Up-scaling, Up-converting, DVD to HD?

[TNT]

Most of us here rip DVD's to the computer then burn to DVD's. I was wondering if there was a way to up-scale a DVD ripped to your computer from 480 to 720 (or a computer monitor friendly resolution), and play it right off the computer on the monitor (Many which support HD resolutions)? It could be on the fly-or not, I'm interested in quality.

[TNT]

I was wondering, could a program like DVD rebuilder do this?

[nwg]

Just like with HDTV's afaik, the monitor will upscale for you anyway if you select a resolution that supports HD on the vertical such as at least 1024 x 768 (720p Res).

Otherwise, there must be way to use TMPGenc or maybe avisynth to re-encode to 1280 x 720.

There is no quality increase going from 480 to 720 as it just interpolates and spreads the 480 over 720 lines.

It also makes upscaling DVD players worthless as the HDTV will also upscale anyway. You occasionally do get DVD players upscaling better than the TV but it is rare. The person then has the choice to whether top activate the upscaling in the player.

[TNT]

Thanks nwg, I was thinking about watching on my computer monitor. I sit close to the monitor so even DVD's look kinda fuzzy. Maybe TmpgEnc is the answer. I'll take a look at that.

[nwg]

What you need is a bigger monitor. I found a 19" widescreen to be too small but a 20" would have been nice but was another £150 !!

If you are serious about watching DVD's on a monitor. I would consider a widescreen one. I don't like the 1400 x 900 res though as everything is small as so much more is onscreen. I would go down to 1280 x 800 if I could (same as my WS laptop) to make it a bit bigger.

[TNT]

Well the reason for this thread is because I just got a new monitor. I got a 22" Viewsonic WS LCD (1680X1050 Native Res). It's HD capable, but I just wanted to watch DVD's on it using the computer. I'll look into TmpgEnc.
Thanks

[nwg]

Well the reason for this thread is because I just got a new monitor. I got a 22" Viewsonic WS LCD (1680X1050 Native Res). It's HD capable, but I just wanted to watch DVD's on it using the computer. I'll look into TmpgEnc.
Thanks

That should be plenty big enough. I cannot use my native resolution which is 1280 x 1024 as it looks too small and is also fuzzy. I am happy at 1024 x 768 which is really sharp plus I get everything nice and big.

Can you try yours at a lower res such as 1280 x 800?

Are you using onboad graphics as I am and wondering if that is causing the fuzzy problem.

[TNT]

Well, it isn't exactly fuzzy as in "there is a problem" fuzzy. It's the same issue with HDTVs. The sets are capable of so much resolution, that if you watch SD sources, they don't look good because you see all the detail and the problems in the source material you wouldn't otherwise see on a traditional CRT TV. I just wanted to know if I could improve the picture to approach HD resolutions.

[anonymez]

pc specs?

it can be done in realtime with ffdshow and/or avisynth and can look noticeably better with some tweaking. you might also want to use haali's renderer in mpc, does bicubic resizing as opposed to bilinear with overlay mixer

[TNT]

Thanks I'll check them out.

[TNT]

OK, I was able to install haali's renderer. It is now an option. How can I get the program to scale the video now?

[anonymez]

haali's renderer is more of an alternative to the ffdshow route; it'll give you nice results without any tweaking. you'll need a dx9 capable graphics card that supports pixel shader 2.0. play a video, right-click-->filters-->haali's renderer. turn up the sharpness to your liking.

i suggested the renderer since it doesn't nearly require as powerful a PC as resizing, sharpening, denoising, etc in ffdshow which gives better results

pc specs?

[TNT]

P4 2.4GHz with ATI dv8500i All in Wonder 64MB. It's an old machine that I keep upgrading. I have a feeling that it's not dx9 capable but I'm not sure. Sorry, where do I adjust the sharpness? Don't see that option.

[anonymez]

I have a feeling that it's not dx9 capable but I'm not sure.

afraid not, ATI x300 and up, Nvidia Geforce 5200 and up are. unfortunately haali's renderer won't work in this case, so onto ffdshow.

first off you'll need to pick an mpeg2 decoder. usually this would be one that supports dxva, but ffdshow will just force it into software mode anyway so your CPU will be taking all the load. i recomend disabling MPC's internal mpeg2 filter (options-->internal filters--> unceck mpeg2 video) and installing dscaler5.

run ffdshow video config, select codecs, head down the list to 'raw video' and set it to all supported

[TNT]

Ok, I'll give it a try and report back.

Thanks.