How to AI Upscale Classic TV Shows to 4K with Quality Enhanced

Old TV shows usually have a quality lower than 480P. If we cannot increase the quality of a video file in traditional video editing software, then is there any way can upscale old TV shows in HD or even 4K quality?

Some old TV shows stand for the old times of childhood we watch them on small screens with parents or kids of the neighborhood. However, knowledge, technology, and information have been changing our lifestyle as new emerging economical factors, the small-screen TVs fade out from our sight, instead, the big-screen TVs, PCs, and smartphones with HD or 4K displays. When you are re-watching your favorite childhood TV series, you will find that the picture turned very blurry on the 4K screen, because the old TV shows you’re watching are mostly recorded in SD quality, and the picture will be enlarged to fill the entire screen.

Over the decades, some TV series were shot on 35mm film and finished in SD quality. 35mm film negatives are 36x24mm, at an aspect ratio of 3:2. 35mm film is a small film format with a lower resolution than other types of analog film. This means that 35mm photos may have a grainy or slightly blurry quality to them. The classic series Star Trek: Voyager gets an unofficial 4K remaster by fans, with the help of AI. So when it comes to upscaling low-resolution TV shows with AI technology, there are various ways.

The first one is using artificial intelligence to improve video quality: specifically the necessary upscaling from SD to higher 4K and 8K resolutions on TV screens. Although TV will scale up videos to fill the screen and improves the quality to a certain degree, that is not easy and economical work. For example, if you send a 720x480 standard-def TV series to the 4K TV, the TV has to create nearly 8 million new pixels. That's nearly 24 times as many pixels as are in the original image. Technology can only do so much.

Then, you need a simple but economical way to accomplish this huge project. Some upscaling software based on deep learning convolutional networks can do a better job than TVs in upscaling low-res TV series to 1080P, 4K, and 8K. One such tool is AVCLabs Video Enhancer AI, which utilizes the most advanced and the most cutting-edge convolutional networks that are trained with data set by the D&R team. This tool lets you upscale your low-quality classic TV series to 4K or even 8K with a few clicks by utilizing pre-trained CNNs. It outputs clearer and sharper pictures than similar services and has been acknowledged by more users.

Here is how to upscale the old and classic TV series to 4K and even 8K with AVCLabs Video Enhancer AI.

Step 1: Download and install AVCLabs Video Enhancer AI

AVCLabs Video Enhancer AI is available for both Windows and Mac. You can download it according to the OS of your computer.

Note: Upscaling old TV series is a time and resources consumption work, please check your computer configuration is sufficient to run this AI Upscaling tool. Tech Specs of AVCLabs.

Step 2: Add one episode of classic TV series

Click the "Browse" button to add one episode of classic TV series to the program.

Step 3: Customize the Settings

Once you add the source video, you will see the interface with multiple settings including Model Settings and Output Settings.

Model Settings: There are three options for Model Settings, including Upscale, Denoise, and Face Refinement. Tick the Denoise option if you want to remove noise from the video and select Face Refinement if you want to enhance the facial details of the video.

On the Upscale option, you can select the model as Standard, Ultra, Standard (Multi-Frame), and Ultra (Multi-Frame).

Standard: Frame-by-frame processing, at fast speed.

Ultra: Frame-by-frame HD models, a slightly slower speed, recommended if you have no requirements on processing speed.

Standard (Multi-Frame): Process multiple frames at a time, effectively reducing the amount of flicker, at a fast speed, highly recommended if your computer is in high configuration.

Ultra (Multi-Frame): HD model that processes multiple frames at a time, effectively reducing the amount of flicker, at a slower speed.

Video Size: You can choose to upscale video by 100%, 200%, 400%, or choose the resolution as 1080P, 4K and 8K.

Video Format: Choose the output format to MP4 (H.264) or AVI (Uncompressed).

Step 3: Configure the Video and Performance Settings

Click the menu button and select "Settings", a settings dialogue pops up where you can change the Video and Performance Settings.

On the Video Settings, allow "Crop to fill frame" to scale the input video to fill the full frame of the output video (no black bars), and "Deinterlacing" to reduce horizontal lines in the video.

On the Performance Settings, you can choose the "AI Processor" to determine what hardware (GPU or CPU) will be used by the application when processing, and "Max memory consumption" to Lowest, Low, Medium, High, and Highest. "High" is recommended if you close any other programs on your computer.

Step 4: Preview and start upscaling old TV shows

Click the "Play" button on the video to preview the video the first 30 frames of the video. If you are satisfied with the AI upscaled video, you can click the "Start Processing" button to start upscaling your favorite TV shows or any other types of video to 1080P, 4K, and even 8K. If you have other tasks needing to be worked on, you can pause the processing task and resume the processing if the computer is available.

The program will fully unitize the resources of your computer to process the video at high efficiency. The higher the computer configuration is, the fast the processing speed. After processing, you can watch the AI upscaled TV shows on any 4K screen, without quality loss. If you are surprised by the resulting output by AVCLabs, do not forget to share this piece of software with your friends.