Is it better than the 720p upscale that was deleted ? I will keep that if it's indeed better.

Its back!

@Marche not better, but 720p version deleted

@kuramori : I grabbed it already, will keep that then.

I never thought you'd redo it. Anyways, we appreciate your contribution :)

@kuramori Seriously, I want the 720p encode, where can I find it? U2? PS: Never understood that rule here, nyaa accepts BD upscales but no DVD upscales -_-

Is there a technical reason why a 720p upscale was made to begin with? If so I'm pretty sure nyaa allows exceptions if you ask in IRC.

An exception should always be made for people who know what they are doing; in which case, kuramori is one, without a doubt.

This rule that forbids upscales on nyaa is ridiculous. It's an old rule made more than a decade ago where, at that time, people released plenty of crappy upscales made without any knowledge. But nowadays there are a lot of encoders like km who are incredibly skilled and are able to release amazing upscaled releases that are not only faithful to the original support (i.e no crappy filters or deterioration of the art) but add a magically "HD" feeling better than any professional made upscale. On the other side nyaa has always allowed releasers like Mozzii or CherryBoyz that like to mess up the art with over-filtering and detail destruction. That's what makes this rule totally obsolete and very frustrating.

Luckily 144fps interpolated releases are still allowed :^)

@Senjia can download it from the magnet link on tokyotosho @booman it all depends on the source, for most I do not do more than 576p, but there are exceptions after a nnedi3 when downscale less than 720, some small details and lines get blurred @Clipsos it was too hard a source to give up easily

upscales aren't allowed because you can't magically create pixels out of nowhere, so there is literally no benefit to encoding a dvd at 720p instead of 576p

@herkz this is not true

here is a good example where you can see the restoration of some lines compared to dvd https://slow.pics/c/iBqU0yeR

Comparison 1 looks fine, but I'm not so sure about #2. While technically it's probably better, it *looks* worse.

THX @kuramori Any idea if you will do Sousei no Aquarion DVD 720p? BD is QTEC and fucked up and we really miss a good encode for it. Same for Blue Seed.

@kuramori's encodes are gold. Too bad there aren't exceptions to the rule for great encoders. Thanks kuramori.

@hertz Then why accepting BD Upscales than?

@herkz, you can and that's actually the purpose of these releases. You can fake an HD feeling while still being faithful to the source: https://i.slow.pics/0gqJV0W7.png https://i.slow.pics/GGAQXKwK.png https://i.slow.pics/6CL72Acq.png https://i.slow.pics/RHKqtZGO.png https://i.slow.pics/ST88NQ4x.png https://i.slow.pics/UooQF01V.png I don't have the comparisons to the source anymore, so my argument is not proving anything. But at least you can see what kind of release we're talking about. These screens come from Akikan and Dragon Ball releases encoded using a script made by Yurazyk. Furthermore, and that's also important, upscaling DVD releases can sometimes help to improve the filtering of DVD artefacts. Editors often publish discutable BD upscales and there is no problem to upload them on nyaa, so why should non-professional DVD upscales that actually aim at brining quality be forbidden? Could you reconsider this rule? There are a lot of people that are passionate about quality optimization. These releases are indeed more sized, but should size still be a problem in 2021 where you can buy +12TB HDD?

Green names are not mods or admins, so herkz can do nothing about the rule. There are downsides and benefits to the rule. If the rule goes away, then the only DVD releases that people will download will be 1080p, 'cause everyone knows bigger = better after all! That's obviously not ideal. The good encoders who keep their releases close to the actual res of the source are gonna be beat out by encoders who upscale for no reason. That's such a disaster that I really hope that the rule never goes away.

@motbob That's a good point, although I'm not sure if this will really happen. Here are a some arguments: - DVDs are now very old, very few people are still interested in releasing these kind of series - The releases I talked about, and not only them, are already present in trackers like u2 and as far as I know there isn't any problem yet - We can consider in allowing DVD upscales but still prohibit higher upscales like 1080p to 4k (where the benefit is clearly inexistent)

Check out the download numbers on Haibane Renmei. Everyone goes for the dogshit quality BD upscales over the DVD simply because BDs are better, right?

