A technical video question ...

[Osi Osgood]

Some years back, there were DVD players that would "upscale" a DVD signal to 1080p. The question ... I know that obviously, a VHS will only give as many lines of resolution as exists on that tape. However, if you wire a VHS, through a 1080p upscale DVD player and then to your monitor, in theory, would this, so to speak, upscale the image quality of the VHS?

[Paul Adsett]

I'm not totally sure about this Osi, but I believe you need a digital source for upscaling to work, and of course VHS is analogue.

[Janice Glesser]

Osi...upscaling VHS can be done. Take a look at how this guys did it.

[Lee Mannering]

This is true. Been thru 1" low density tape and beyond but the best transfer we have effected thus far is from a good Super vhs player via S cable to DVD dual layer disc at max quality setting. If the original is good you can still get a good transfer from it.
Video 2000 is a thing of the past but we did manage some reasonable transfers for a couple of networks here needing public archive stuff as is.

if you can get a good super vhs player you will have a head start

[Xander van der Merwe]

Different upscalers will give different results, but ultimately it can only work with what is provided at the source.

I recently converted our old digital 8mm home videos to mpeg4 via an s-video cable into what I believe is 576p PAL and when I play that on my Shield TV Pro using the VCL video player via an HDMI connector to my Epson 4K projector the quality is barely acceptable for what it is. In this case there is upscaling done done by the VCL video player, some video processing done by the Shield and then the projector itself does further video optimisations. So there are various stages of video upscaling and optimisation in the pipeline.

So the quality will be limited, but using good components in the pipeline will help, although you will be limited by what is provided at the input. In your case I assume it will be NTSC which will have slightly less resolution to start with than PAL.

We’ve been spoilt with 4K video quality, so anything less, especially 480p or 567p is barely acceptable now. The saying about making a purse out of a sows ear or something to that effect comes to mind

[Ed Gordon]

Another option to try is DVDFab Enlarger AI.

Using the Super-Resolution technology, DVDFab Enlarger AI, the world's 1st complete, deep learning capable video upscaling solution, can enhance video from 480p (SD) to 1080p (Full HD), or from 1080p to 4K. It enlarges the video images by 300%, and in the meantime, add in great details to improve video quality exponentially.

You can download and try it free. Link: https://www.dvdfab.cn/enlarger-ai.htm

I have not used it, but it would be nice to see if it can improve the quality of digitized 8mm films.

[Philip Hamilton]

Why would you want to ? VHS is recorded pretty low-res. It will never look like DVD or Bluray. Garbage IN = Garbage OUT. Generally.

[Nantawat Kittiwarakul]

Video upscaling/capture...quite a debatable topic for ages.

I've been doing video capture/upconversion for a while. My general summary is that yes it can be done...to a certain limit.

Although with advanced AI algorithm it would be possible to "fill in" the missing detail. But if you started with only 240 TVL resolution and "fill in" up to 4K, most of the information would be yes...artificial (in other word, FAKE).

In the end I prefer to simply preserve what's really available in the source, and give only necessary alteration to make it look pleasing enough. At the moment I would normally do the modest upconversion to just 720p resolution, with some touchups (noise reduction/some sharpening/etc.). That's only to make it look more "watchable" on the playback, not intended to make it look like genuine HD content by any means.

[Brian Fretwell]

I would think that any HD TV that had a SCART input would have to internally convert the signal (from VHS or any other source like DVD) to 1080 to be able to display it. It wouldn't look any better than playing on an SD CRT though, and possibly worse.

[Osi Osgood]

Phillip, there's definitely a need. 1. Some folks recorded they're family home movies on VHS, if you preserve and re-archive these memories, wouldn't you wish to have them potentially better than before? 2. Some films, even to this day, can only be found on VHS, not DVD, Blu-ray, laserdisc or HD files, so it makes sense to try to place these aging copies in better circumstances.

[Lee Mannering]

Osi. The old JVC SR-VS30 would do it with firewire easy enough. For what its worth I'm transferring some shots of my late 70's gigs filmed on vhs to S8 quite enjoying it.
Back on topic sorry.

[Osi Osgood]

That video would have been a little better if they had a before and after comparison, but thanks, Janice.

[David Strelitz]

This is true. Been thru 1" low density tape and beyond but the best transfer we have effected thus far is from a good Super vhs player via S cable to DVD dual layer disc at max quality setting. If the original is good you can still get a good transfer from it.
Video 2000 is a thing of the past but we did manage some reasonable transfers for a couple of networks here needing public archive stuff as is.

if you can get a good super vhs player you will have a head start

Never owned 1" but have been in video production for 30+ years. In that time went from Umatic through to Digibeta and beyond.
Svhs decks should give a better output via Y/C or Scart set up to give S out. If I recall some Pro-S decks even had component out. That said VHS was recorded as a combined composite signal, as opposed to S which was Y/C or Betacam that was YUV, so a composite signal has to be processed to get a better output...still in SD.

I have a Panasonic VHS/DVD recorder with HDMI out. As has been pointed out all HD TVs will upscale in order to display. How much better you can achieve over and above what Sony/Samsung/LG et al do is going to be very subjective. That said you cannot really invent pixels. There is some sophisticated software like https://www.topazlabs.com/video-enhance-ai which a colleague has tested - fine for 20secs to include in a programme but for serious durations rendering will take a week without £10K of hardware. 1 frame takes 2 secs!
Most decent pro NLE software will also do an upscale...of sorts. I subscribe to the words of Australia's Kevin Bloody Wilson, "You can't polish a turd".

[Ed Gordon]

RE: "You can't polish a turd"

Actually you can polish a turd. It just takes a long time.

The Topaz software can do rather amazing things with substandard images. If you go to YouTube and search on "topaz AI" you will find dozens of examples of images/videos that have been enhanced, and get a notion of what the major limitations are. If you can improve a irreplaceable video in 2 hours, 2 days, or 2 weeks, who cares? The computer is doing the work.

Now, lets polish some turds:

[Brian Fretwell]

I do remember some software that the writers did say could increase the definition in panning or tracking shots by interpolating information between frames showing in some detail that was missing in another and another that had detail missing in the first etc. I think you need a twisted mind to work out the algorithms for that (or be able to simple describe the process - I think I failed in the second of those).