good movies

[scarface]

Hey Scarface. I know you do some video editing and [I believe] use programs like handbrake. Is there any way to enlarge a video while limiting grainy pixelization to a minimum? I know this can be done with image files, but not sure about videos.

Some videos I have are almost the size of a postage stamp when put on a 4K screen.

Hi humbert,

In fact I used to do that, indeed. if you want to reencode a video, you have to know that re-encoding almost always results in some loss of quality. However, the loss can be barely noticeable if you use the right settings. I reencoded some videos using the x265 codec, to reduce the file size, since x265 can deliver similar visual quality to x264 at lower bitrates.  But enlarging  the video resolution is probably the worst thing you can do. Because your playback devices is probably much better at "upscaling" if needed. Likewise, increasing bitrates from a low bitrate source won't add any quality improvements, instead you're adding only more useless data which results in a larger file for no good reason.
Yet, if you still want to enlarge your video, you can load it in handbrake and then put the resolution limit and then check the "Allow upscaling" checkbox. In the example below I put a 720p video that could be re-encoded in 1080p.

[humbert]

Scarface - thanks for answering.

Logic dictates that video quality will be compromised if you try to enlarge it. The idea is to enlarge and mimimize degredation.

Basically you're using handbrake to enlarge and re-encoding to x265? Is this just to save space? Can degredation be minimized if you use x264 assuming space is available? Remember that with today's drives, space is no longer the problem it used to be.

[scarface]

Basically you're using handbrake to enlarge and re-encoding to x265? Is this just to save space? Can degredation be minimized if you use x264 assuming space is available? Remember that with today's drives, space is no longer the problem it used to be.

I never enlarged a video. However, I re-encoded some videos to save space.
x265 demonstrates superior compression performance compared to x264, with bitrate savings reaching up to 50% especially at the higher resolutions.
Therefore, with a 1080p video encoded in x264 at 3 or 4 Mbps, I re-encoded them in x265 at roughly 2,2 Mbps (vs 3 Mbps for the source video for example) or 2,5 Mbps (vs 3,5 Mbps or more for the source video). With the same resolution, the difference is not visually noticeable.




You can see the results with a few movies available on the forum - all these videos were previously in x264 and re-encoded in x265:
https://www.nomaher.com/forum/index.php?topic=1023.msg36076#msg36076
https://www.nomaher.com/forum/index.php?topic=1023.msg37855#msg37855
https://www.nomaher.com/forum/index.php?topic=1023.msg37813#msg37813
https://www.nomaher.com/forum/index.php?topic=1023.msg34359#msg34359