, this time I exported the upscaled clip as tiff images, then imported those to Adobe Premiere, exported it to lossless AVI as 720p, then ran the AVI through AVIDemux as CRF x264 set at 18. I'm liking the result!!:

Original AVI

Properly done upscaled 720p

 

[AlexGRFan97]

Let's be completely 100% honest here, even if this does tread on a few toes: Scene BUTCHERED the original releases of S4 - S13, and Maxiuca's S1 - S3 erased a large, to this day irreplaceable chunk of Top Gear history. We would have been quite frankly better off without them.

Anyway, what's an upscale without a proper source to base them off of?

(Click the images to see these screenshots' full sizes)
I will not speak more of these recordings until it's relevant to do so, nor where they originated (not that I'm even allowed to say where I got them from in the first place)