OT: Anybody believe this?

musicvid10 wrote on 4/3/2015, 11:56 PM
Giveaway of the Day has some real gems for free from time to time.
They also have their share of duds, destined for the bargain bins at Walmart.

Being just a bit of a pragmatist, I read this claim with a bit of skepticism:
"Furthermore, the software converts your videos to high definition and achieves the best possible resolution. The background of this innovative performance is the ODU-technology (Object Detection Upscaling), which is able to resolve scaling errors and scaling artifacts visibly and better than common methods from Spline or Lanczos. With only a few mouse clicks you can create HD-files out of DVD-videos (or single chapters)."
Wow. If they can do that, why would they even bother marketing to consumers?

Comments

PeterWright wrote on 4/4/2015, 1:33 AM
Similar to people selling "How to get rich on the Stock Market" courses - if their method was any good, they'd be keeping it to themselves.
PeterDuke wrote on 4/4/2015, 3:17 AM
Object Detection Upscaling suggests that it does some sort of scene analysis and upscales each object using some "optimal" method for that object, OR they plucked some buzz words out of a dictionary.

I couldn't think of a better bloke to test it out than musicvid10 :)
Grazie wrote on 4/4/2015, 4:01 AM
Perchance, was that released on the 1st April? Along with getting eggs out of an omlette; stairway to the Moon and dinosaurs storm Buckinham Palace.

G
Marco. wrote on 4/4/2015, 4:43 AM
Object Detecting Upscaling is a technology developed by Engelmann Media some years ago. Once made for photo scaling it sorted to work fine for video too. The company offers a product called "CinemaHD" using ODU technology.
PeterDuke wrote on 4/4/2015, 5:24 AM
Fractals or Mandelbrot Set anyone?
TheHappyFriar wrote on 4/4/2015, 6:42 AM
Anyone try it?
musicvid10 wrote on 4/4/2015, 8:15 AM
"I couldn't think of a better bloke to test it out than musicvid10 :)"
I'll get to it right after I'm done with my perpetual motion device.

It's fake vector analysis with smart edge detection, and someone else will need to do the side-by-side comparisons with Lanczos and Spline. I have no interest in software upscaling, save for inserting an occasional SD clip in a 720p Youtube project.
Chienworks wrote on 4/4/2015, 8:40 AM
I won't try it. Been bitten too much in the past with "free" versions of software coming packaged with assorted bloatware, spyware, etc. I see no reason to ever risk a GAOTD download.
wwjd wrote on 4/4/2015, 1:54 PM
Possibly related:

There are video game engine emulators that take those old 8-bit, choppy square pixel graphics, then apply some algorithms, blending and drawing lines and filling pixels and shades, and they do a pretty darn amazing job to bring a modern smoothness to the old school games.

Why couldn't this also apply to video? If you double or quadruple your pixels, you could add new average shades, then a pinch of unsharp mask to clarify?

In the past we'd never have DREAMED anyone could improve the the visuals of our 8-bit pixelated games, yet, here we are.
farss wrote on 4/4/2015, 2:41 PM
[I]"Why couldn't this also apply to video?"[/I]

With the old 8 bit game images it's known what they should look like so converting back to vectors and then rasterising at higher resolution is feasible. Video is vastly different problem.

A long time ago I was involved in converting thousands of line drawings into CAD files. Even that was fraught with problems, there is no way to know if an object was intended to be a circle or an n sided polygon.

Optical Character Recognition has a similar problem. It can work incredibly well if it's all one language that's being converted back to a text file. Mix several languages on the one page and then it can all fall apart.

Bob.
wwjd wrote on 4/4/2015, 2:46 PM
I've also seen HD to 4K upscaling "improvement" demos done on new TVs and it looks impressive. Although, I was not in control of the source material and tests...

And I've done some upscaling tests in Vegas that looked a little better.. not AMAZINGLY better, but improved over HD with presumed better detail - even if it was faked with sharpen.