How I Remastered Legacy of the Void Opening Cinematic to 8K Dolby Vision
I've always loved watching all those epic game cinematic, but few of them are in Ultra High-Definition.
Luckily, as of 2022, it is possible to upscale a legacy video to 8K Dolby Vision HDR at home. All I need is a power horse computer and some modern video process software powered by AI.
Here's how I remastered the StarCraft II: Legacy of the Void Opening Cinematic to 8K Dolby Vision.
Grab the Source Video from YouTube
The cinematic I wish to upscale is in YouTube, it can be downloaded by youtube-dl.
But I used another tool that is based on youtube-dl to download the video for it's easier to use, which is yt-dlp.
Transcoding for Upscaling
The video I grabbed from YouTube is in Google's .webm format and encoded by the VP9 codec. The codec is advanced, it's just not so commonly used, so I had to convert it to h264 format.
After trying a few different video transcoding tools, I found HandBrake to be the best.
To preserve high quality during transcoding, I used the Production Max preset.
Upscale the Video to 8K
AI technologies has evolved beyond imagination as our computing power arises phenomenally these years, and computer vision happen to be the crown jewel of them.
Topazlab managed to train good machine learning models for upscaling numeral kinds of videos. So I bought their Video Enhance AI app to upscale the cinematic.
By using the Proteus - Fine Tune model, I got a shining remastered 8K video.
Dolby Vision HDR
HDR is the essential magic of Ultra High-Definition experience of today. Without it, you can't say you had the ultimate experience of watching an UHD video.
There are a variety of HDR standards in the industry, the best one is Dolby Vision.
Final Cut Pro from Apple provides an easy solution for grading Dolby Vision HDR. It can be finished in a few minutes:
- Create a
Wide Gamut HDRlibrary and aWide Gamut HDR - Rec. 2020 HLGproject. - Drag the upscaled video into the project.
- Add a
Color Wheelseffectto lighten the video inColor Inspector(at the right top of the app).
And it shall be done by now.