The use of technology to enhance old videos is progressing at a rapid pace. The most stunning example was the recent Peter Jackson movie "They Shall Not Grow Old" that converted WWI b/w movie material to look like it was filmed yesterday. That movie took years to make and cost millions in 2017 - but the tech used is now beginning to be more widely available. AI can be used today to upscale older content to High Definition video, even 4K in some cases. Combined with interpolation software to upgrade the content to 60fps the results can be impressive.
Some examples are now beginning to make their way online. Some AI Upscale content made available online in recent months include scenes involving Tia Tanaka, Lucy Thai, Krystal Steal, Kacy Cox (a couple of gangbang scenes), Lacey Duvalle, Jenna Haze and Heather Harmon (iDeepThroat).
Is it time for the owners of porn content made in the 70s, 80s and 90s to relaunch high quality videos?
Imagine all the Rocco movies made to look as fresh as if they were made today, or a series featuring Peter North's famous cumshots?
I'm not sure it's question of whether it's time in itself but rather if it can be done to a satisfactory standard and at a cost that would be offset by a large enough market.
What was done with "They Shall Not Grow Old" was impressive but I think it's a stretch to say it looked like it was filmed yesterday as the flaws are to be expected with that footage. If similar flaws appear on an older porn flick, it may look overprocessed and fake. Likewise, flaws in the original footage may become more apparent and undesirable in the AI render so production costs may go up to try and mitigate such situations.
It would be an interesting project on a few porn titles but I can't help but feel this could be a case of "be careful what you wish for" if you were to do this on a large scale.
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Posted - Sep 16 2020 : 10:34PM
This topic was moved here from the The Porn Pool forum.
kronas77 Deactivated User
469 Posts 4/19
Posted - Oct 19 2021 : 12:24PM
I was just becoming aware of this technology recently and thought it could also be especially wonderful for any adult DVD scenes from the era of about 2000-2005 when DVD versions of web scenes were the much higher quality version. I wonder what could be done with the 480p's. One problem is that even most recently the actual conversion of a 15-20 minute 480p movie might take more than a day.
For those who said DVDs of any sort are obsolete, now we may have a treasure trove of great material waiting to be made from those DVDs, using AI upscalers. You can now buy your own upscalers. I have seen a few, but they are usually around $200 or $300 to own. Or they will be offered for use as a very expensive monthly subscription.
Now you can say you keep old DVDs because they are likely to get better with age.
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kronas77 Deactivated User
469 Posts 4/19
Posted - Oct 19 2021 : 12:47PM
Would you believe that there is a free AI upscaler that is designed for anime images, but which I have tested using an older DVD called Anal Frosting and got a noticeable improvement when upscaled?
The software is called Video2X (video2x.org) and is based on the anime image upscaler Waifu2x.
The details at the site focus on anime videos, and don't seem to focus at all on basic videos, but I did see some improvements when I attempted to enhance the look of one of the scenes in Anal Frosting.
I would give that a try. Maybe let us know what you get.
You need to really check out the options and line things up correctly first. Or nothing might happen.
There are various drivers for it and as I said you need to make sure you line things up right first.
Some drivers require a certain video card, etc. But there are also some workarounds.
You can adjust settings for 264 and 265 codecs.
But once I got that figured out, the program began the slow conversion process.
I am talking about making just a 5 or 10 second clip.
On my fairly new computer with 16 GB of RAM, processing was super slow, about 4 seconds per frame.
They can scan film in any format up to 10k then clean it up in post, new film scanners are being made to make old film look great, criterion uses one of these. The most you can do with 90's gonzo porn is deinterlace it and use newer codec. For 70's 80's porn movies, vinegar syndrome is already releasing them on Blu-ray and hotmovies are releasing some in HD since the oldies were done on film.
I've seen interpolated 60fps and native 60fps. It's night and day. I don't recommend it.
I've deinterlaced my own personal videos using handbrake, what some people do is forget to change the frame rate to 59.94.
This thread is exactly what I was looking for, and your contribution are so useful. And seeing that your configuration does not have a dedicated card your time of conversion (if I've seen it correctly, 1 day for 20 minutes for 480p to 720p) is less terrible than I thought. I'd be curious how much time a 30 minutes conversion from say, 360p or 480p would require with a very powerful gpu, like a 3080 or 3090.
Another thing: the AI upscaler of Topaz you've bought for 100 bucks... you can use it indefinitely or it's like just for a year or something like that?
a bit of confusion due to the fact that I've discovered the thread only after I sent you the dm, but I've read your answer there too now. That comparison of videos looks great, the improvement is impressive, especially considering the resolution of the original video is so low. I really hope I will be able to buy a good new pc this year. I'm really curious to know how the upscaling technology will evolve, I've seen for instance the upscaling technology that google showed less than a year ago and it's literally mindblowing... altough there were no informations if it will be available for customers, if it could be used for videos too and also how much time it would take to convert a video. But the quality was really incredible, if you haven't seen it, check it out.
I've thought too of that approach you're mentioning (upscaling every frame), but for what I've read online upscaling a video requires a thing that for single pictures is not a problem, which is coherence between different frames, because just upscaling every frame like an indipendent picture would cause (at least that's what I've understood) some kind of distracting shimmering. But I suspect that sooner or later we will see something that work in a software that we can buy.
Thank you again, very useful informations. Besides the upscaling, another technology I would be curious to use in combination with the upscaling is the interpolation of new frames generated with a AI. I think it's possible with Nvidia gpus. Imagine in the future a old video not just upscaled, maybe with that amazing quality of the google method, but also with a double frame rate.
