Thanks, JohnnyRoy,
That's probably what I expected. Most of the video I'm working with is low-light, extra grainy from 20 years ago. I've had fairly good luck using CartoonR, but I have to settle for a slightly cartoonish look.
Because of my bad memory, I always leave my settings on 'Best'. I hope there's no bad results possible this way.

I don't work with regular HD, so when you say render as HD, is that different than merely changing the Project Properties screen size to 1280x720 and using an mp4 at higher than 10,000,000bps (that's about what i do, except the bit rate is still experimental and can go twice that)
Thanks again,

Changing the project properties doesn't affect the render. When you render, you have to pick an HD template, or at least go into custom settings and choose the HD resolution you want.

I agree with JR 100%. I have yet to see an uprezzing plugin or solution that gives me any better results than a simple Vegas resize.

Also, in my experience, the biggest obstacle to getting good results at uprezzing is compression artifacts in the source material. For example, for still photo uprezzing I use an excellent program called Photozoom Pro. It comes with some low rez but compression artifact free samples that uprezz just beautifully to ten or more times their original size. When you try that with your own photos it works really well if you start with RAW rather than jpeg photos, less well but still acceptable if you start with point and shoot jpeg photos, and gives you quite mediocre results with downloaded photos that use heavy jpeg compression.

The same is true in video. It is the compression artifacts that are your worst enemy when you uprez. Low bitrate Youtube video looks just as bad after uprezzing as it did at low resolution. Interlaced video doesn't uprez very well either. Noise throws off the uprezzing algorithms as well. Very clean progressive video can uprez quite well. One thing that can help a little is avoid rerenders unless you are using Cineform or a lossless codec, and maybe try to clean up any noise with either Neat Video or the free Mike Crash video noise reduction plugin.

Thanks Chienworks & Laurence
There's really not much I can do to help these old videos, but I would like to make them as nice as I can.
I'm not sure what Chienworks means about the HD resolution. (Either I don't have any presets for HD or I erased them with my 15 homemade presets)
I'm using MainConcepts AVC/AAC mp4. set at 1280X720. I could probably bump the bit-rate up to 15,000,000bps with 320bps audio on a 10 minute video and barely make the 1GB YouTube limit. I'm assuming this is barely in HD territory, as it's at least 5,000,000+bps, above Mpg2 SD limits
So, I'm sort of guessing, I could probably use between 15 & 25,000,000bps depending on the length and I should be in HD territory, is this correct?
Or am I totally overlooking something? (remember, I don't work with HD, just trying to utilize it anyway.)
OK, thanks again,.....

My suggestion if you've got to put bad VHS onto say BD is don't upscale it at all. The noise etc at full frame will really stress the encoder.
Leave it at original res or upscale it just a little. Maybe just some light noise reduction. Put some text in the rest of the frame e.g. how, where, why. The clean text may distract the eye and because the viewing angle of the original SD footage should be about the same it would have been when watched originally it'll look much like it used to, job done.

I've watched a couple of great short videos shot on mobile phone cameras projected onto a cinema screen. They were quite watchable but they were kept to a sensible size, they certainly did not fill the screen. Good audio helped a lot too.

Bob.

Sorry farss,
But, I'm referring to making it look better before I send it to YouTube. I know it will look bad on any regular TV or even full size computer screen, but I would like to make it look as good as possible for their regular default screen.
My last video, I blew it up to fit within the HD viewing size and it looked extra "blocky". (Yes, I know that's what should happen) So..... I'm trying to clean this process up to look as clear and detailed as I can, whether it's blown up or not. I want good fake HD. lol. I really just want to give watchers the best choice. With one of those choices, being - better than expected.

I've also used tricks, where I'll keep my old video at 720 (or 640) X 480 and fill in the sides & top & bottom with some other SD, turned 90 degrees on its side. I end up with video, that is technically the right pixel size within 1280 X 720. These don't look too bad, but I can have a lot of extra tracks to fill in all the blank space.

So, my real question is above farss response, which is, am I technically semi- HD, by simply changing my screen size to 1280 X 720 and having a bit-rate between 15,000Kbps and 25,000Kbps?
I will add my 'Sharpening" or 'CartoonR' FX and hope to end up with a video with better detail. So far, 10,000Kbps, is the highest I've gone. Depending on the source, it can look OK. But now, I have some extra bad, low light footage, that seems too look a LOT worse by the time YouTube encodes it
I know, ultimately, this will only barely help, if at all, but these vids need all the help they can get. I would like to get a better YouTube encode, from whatever I send in. They're version of HD is about 1/5 the size or less of what I send in.