[Release] Thief 2 ESRGAN Refiltered/Upscaled Video Pack

[Akven]

Wait for second release from me, will fix some audio issues

Ok, guys. I finally made ESRGAN pack for Thief 2 videos.
There are two variants - SD and HD. SD is for internal ingame using due to the fact that NewDark engine for now does not support resolution higher than 640x480. HD is for external viewing.

Original movies were converted to frame by frame pictures. Filtered using ESRGAN jpeg artifact remover model (there were a lot of compression artifacts in original videos). When upscaled 4x using ESRGAN manga109 model from 640x480 to 2560x1920.
After that downscaled to 1440x1080, filtered a little for better compression and noise filtering, fps was interpolated from 15fps to 30fps using InterFrame2 Avisynth plugin.
After that 1440x1080 resolution was used for HD version. And downscaled to 640x480 filtered images for SD version.
Videos are in original AVI container, video is x264 codec, audio is VBR MP3.

Also I filtered whose interlace artifacts from original vanilla Thief 2 videos (especially in B16, CS10, CS15, INTRO). For CREDITS german soundtrack was added cause original video was with no sound.
Example of vanilla artifacts
https://imgur.com/a/xK3h9nf

SD version for ingame usage. You can compare original and filtered versions in two separate Media Player Classic. Mine is much smoother and cleaner. Old refiltered videos I made before now obsolete.
https://cloud.mail.ru/public/29LX/5LeHwf7qM

HD version
https://cloud.mail.ru/public/5B7M/5GHHRzJSx

SUCCESS and DEATH videos were taken from Thief Gold ESRGAN Video Pack cause vanilla game itself using 320x240 videos from Thief Gold.

P.S. If you have trouble downloading I will reupload files to another cloud. Just don't now which one. My MEGA is full((
P.P.S. I will upload HD version to youtube later.

I'm working on Thief 2 ESRGAN Texture Pack now. Completed vanilla obj and mesh textures and about 1/5 of fam textures. Which packfix is better for Thief 2, T2Fix or TafferPatcher?

[Yandros]

Great work on this! Thanks for all your efforts.

Definitely use T2Fix, Tafferpatcher is outdated.

[Akven]

As always, found bug in SD INTRO video. Will reupload tomorrow.

[Hitokiri-san]

Looks great, but the I've noticed that the audio is kinda distorted (a good example is at the 00:46 mark in "CS05"). Anyway you could fix that?

[Mat99]

Looks great, but the I've noticed that the audio is kinda distorted (a good example is at the 00:46 mark in "CS05"). Anyway you could fix that?

They are all broken... The funniest are B01 and B14 :)
And why all of them are 44.1 is the greatest mystery. Something went extremely wrong during PCM to MP3 conversion.

[Akven]

Ok, will look into it. One of the problem is that sound sometimes longer than video in original files. It's not an issue in vanilla, but nowadays muxing software cuts out this additional audio. So I had to stretch audio a little. Will look into another ways of fixing this, however it takes time. Had to insert black frames to the end of the videos with recompression of the video.

[Akven]

B01, B02, B04, B08, B09, B10, B11, B13, B14, B15 had this issue with mismatched (audio is longer) length of video and audio in vanilla.
Will try to fix
The problem is: it's x264 in AVI container, so I can't edit it without reconverting the whole video. If I want to reconvert the whole video with adding black frames to the end, I need to reconvert lossless filtered images, not already compressed files. Filtered images were too big (about 2-4 Gb for one video), so I deleted them. So I need now to refilter the whole process again with ESRGAN. It's about one to two days of non-stop computer working.

[Akven]

BTW, can anyone remaster soundtrack for videos like Child of Karras did for Thief Gold? I can provide original PCM files.

[Mat99]

The problem is: it's x264 in AVI container, so I can't edit it without reconverting the whole video. If I want to reconvert the whole video with adding black frames to the end, I need to reconvert lossless filtered images, not already compressed files. Filtered images were too big (about 2-4 Gb for one video), so I deleted them.

I'm pretty sure it is possible without touching the source Bx's materials. Just create a separate black-frames AVIs (the same res and FPS as Your Thief's versions + the right number of frames per adequate Bx). Then use "add" option in AVIDEMUX to add the blackness at the end and save it by set the "copy" (not encoding) in 'Output Source' field. After 1-2 seconds You will have the output file. You can add the audio in the same (copy) way.

BTW, can anyone remaster soundtrack for videos like Child of Karras did for Thief Gold? I can provide original PCM files.

The originals are broken already (in many ways), but at least that terrible static noise could be... hmm... "repaired" a little to not be annoying. I'll try to not break them TOO much by extremely delicate and slightly cutting off the highest freqs. (as they are also part of the audio).

We'll see the results and decide if its worth, because maybe the originals should stay.
Drop me all PCMs as a package-file here:

[the link has been removed - got the package]

[Akven]

Uploaded to your dropbox original PCMs plus MP3 from German CREDITS.
I was trying to do something in iZotope RX, but I lack knowledge on sound.
Everything I could say is that spectrum is restricted to 11 kHz due to 22050 quality. And there is clipping in several files.
I may be mistaken, but I thing there was some trouble with 22050 and sound cards as they output sound in either 44100 or 48000 and will use linear interpolation for 22050. Or maybe with Creative - can't say for sure.

I will try to add black frames to the end of files. I doubt VirtualDubMod will do it, but I never tried Avidemux. VirtualDubMod cannot do anything to x264 stream it even does not listed in stream list.

[Akven]

Any news on filtering audio?

[Mat99]

Any news on filtering audio?

I'm still "crashed" by Mr. Time, but things go better now, so maybe to the end of the week I'll send You something :)
Stand by...

[musictaffer]

I started work on audio. I managed to qualitatively remove the noise and also recreate high frequencies using the pitch shift and distortion.

Comparison with the original: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W_r79CvJJ2w

[Mat99]

I started work on audio. I managed to qualitatively remove the noise and also recreate high frequencies using the pitch shift and distortion.

Great work and better than mine, so looks like I will have more free time ;)
my worse/poorer version: https://www.dropbox.com/s/lmi9bdigl14h8kh/B01.wav

I didn't touch the high freqs (I mean recreation) as I wanted to stay as much from the original as possible, but Your version shows/proves that there is nothing to worry about. Keep going, as You do it well!

[Akven]

I will wait for musictaffer/itaffer version if he is better)

[Hitokiri-san]

Any updates?

[Akven]

musictaffer said to me he completed about 2/3 of the audio.