Why do new upscaled posts immediately get hit with a 1-star rating?
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I've been seeing this trend recently and it makes no sense to me. Is someone just trolling? People are giving up their time and CPU/GPU power to try to improve old videos, so why would anyone have an issue with that? I can't believe that anyone is actually downloading them all, watching them, reviewing them and awarding them 1-star because they are such poor quality movies!
Personally, I want to thank everyone who is attempting to improve and upscale old classic gay movies - your efforts are appreciated
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There's probably somebody who thinks that all upscaling is bad--which isn't strictly the case. Using simple software to increase the resolution of a video file won't improve the quality, and just makes the file larger. Many people have done this, falsely claiming to have converted the file to HD.
On the other hand, there is some very sophisticated software that can make some improvement to the quality of a file when increasing the resolution. If the uploader has done this, they do indeed merit our thanks. While a 20-year-old file cannot be made to look like a current HD file, it can look a bit better.
I suspect that the one-star rater assumes that the uploader just increased the resolution without any quality improvement (which is the case with most upscales). Blowing up a file with no benefit deserves a low rating, but unless somebody has downloaded the material and compared it to a lower-resolution original, s/he's not going to know whether it's a "good" upscale or a "bad" one. It would be nice if the torrent page software only permitted rating by people who have completed a download of all the material, but that sounds like a massive software headache.
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I think there is a combination of two factors at work here.
Firstly, there are a number of uploaders who appear to think that re-encoding an old video at a higher resolution with a "better" codec will somehow improve the quality, when this actually has the opposite effect. I'm sure some of these uploaders mean well, but don't really understand how video compression works. I think people have been stung downloading these bloated files in the past and assume anything upscaled is the same. I personally can't understand the users who re-encode everything with H.265 or HEVC and think they have somehow improved the video. B
Secondly, there also seem to be a few "upscale deniers" who simply don't understand the process and technology of using machine learning to upscale video, and will insist that they cannot see any difference between original and upscaled video, even when presented with a side by side comparison.
AI video upscaling is a constantly evolving technology, that gets better by the month as models and techniques are refined. I have found that a videos I upscaled a year ago, can now be upscaled again with far better results. I can only imagine the improvements to come as the technology evolves further, with developments in face recognition and motion interpolation. -
@pjh1122 I agree! This morning I downloaded the upscaled Cadinot classic "Classe de Neige" specifically because the uploader said they upscaled it using specific software and what they changed.
Just saying it was upscaled, I would probably have passed because most people have just taken an old file and doubled the size. It would have been nice if they also indicated what they used as their starting point in the upscaling. Obviously AI still holds to the original data processing concept - "Garbage in, Garbage out". It will be much better from the DVD or full size rip, than if they only had a low quality 700mb mp4 file to start.
I have an extensive collection of Cadinot DVDs and want to be able to compare and see for myself what this AI software can do. It would be great to see some of these looking even better on my large screen once they get the AI tuned.JSYK - this particular upscaling looks pretty good compared to the original DVD.
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@Mrker1234 I'd love if someone could share one of their Cadinot DVDs as either an image or video_ts file and I could see how far I can push the AI software
A lot of the rips of European DVDs I find online are at the wrong frame rate so it would be great to have an original DVD to start from!This is not a request for an upload, I'm just expressing a general wish
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@drekkin I have put a lot of them up as direct MKV files that only did a straight convert from DVD. They are at the same 3-4gb file size as the VOBs were.
Would that work? Or do you need the actual image?This is one I have here -
https://www.gaytor.rent/details.php?id=a73586943a175328bcee19b59378f66c143a39814b97dad6 -
@raphjd said in Why do new upscaled posts immediately get hit with a 1-star rating?:
I noticed this too.
Maybe the person is against changing the quality.
This is why I have always wished that you would also have to leave a comment when posting a star rating.
It also seems to happen in categories that someone doesn't like.
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@Mrker1234 Remuxed mkv's will work fine because there is no
further compression of the DVD video involved. I'll download the video from your link and see what I can do with it. -
@drekkin If it works, there are 16 Jean-Daniel Cadinot DVDs that I uploaded the full MKVs for and are still seeding. All about 26 weeks ago and with his full name in the torrent like these -
Maurice et les Garçons (1994) Jean-Daniel Cadinot -https://www.gaytor.rent/details.php?id=8ef655e13065fd1dbcee19b59378f66cec688c700c748f18
Pension Complète (1988) Jean-Daniel Cadinot
https://www.gaytor.rent/details.php?id=98306073ef9d285fbcee19b59378f66c72789b7c141425a7
Le Culte D'Eros (2009) Jean-Daniel Cadinot
https://www.gaytor.rent/details.php?id=ec80c36dc109e9ffbcee19b59378f66c1f361e48fd089d07 -
@Mrker1234 I just had a look at the file I downloaded, was this taken from a North American DVD release by any chance?
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@drekkin should be, I'm in the US
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If you just run an AI software to "enhance" the image you might be objectively losing data as opposed to the desired effect. But a proper job can lead to fantastic results. Much more important than having the proper software it is having the proper knowledge on what you are doing... I just assume 99% of the people doing it in their homes don't.
I'm not a colector, I put much more value into efficiency rather than having the source material. I prefer smaller files with modern encoding rather than a 5GB DVD ISO for example. Put that same 5GB ISO against an "enhanced" version and I'll have the ISO anytime...
But let's be practical, no one here is bloating the internet or flooding servers around the world with unnecessary files, so there's no need to be aggressive.
