Server - Server side up scaling

[Jdiesel 1431]

Not sure how popular this idea will be but I thought I'd throw it out there for comments.

 

There are a lot of playback clients out there with poor upscaling (Roku, Web client, etc) which can make watching SD content a poor experience. I know that it is typically the players job to upscale the video but sometimes the result just aren't great. What if there was the option to use the server to upscale the video server side on-the-fly before delivering it to the client? I personally like the quality of Lanczos upscaling in Kodi on my SD videos but can not do this on my Roku.

 

My thoughts on how this might work, the ability to enable a rule to upscale anything below a certain resolution to a target resolution. For example, all videos with a height <480 get upscaled to 720, all videos with a height <720 get upscaled to 1080. Or maybe it can be as simple as doubling the resolution, for example, enable the option to double the resolution of all SD content.

-vf scale=-1:720:flags=lanczos

-vf scale=-1:1080:flags=bicubic

There are obviously downsides to this such as needing transcoding, the amount of horsepower required to upscale, and increased file sizes over the original. 

 

Would anyone else use something like this?

[schmitty 66]

I think this would put too much load on the server.

 

 

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[Jdiesel 1431]

No need to use it if your server can't handle it.

[anderbytes 141]

I'm all about customizations... If the Emby admin allows it, Ok. If not... just don't turn the feature On.

 

Even more cool would be to configure when it will upscale (Ex: only for SD? Min width/height? Only if server is not too loaded?)

[bandit8623 213]

Please add. Many of us have hardware now capable. Example arc GPUs.

Thanks 

[TZTZoro 26]

suppose you got multiple users, why not upscale the source file? It will reduce server load and you do not have to wait for the devs to implement it
if you want the source file to be original make a duplicate?

[laie_techie 16]

I came to say what TZTZoro said. Why not upscale the source yourself and keep it with the original? There's no need to use all that computing power time after time. Disc space is getting cheaper all the time, too. Why would you rip to 480p unless that's the source's native resolution?

[bandit8623 213]

1 hour ago, laie_techie said:

I came to say what TZTZoro said. Why not upscale the source yourself and keep it with the original? There's no need to use all that computing power time after time. Disc space is getting cheaper all the time, too. Why would you rip to 480p unless that's the source's native resolution?

Your argument makes no sense.  If I have the GPU power why not do it on the fly.  GPUs are cheap as well. It cheaper to buy a a310 than buy more storage.  Either way choice is good.

This is a request forum. 

[bandit8623 213]

2 hours ago, TZTZoro said:

suppose you got multiple users, why not upscale the source file? It will reduce server load and you do not have to wait for the devs to implement it
if you want the source file to be original make a duplicate?

How will I upscale my live TV broadcast ahead of time? For every channel.....

Edited October 16, 2024 by bandit8623

[TZTZoro 26]

10 minutes ago, bandit8623 said:

How will I upscale my live TV ahead of time smarty-pants?

well, if you wanted you could create a server which accepts streams upscales it and outputs a stream and input that stream into emby
but depends on what your livetv source is, if you use psuedotv or virtualtv you can still upscale the source files.. but yeah live tv would be the only reason to do it on the fly in my opinion
 

28 minutes ago, bandit8623 said:

If I have the GPU power why not do it on the fly.  GPUs are cheap as well. It cheaper to buy a a310 than buy more storage.  Either way choice is good.

How about the power usage, wear and tear, the heat, they can all be issues, especially if the same thing is upscaled multiple times
It only becomes useful to schedule the load on your server or when it needs to be upscaled multiple times
for me spending 200 for a few more tb is cheaper then to upscale everything on the fly especially with multi user setups and people rewatching stuff, you also get a longer delay when seeking through a file to find a specific place

 

28 minutes ago, bandit8623 said:

This is a request forum. 

But i agree it is a feature request so nothing wrong with it, and these are just suggestions to help you out maybe or give new ideas

Edited October 16, 2024 by TZTZoro

[bandit8623 213]

4 hours ago, TZTZoro said:

well, if you wanted you could create a server which accepts streams upscales it and outputs a stream and input that stream into emby
but depends on what your livetv source is, if you use psuedotv or virtualtv you can still upscale the source files.. but yeah live tv would be the only reason to do it on the fly in my opinion
 

How about the power usage, wear and tear, the heat, they can all be issues, especially if the same thing is upscaled multiple times
It only becomes useful to schedule the load on your server or when it needs to be upscaled multiple times
for me spending 200 for a few more tb is cheaper then to upscale everything on the fly especially with multi user setups and people rewatching stuff, you also get a longer delay when seeking through a file to find a specific place

 

But i agree it is a feature request so nothing wrong with it, and these are just suggestions to help you out maybe or give new ideas

You realize the arc gpu when used is like 20watts.  The reason I added it.  I even removed the fans from it as it in a server with plenty of airflow.  It's not a CPU pulling 150 watts when hit hard

[MagicDoubleM 121]

Digged a bit in a similar thought and ended up playing with NVIDIAs superresolution tool from their Maxine (Video Effects) SDK. This is quite nice and runs on GPU in realtime. You can have this in MPC-HC with their own renderer too, but there it's for playback only. You can expect results like NVIDIAs upscaling on their Shield. Not in the league with properly configured Topaz AI or some Waifu-stuff, but a visible increase of quality in motion. Depends on source-material of course, but I have interesting results with DVD-material.

So yeah, this is something I'd like to see too. Having a beefy PC with proper GPU in the emby server and some clients that have a fast connection and 4k-capatibilites screams for doing something with low-quality/SD-content bevore delivering it to the client. Because why not?

A GPU-solution, leveraging NVIDIA's RTX Super Resolution would be great, but so far I haven't found an ffmpeg-patch that adds support for this.

[bandit8623 213]

https://blurbusters.com/crt-simulation-in-a-gpu-shader-looks-better-than-bfi/

 

this could also be added in theory.

[Sparker 43]

Nvidia Super resolution is available for GeForce RTX cards in the Nvidia control panel. I see it activates when I view Plex or Emby content in my Chrome browser, but it does not enable with the Plex or Emby Windows apps, which is sad, because the Windows apps have proper controls for my TOSLINK 2.0 setup, while the web apps don't (some kind of surround sound downmix to stereo)..

Edited April 15, 2025 by Sparker

[Luke 42077]

21 minutes ago, Sparker said:

Nvidia Super resolution is available for GeForce RTX cards in the Nvidia control panel. I see it activates when I view Plex or Emby content in my Chrome browser, but it does not enable with the Plex or Emby Windows apps, which is sad, because the Windows apps have proper controls for my TOSLINK 2.0 setup, while the web apps don't (some kind of surround sound downmix to stereo)..

Probably because the native app is direct playing without any transcoding, right?

[Sparker 43]

7 minutes ago, Luke said:

Probably because the native app is direct playing without any transcoding, right?

Yes

[mark19721964 13]

I've upscaled several of my series...I also add some grain... I only do this though if they are bad overly compressed from the DVD source... I can't imagine the server doing that....at least in 2025... I think it could lead to problems... but if you can enable or disable it... why not?