I think I’m a little late to the party, and correct me if this isn’t necessarily the place to contribute my sample, but I’ve been doing a lot of tests with SuperResolution of the SSE to see how much detail can be resurrected from it. The SSE is a fine (if not the best) clean up job and restoration, yet lacks a certain crispness to it. If there’s one thing I like about the Blu-ray (possible the only thing) is how sharp and clean it is. I have noticed that the grain present in some shots of the SSE, and most likely the source, is a little soft; It makes what’s in frame feel distant in a way.
I’ve used both SuperResolution (faster almost real-time) and Adobe’s Detail-preserving Upscaling (more accurrate but resource intensive and borderlines crashing) in After Effects to see what works best. In some cases I’ve considered using Denoiser II to reduce the grain and add it back in later (just bear with me). Also, order of operations is very important when it comes to adding effects and upscaling. In what order the effects were done gave VERY different results.
Here’s what I was considering in my tests
- SuperResolution or Detail-preserving Upscale?
- i.e. How much time am I willing to give a shot? Which produces better results on its own? - 1080p? 4K? Upscale to 4k then scale down to 1080p?
- Denoiser II before or after upscale? How much reduction? How much Enhancement?
1080p comparison
http://screenshotcomparison.com/comparison/187722
At first it seems subtle, but the more you look at it and at the different things in frame you can see the crispness I’m aiming to bring out in the SSE. Threepio, Artoo, Luke and Ben now have definite features and are all around less blurry.
I don’t have a 4K monitor but at 4K it looks even better because of the 1:1 pixel ratio. I have zoomed in here to create a 1:1 pixel ratio on my 1080p monitor.
It shows the SSE at 200% compared with my Upscaling test at 4K
http://screenshotcomparison.com/comparison/187728
When matching the 1080p and 4K at a zoom, you can see the aliasing present in the 1080p version.
http://screenshotcomparison.com/comparison/187724
However, comparing the 1080p version to the straight 4K version both fully framed (on a 1080p monitor) they look identical. So you would need a 4K display to appreciate a 4K ‘master’.
A 4K version of the SSE is not out of the question, just not feasible at the moment.