smart upscaling - Vegas 14 or plugin best?

wilri001 wrote on 8/25/2017, 1:18 PM

Any before/after videos using Vegas Pro 14 smart upscaling, or 3rd party FX like Boris? Which works best? I don't really want to make a round trip outside of Vegas, so needs to work as Vegas plugin. And which will work with Nvidia CUDA? (I can't test Vegas Pro 14 myself since I have Nvidia graphics card. But I'll buy AMD if upscaling is really good.)

I shoot mostly stage events with 6 cameras, 5 of which are unmanned. So this is to upscale the events zoomed with the pan/crop tool.. 5 cameras are HD1080, one is 4k (but sometimes need to zoom more than HD01080 on it, too).

If I missed an earlier post, I apologize for starting a new one. But my search mostly found complaints about Vegas Pro 14 smart upscaling requiring OPENCL.

Comments

Musicvid wrote on 8/25/2017, 3:20 PM

You probably are not going to like this answer, however I would work in a 720p project screen, cropping my source rather than than upscaling.

I haven't seen examples of Vegas smart scaling, it's just that my experience with any software upscaling has been pretty blechh!

Btw, I shot my first stage musical in 1998, with 2 tape cameras and a "realtime" analog multiplexer. We didn't do any real post production, because it looked so bad by the time it got to print.

wilri001 wrote on 8/25/2017, 4:16 PM

Yeah, my first camcorder used full sized VHS tape; we've come a long, long way in our video lifetimes!

Although there is loss of detail in the zoom, it isn't too noticeable when it has pan as well - I think because the eye is used to blurriness with motion. And the better framing, and putting the "motion" in motion picture, outweighs the downside loss of resolution. Most of the time it is at, or close enough, to HD1080, so I think that also fools the eye. But if not too expensive and a noticeable improvement, I would like to get at least better resolution, even if it isn't perfect. One day, maybe there will be enough money to replace all the HD1080 cameras with 4k, and I'll have a fast enough computer to multicam edit all at 4k.

Musicvid wrote on 8/25/2017, 4:22 PM

I'm wondering how you are delivering to your customers. Optical disc, direct download, streaming server, ?

wilri001 wrote on 8/25/2017, 4:29 PM

YouTube. Our channel is csldallas if you want to look at some of the videos. And about half the views are on a smartphone, so their screen doesn't show HD1080 anyway. And most HDTVs upscale. Still I'm hopeful someone has some good results with the Vegas Pro smart upscaling. And hopefully Monday we will see other nice version 15 features. /:^)

Musicvid wrote on 8/25/2017, 5:01 PM

Not to belabor the point, but 720p is still the most deliverable streaming option.

Bandwidth isn't always that good outside the urban corridors.

I would like to see some comparisons of Sony vs. Lanczos, if anyone has the time.

wilri001 wrote on 8/25/2017, 5:17 PM

Musicvid, you can select your resolution on YouTube. The creator uploads HD1080 and either YouTube will automatically lower the resolution when it sees buffering pauses, or the user can select a lower quality. You aren't forcing anyone to wait for HD1080 just because you upload it in HD1080.

But I may have been asking the wrong question. I saw a tutorial about Vegas Pro 14 smart zoom and upscaling, and neither are exactly the same as using the pan/crop tool with keyframes. The smart upscale requires rendering the whole video, and the smart zoom seems to be a static zoom of the whole event.

Perhaps the "smart" part is built into the pan/crop with keyframes? Anyone seeing a difference starting with version 14?

Musicvid wrote on 8/25/2017, 6:00 PM

I think the "smart" is in the algorithm, but I've still not seen examples.

Sometime back I tested native 720p against Youtube-downscaled 1080p. Maybe I should test it again...

Former user wrote on 8/25/2017, 6:11 PM

https://www.vegascreativesoftware.info/us/forum/something-really-good-about-vegas-pro-14--103857/#ca641277

 

Some information/comments in this thread. More about smart "zoom" than smart upscale though.

NickHope wrote on 8/25/2017, 11:57 PM

And some previous discussion on Smart Upscale is here and here.