Can I Upscale video?

Late_Shift · 09-05-2022, 04:32 AM #1

My daughter wants me to AI upscale the video on Mario Sunshine like we have done with other games (not emulated).
The actual upscaling isn't an issue as I have access to several algorithms that will do the job nicely. As I understand it Dolphin emulator emulates the decoder that was already present in the game so theoretically if the game would support play back it would just be a format and size issue.

I don't see any mods that have done this and so I guess that it is either not easy or outright impossible as of now.
Never hurts to ask though.

To anyone that replies, thank you.

**mbc07** · 09-05-2022, 04:53 PM #2

Super Mario Sunshine uses THP for the video files, while you technically can make high resolution THPs, the decoder from the game will likely choke with anything higher than 640x480 AFAICT...

Late_Shift · 09-05-2022, 05:55 PM #3

(09-05-2022, 04:53 PM)mbc07 Wrote: Super Mario Sunshine uses THP for the video files, while you technically can make high resolution THPs, the decoder from the game will likely choke with anything higher than 640x480 AFAICT...

Well depending on the original resolution that could be quite a jump in quality. I was looking at the texture based replacement videos that the Resident Evil HD project was doing and that looks better but the implementation seems not so great. Only worked on a special fork at that.

**mbc07** · 09-06-2022, 06:46 AM #4

I took a quick look at the THPs from Super Mario Sunshine and resolution-wise they seem to be at the upper limit of what the console can output (640x448 for fullscreen videos and 640x320 for letterboxed ones). You might still be able to improve the quality, though, the individual frames has lots of compression artifacts...

Late_Shift · 09-06-2022, 07:06 AM #5

(09-06-2022, 06:46 AM)mbc07 Wrote: I took a quick look at the THPs from Super Mario Sunshine and resolution-wise they seem to be at the upper limit of what the console can output (640x448 for fullscreen videos and 640x320 for letterboxed ones). You might still be able to improve the quality, though, the individual frames has lots of compression artifacts...

So clean it up and down sample maybe attempt edge sharpening. That seems reasonable. Now can it be done and if it can how technical would it be? I find joy in figuring out how but jumping in the deep end before learning to swim isn't fun.

**mbc07** · 09-06-2022, 06:39 PM #6

AFAICT the video data from THP is derived from MJPEG, which essentially is a bunch of individual JPGs stitched together (one for each frame). So, in theory you could make high quality JPGs, as long as they don't exceed the maximum resolution the game is expecting. I think I've already seen a reverse-engineered THP encoder somewhere, with source code too, but I'm having trouble finding it now...