Upscaling videos guide

[ivabus]

Just finished upscaling a video with Upscayl and here is a result (YouTube (up to 4K), file (big), file (smol)).
Model used: "Digital art" - "realesrgan-x4plus-anime"

Formats

Video: 1280x720 -> 5120x2880 (5K)
Framerate: 30
Length: 3:20 or 6015 frames

Steps

Split video into frames

ffmpeg -i /path/to/video.format -r FRAMERATE /path/to/frames/%08d.png

Extract audio from file (optional)

ffmpeg -i /path/to/video.format -vn -acodec copy /path/to/audio.mkv

Batch Upscayl

Just use Upscayl in the "Batch" mode

Running in parallel on the MacBook Air M2 and MacBook Air M1, it was done in 10 hours. (2.8.6)

Join frames into video

Without audio

ffmpeg -framerate FRAMERATE -i /path/to/upscayled/%08d.png -r FRAMERATE -vf format=yuv420p upscayled.mkv

With audio

ffmpeg -framerate FRAMERATE -i /path/to/upscayled/%08d.png -i /path/to/audio.mkv -r FRAMERATE -vf format=yuv420p upscayled.mkv

[NayamAmarshe]

That's awesome! Thanks for posting this!

[TGS963]

Thanks for posting such a detailed guide!

[Darin755]

This is surprisingly easy (not tried yet)

[jefflomax]

This is great - but I really wish we could pipe the processed results into ffmpeg
https://ffmpeg.org/ffmpeg-all.html#pipe
so we could re-scale without having to store all the frames.
Could be command line wizardry, addition to Upscayl, .NET Core or Python.

[aaronliu0130]

1. We're not introducing Python because it would introduce a ton of dependencies. We're not using .NET either as it's Windows-only.
2. We're a GUI for the CLI tool Real-ESRGAN-ncnn-vulkan. I'm pretty sure piping only works with CLI tools, so you can pipe with that

[NayamAmarshe]

1. We're not introducing Python because it would introduce a ton of dependencies. We're not using .NET either as it's Windows-only.
2. We're a GUI for the CLI tool Real-ESRGAN-ncnn-vulkan. I'm pretty sure piping only works with CLI tools, so you can pipe with that

Well, we're not Real-ESRGAN-ncnn-vulkan anymore :D We're Upscayl NCNN

[boludoz]

With ffmpeg it is impossible, better use OpenCV with a small buffer so as not to saturate the memory that progressively writes the video in 4k and later adds the sound.

[aaronliu0130]

Why would it be impossible with FFMPEG?

[owen555999]

Did this work with gif?

[aaronliu0130]

Yes

[owen555999]

so what is the best format for gif file?

[aaronliu0130]

Just follow the gudie