Silent Hill 2 - Opening FMV (Upscaled via Proteus AI Model)

The opening FMV for Silent Hill 2 was obtained by extracting the video data from “The Art of Silent Hill“ DVD, as this source is the best known quality available for this video. From this DVD, the video is saved as 480i (720x480 interlaced). Within the canvas of 720x480, the video’s aspect ratio is 16:9, centered within letterboxing. The video was deinterlaced (through a “blend“ deinterlacer) then losslessy converted to a PNG image sequence for upscale work. For upscale work, the letterboxing around the video was removed and then upscaled ~267% to a resolution of 1920x1080 (16:9). The upscaling software used was Topaz Labs’ Video Enhance AI using the Proteus AI model. The intent of this upscale project was to conservatively restore some levels of detail and clarity to the video without overly sharpening it which would result in edge haloing; a “stereotypical“ byproduct of many upscaling efforts. Because of this, even after being upscaled, the video is still relatively “soft“ in appearance, which is suitable as the original video is inherently “soft“ by its very nature. As to be expected, though, certain scenes throughout the video lend themselves better to upscaling efforts than others. It all depends on how much detail was there to begin with for the upscaler to work from. But I consider this upscaling effort an overall success as the Proteus AI model was able to restore varying levels of detail and clarity in areas throughout the video that weren’t readily seen in the native file, without going “overboard“ through typical aggressive upscaling efforts. This video will be included in a future update to the FMV Enhancement Pack for Silent Hill 2: Enhanced Edition, which is a project aimed to improve the experience of Silent Hill 2 PC. The PlayStation 2 version of Silent Hill 2 disables the in-game noise filter whenever FMVs play. To compensate for this, the FMVs have a baked-in noise effect. (This also means that if you play the PS2 version with the noise filter disabled you’ll still see noise in the FMVs.) The PC version of Silent Hill 2 renders the in-game noise filter on top of FMVs, however. As such, the baked-in noise for the FMVs was removed during the upscale process to allow the in-game noise filter to render on top of the videos without competing against any embedded noise. Another benefit of removing the embedded noise is that the size/speed/pattern of the noise grain will stay consistent between gameplay and FMVs, since the PC version overlays the in-game noise filter on top of FMVs. The working files for this video were kept in lossless quality up until having to render the video in a WebM codec for upload to YouTube. YouTube then adds its own layer of compression (or “bitcrush“). Over time, if enough people view this video that YouTube deems it “popular,“ YouTube will change the codec and bitrate this video is using to one that produces slightly better results.