Thanks, man. I can't STAND the BD version of this anime. It looks absolutely terrible. Love Hina was one of my first shows, and it has a special place in my heart. Love Hina Again also has a special place, but it's in hell.

I honestly think BD upscales are mostly shit. Even in your comparison, Kuramori, the #2 BD screenshot makes me want to gouge my eyes out. No way it looks better than the original DVD. Although I still think the rule should be removed. There is tons of shit getting published here. I mean for fucks sake we allow fucking camrips and not DVD upscales? It's just retarded. Let the viewer choose.

i see none of you understood my point, which isn't a surprise. my point was you can do whatever nice filtering you want. if you output it at 720p, it won't look any better than if you output it at 576p (or lower) when the source is 480p. that extra detail can't just come out of nowhere.

Sometimes the filtering involves doubling/nn upscaling, though. It's not weird to want to leave the filtering at that higher res instead of bringing it back down.

well i can't say i've ever seen anyone make a 960p dvd encode

@herkz I think we all got your point, it is obvious that you can't invent details. But there are other reasons. Here is a sum up for you: - The aim is to give a **fake** HD feeling and bring an added value compared to professional editor releases that mess up the art most of the time (qtec and cie). This can be done by combining sophisticated upscale algorithms with slight filtering. - Upscaling can sometimes help to correct artefacts or as km was mentioning to restore lines.

>The aim is to give a fake HD feeling fake "detail" is a stupid placebo >Upscaling can sometimes help to correct artefacts or as km was mentioning to restore lines. i agree that this is true and it's actually how antialiasing filters based on nnedi3 or eedi3 work. there's just no benefit to not downscaling back at the end.

herkz apparently watches stuff on a 480p/576p monitor or windowed

Yes it is a placebo, but the crazy thing is that placebo has been proven many times to work over drugs. We're stupid creatures ^^' Our eyes are very easy to mislead because we are not machines that can have a perfect objective distinction of each pixel. That's the beauty of the trick.

With regards to the upscaling, a big part of it would be the quality of the DVD ISO/Rip and the AI Enhancer program used for it. I'm experimenting with it myself, and am starting to get some relatively decent results as I get more practice with it. I'm also not going any larger than 720p, usually between 540p - 600p.

(for future reference, ignore my previous comment.)

@herkz GJM (specifically Light) made an encode of the DVD only Kaguya OVAs using custom-trained ESRGAN models using DVDs of BDs of the TV show. The plain upscale looks better than the downscale to 576p that follows to be in accordance to the rules on this tracker. this kind of upscaling is also something that cannot be replicated by playback. While in reality the amount of times where going over 576p is worth is limited for DVD encodes, I really don't see why the upper limit cannot be increased to 720p. There are tangible gains in fidelity to be gained both in such exceptions and more generally by forcing part of the upscaling to be competent at least. All of this is obviously super diminishing returns, which is why any such DVD upscales really have no business being upscaled past 720p imo but the current resolution rule was suggested and put in place because of Daiz like a decade ago, it's frankly outdated.

>herkz apparently watches stuff on a 480p/576p monitor or windowed yeah i watch everything windowed since i don't sit 6 feet from my computer, but still wouldn't you prefer to be able to choose what upscaling method you want instead of being forced to use what the encoder picked? especially since computers are getting faster and you can use really nice upscaling filters in real-time these days. >but the current resolution rule was suggested and put in place because of Daiz like a decade ago, it’s frankly outdated. actually the rule was put into place because PAL DVDs are 576p and it's not trivial to tell whether a PAL or NTSC DVD was used for an encode, saving work for the mods of the old site (who actually did things). there's also the minor benefit of 16:9 480p not being mod4 while 576p is, as well as most video players considering anything over 540p resolution to be HD, allowing you to typeset things with the same bt709 standard used for say the TV subs for a OAD you're subbing. also trying to typeset 480p video is actually impossible. even 576p can be a pain.

The subs for episode 18 are 1 second late. Easy to fix. Just for everyone to know.