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@ianfontinell said in Why do new upscaled posts immediately get hit with a 1-star rating?:
If you just run an AI software to "enhance" the image you might be objectively losing data as opposed to the desired effect. But a proper job can lead to fantastic results. Much more important than having the proper software it is having the proper knowledge on what you are doing... I just assume 99% of the people doing it in their homes don't.
I'm not a colector, I put much more value into efficiency rather than having the source material. I prefer smaller files with modern encoding rather than a 5GB DVD ISO for example. Put that same 5GB ISO against an "enhanced" version and I'll have the ISO anytime...
I have to disagree on the software not being important. Yes, there are a lot of video tools that can "enhance" images with lots of possible ways to tweak them that most people don't know how to use. BUT, that is where artificial intelligence is starting to shine. I'm not saying it is fully there yet, but each year it gets better and better. Those 99% of people who don't know what they are doing, soon won't have to know all that much.
I greatly appreciate when an older filmed movie can be cleaned and upgraded to be viewable on my big screen. I'm talking 20th century movies, so most of the smaller files that float around are complete garbage and were made 20 years ago. So, yes, it is nice to be able to go back to a (more) original source and use modern encoding from that and not a crappy 400 - 600mb avi file.
I'm not talking taking a video that was originally recorded straight to video at HD and "enhancing" it to 4k. In that case I probably agree with you, it might be losing data and the gain isn't going to be worth it.
But taking a classic Cadinot movie that was originally made on film, then digitized to DVD 20 years ago and trying to eliminate the graininess and correct the coloring that was messed up when it was clumsily digitized 20 years ago? I can't wait to see what the AI enhanced software will be able to do with it!
I'm not concerned about efficiency, I have 25TB of storage and a GB Internet connection, I want something that will look good on an 80" TV not a phone.
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@ianfontinell The software certainly needs refinement and at times feels like using a sledgehammer to crack a peanut, doing more damage than good. Some of the results I have seen, and some of my early attempts, have been quite heavy handed and so much detail has been lost that the outcome looks completely unnatural. Some of this can be down to particular studios using a filter on their early work (Bel Ami being one) that gave it a soft glow, more flattering for the actors and quite acceptable on standard definition DVD, but which most AI models cannot deal with effectively and will turn into something closer to anime than live action (I've seen a few of these uploaded in the last couple of days). A lot of these upscaling programmes have a few very general and quite harsh presets and then a whole host of advanced settings that can be tweaked 1/100th at a time - I wouldn't like to guess how many users look beyond the presets. I always find a "less is more" approach is definitely the way to go with most video editing anyway, but particularly when handing over total control of the outcome to a machine. I'm still an old school control freak at heart, and I like my video meters and sliders, and I still believe a lot can be done to enhance a video before going near AI. Ideally it should be used as part of a suite of editing tools. instead of being used as the magic tool that it certainly isn't... yet.
I've spent over a decade digitising historical material, and there is a debate about whether using AI to enhance or restore old video is staying true to the original material or changing it in some way. I have experimented with facial recognition and refinement technology and initially the results seemed very impressive, but as I looked further into it I found that at times the AI would get confused with faces in a crowd and put the wrong face on the wrong person, in effect creating a deep fake. Not exactly what you want in a historical archive! I wonder what kind of horrors we will find when this technology goes mainstream and everyone is upscaling their awful Boyztube rips to 8K.
With data storage so affordable nowadays, and internet speeds that can transfer data faster than we can consume it, I don't see a need for highly compressed video anymore. Indeed those of us interested in high end audio and video have little interest in highly compressed codecs like H.265/HEVC and are more excited by Apple's ProRes codecs. One of the currents strengths of AI video enhancing is the ability to restore compressed video, to eliminate a lot of the compression artefacts and sharpen the image, and this is really useful for movies of which only a compressed video file exists. Always keep your originals somewhere!
I'm at a complete loss to understand the logic at play when someone re-encodes a H.264 video or older with a H.265 codec and somehow thinks they have made it better, or even worse re-encoding a 480p video at 1080p and calling it HD. It's like recording an LP onto a CD and expecting it to sound like a CD! Why not just enjoy the LP as it is?
This site has become flooded with these re-encoded movies lately and trying to find a good quality original to upscale is getting more and more difficult. Re-encoding is actually downscaling. like we did when we ripped our CDs to 128kb/s mp3s or our DVDs to 700mb mpeg files, it doesn't restore any data, it just strips more away. But I suppose it's a case of someone reading somewhere that HEVC is the next greatest thing and them deciding that everything ever made needs to be re-encoded with this amazing new technology. -
@drekkin said in Why do new upscaled posts immediately get hit with a 1-star rating?:
ut I suppose it's a case of someone reading somewhere that HEVC is the next greatest thing and them deciding that everything ever made needs to be re-encoded with this amazing new technology.
That's pretty much what's happening and the reason is simple, it's double the efficiency of H264, meaning you require half the bitrate to get the same image quality. The issue is that people are taking lossy copies and compressing them even further, like you said yourself. Regardless of how much your HD can store or how fast your internet is, compression will always make itself more and more important through time as the demand for content it's availability grows out of control and even H265 is getting outdated nowadays.
But encoding, just like AI upscaling, is designed to have a range of scenarios where it'll perform well and everything else have to be taken as is. This is precisely why it's more important to preserve the source material.
But there are cases like mentioned by another user, where the source material is long gone and you're left with digital "enhanced" versions from 30 years ago... In this case using todays AI is much more a case of restoration than enhancement, I'd say.
