Feedback Wanted: my Empire Strikes Back SE97 720p upscale

This project is about the<span style=“line-height: 14.3999996185303px;”> </span>1997 Special Edition of <span style=“line-height: 14.3999996185303px;”>Empire Strikes Back. The goal is a sharp looking 720p upscale.</span>

<span style=“line-height: 14.3999996185303px;”>The German (Gkar) and Scandinavian broadcast have been considered as sources. I compared different scenes and came to the conclusion that the Scandinavian broadcast has a better picture quality. Therefore the source of this project is the Scandinavian broadcast. </span>

There are two main processes involved in this project. Upsacling and Sharpening. Both are done using Avisynth 2.5.8.

I use the BlackmanResize with default values to upscale the picture. I also tried LanczosResize with 4 tabs but this filter is a tiny bit worse than Blackman.

The picture is then cropped to remove the black bars.

After this step the picture is sharpened in order to get the HD look. This is done by using LimetedSharpenFaster in MinMaxSharpen mode with a 5x5 neighborhood. I don’t use super sampeling because it produces a poorer image of my test clips <span style=“color: #800080; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 13px; font-weight: bold; line-height: 19.0499992370605px;”>
</span>

Some sample clips are encoded in MeGUI using x264 with a crf of 16 and tuned for film. Below are two comparisions. Both are snapshots taken in VLC media player.

Broadcast: http://i2.minus.com/i0KdoUYUwehwa.png

Upscale: http://i3.minus.com/i2ugqyEn7gPk9.png

Sharp: http://i5.minus.com/i7D8tGzgipztf.png

Broadcast: http://i4.minus.com/ibo5TWUwB4nQ9g.png

Upsacale : http://i4.minus.com/ivnvg6WiH38dE.png

Sharp: http://i1.minus.com/ibgaTrrJq0mz4q.png

I also toyed around with noise reduction to see how it will affect the picture. I used  QTGMC before Upsacling.

QTGMC: http://i4.minus.com/iJoxh7USELzGQ.png

As you can see, this blurs the image. It will also significantly decrease the encoding speed. I’m not really sure if I should use this filter. What do you guys think?

Yeah, I'm new to this. Thank you for your input. 

I tweaked the script a bit.

LoadPlugin("C:\Program Files\dgindex\DGDecode.dll")

MPEG2Source("VTS_01_1.d2v")

Trim (173561,173786)

Deblock()

FastDegrain(3)

QTGMC(InputType=2,Sharpness=0,TR2=0,NoiseProcess=2)

#BlackmanResize(1314, 722)

spline36resize(width()*2,height()*4)

ResampleHQ(1314,722,dither=true,chroma_kernel="Spline36")

Crop(4,116,-30,-94)

LimitedSharpenFaster (ss_x=1.0, ss_y=1.0, Smode=3, strength=200, wide=true)

This results in: http://i6.minus.com/iUIwlylLTHJyR.png

When I don't use LimitedSharpen and use the sharpen method from RU.08 I get:

http://i5.minus.com/i90WdggvPPc7Y.png

I did a third time without the Blur(0.4) function: 

http://i4.minus.com/ibnzJ75yMu7so9.png

I did the same with Leia's face: 

Limited: http://i2.minus.com/iIOdPIL0LqBmB.png

MSharpen+Blur: http://i5.minus.com/io957iOrCg4tz.png

MSharpen only: http://i3.minus.com/ittOYJHM5bVDP.png

I like LimitedSharpen the best. It produces the sharpest image.

I'm using MCTemporalDenoise now. It doesn't blur the image as much. The medium settings are a good compromise between denoise and sharpness. 

noise: http://i5.minus.com/i7D8tGzgipztf.png

denoise: http://i6.minus.com/iyhVH7UuT9WjL.png

noise: http://i1.minus.com/ibgaTrrJq0mz4q.png

denoise: http://i5.minus.com/i3EBBLulO7JID.png

noise: http://i3.minus.com/idyxr2wB1hEtm.png

denoise: http://i4.minus.com/iLpwqoxXvVDeD.png

noise: http://i4.minus.com/iomS7lZLpn7UU.png

denoise: http://i7.minus.com/ioineGEIBhPFZ.png

The violet line is from the authoring. The first few frames of the vob contains some frames of the DVD menu at the beginning, which messes the whole image up. I fixed it by cropping the image before resizing.

I applied QTGMC and MSharpen again and yes, it gets better results. The stars are brighter and there are more details.  It blurs the picture a tiny bit, but it's a good trade-off. It looks really great now.

http://i1.minus.com/itfmkyazHeRjB.png 

http://i2.minus.com/ijXjdkRpvNwqH.png

http://i5.minus.com/ikDmM0y8YlScy.png

without QTGMC: http://i4.minus.com/iRlwTIEnJMW2H.png

http://i5.minus.com/ib2lsTGsaQmZ8e.png

I tweaked the script after playing with Superresolution. The SR plugin doesn't really give better results with this source. But I found another Script called MSR, which uses MVTools and doubles the size. The final upscale to 1080p is done with nnedi3_resize16. I've decided to go with FullHD as it gives a better image. I also played with the sharpness function of nnedi3_resize16. It gives a sharper image, but it also enhances the noise and artefacts. 

pic 1 

http://screenshotcomparison.com/comparison/137813

http://screenshotcomparison.com/comparison/137825

http://screenshotcomparison.com/comparison/137816

pic2

http://screenshotcomparison.com/comparison/137817

http://screenshotcomparison.com/comparison/137822

http://screenshotcomparison.com/comparison/137820

pic3

http://screenshotcomparison.com/comparison/137810

http://screenshotcomparison.com/comparison/137827

http://screenshotcomparison.com/comparison/137811

pic4

http://screenshotcomparison.com/comparison/137800

http://screenshotcomparison.com/comparison/137828

http://screenshotcomparison.com/comparison/137802

pic5

http://screenshotcomparison.com/comparison/137806

http://screenshotcomparison.com/comparison/137829

http://screenshotcomparison.com/comparison/137809