> actually the rule was put into place because PAL DVDs are 576p and it’s not trivial to tell whether a PAL or NTSC DVD was used for an encode, saving work for the mods of the old site (who actually did things). Yes, this was Daiz' reasoning. Not sure why you are "actually"-ing me here, as the two aren't mutually exclusive.  (For the sake of clarity, he goes on to expand that the reason is as you described primarily, but I didn't want to screenshot the entire, slightly scattered conversation. The screen is just to show it was actually Daiz' doing)

The thing about why 720 to 1080 upscale is okay is because it's the industry standard, aside from the fact that most of anime nowadays are native 720 or higher are being simulcasted as 1080. I believe it's the same for SD if they decided to release them officially in different resolutions. What I mean is I believe that we can't be flagged if we upload an upscale, let's say 576 from 480 of an anime that's being officially released on both resolution if the source of the encode is the same as the native or higher. The rule was placed to deter people from flooding Nyaa with uploads of unnecessary upscales for the reasons mentioned by herkz and it became the rule of thumb.

>Not sure why you are “actually”-ing me here, as the two aren’t mutually exclusive. i was "actually"-ing you because you said it was outdated, yet the main reason (PAL DVDs existing) is not outdated in the slightest. as you can probably tell by the other rules, max resolution allowed is the max resolution of the source format. anything else is irrelevant honestly.

> upscales aren’t allowed because you can’t magically create pixels out of nowhere, • Salieri making his own HDR from non HDR releases • Raze interpolating 60 and now 120fps • Ratsasan interpolating DVD to 144fps

@kuramori : Looking at the framerate for the first couple of these and they are hitting 25.642, 25.666, 25.741, 26.058, 25.686 Was this intentional? Not criticizing just wondering.

@DoctorMemory this is the usual variable frame rate, mediainfo shows the average value, almost everywhere 23.976 frames, there are some scenes where is 29.97, for example in episode 4 also the ending is 59.94 frames

zamn... this is a great debating section...

@Senjia Sousei no Aquarion no plan, Blue Seed i have no source r2j @DmonHiro I also hate the qtec-bd, in the next time i will try to encode more dvdrips for those titles that are unlucky with the bd release

Thank you so much

>*Green names are not mods or admins, so herkz can do nothing about the rule*. I always thought that [@herkz](https://nyaa.iss.one/user/herkz) was the owner of Nyaa. (?)

Herkz may or may not be the owner of the infamous anime cartel. Who knows really.

if anyone is interested here is a comparison this dvdrip with the source r2j, frames upscale with a simple lanczos resize for easy viewing https://slow.pics/c/HE3Grocj

That's some pretty awful frames, but from my experience working on DVDs, not every frame is going to look *that* awful (even if it's still not good). Would be interested in seeing way more comparisons of random frames tbh to see if the strong filtering is applied to any less-bad frames. Also was this deblocked using DPIR? The deblocking looks pretty impressive!

I'd rather share the dvdiso https://disk.yandex.ru/d/9gtAEUWv_PfJWQ later on u2 it's possible download everything. Yes, the frames are not the good) An adaptive deblocking (not DPIR ) and scene filter was used so that good frames were not affected

Upscaled dvds don't have to look like dogshit all the time. I've messed around a little with some of my older anime dvds trying my hand at some various upscaling algorithms with pretty good results-but they'll never be mistaken for native 1080P hd blurays. I might try upscaling my us Bandai Love Hina dvds and uploading a torrent here just for laughs and giggles.

GJ!!!

With the speed and storage standards, encoding and upscaling is totally unnecessary today.MPEG2 is a bad quality codec and you are encoding to a lossy codec losing even more details, the best way to watch dvds is by remuxing them. Only BDs nowadays should be encoded as size is still a problem for downloads, but DVDISOS are small compared to BDISOS.

"the best way to watch dvds is by remuxing them." MY NIGGER!!!!!

Purples, please ban the racist green man.

''the best way to watch dvds is by remuxing them''. give that man a medal! also, herz, thx for explaining it but it still kinda sucks that the 4 good fan upscales currently in existence have to be sacrificed for the sake of evading the infinite load of bad upscales being flooded to nyaa. what a horrible world we live in