I like the Credits transitions effects
With permission from Akven I've ran all of his ESRGAN improved Thief Gold cutscenes through the DAIN app. It's a slow process, but it does a good job of interpolating frames to create a smoother video sequence.
Download link: https://www.mediafire.com/file/x51eh...othed.zip/file
File size: 3.96 GB
The best results are seen in the CS06, CS11, and Cs14 videos.
Here's a comparison against the original INTRO video vs. the ESRGAN & DAIN improved version.
YouTube videos were formatted to fit the 16:9 resolution, but the videos to download are in their standard 4:3 AVI format. I have personally tested all of them and verified they work in game without issue.
In-game example:
**INSTALLATION**
Backup original video files.
Copy and paste into MOVIES folder.
**Videos**
All are at 640x480 resolution and playback at 60 FPS.
B01-154 MB
B02-274 MB
B03-311 MB
B04-206 MB
B05-118 MB
B06-140 MB
B07-164 MB
B09-141 MB
B10-133 MB
B11-134 MB
B12-64 MB
B13-134 MB
B14-78.5 MB
B15-260 MB
B16-230 MB
B17-199 MB
B18-259 MB
CREDITS-136 MB
CS06-178 MB
CS11-222 MB
Cs14-196 MB
DEATH-4.89 MB
INTRO-310 MB
SUCCESS-5.23 MB
Link to a complete playlist: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?lis...4i5BA3ZStMmYtW
Last thing to point out, the CREDITS video is totally optional. It was originally a 1 FPS video since it just changes from one still frame to the other so processing it under DAIN would've been pointless. I decided to grab the frames and add some transition effects to the video then render it. If you don't like my choices, you can skip this video.
Thanks (credits)
Akven for his ESRGAN work to improve the quality of these videos.
Child of Karras and musictaffer for improving the audio.
Link to Akven's ESRGAN Thief Gold videos: https://www.ttlg.com/forums/showthread.php?t=149961
Working on T2 videos I've found there is a noticeable difference between using Akven's orignal version which improved the FPS from 15 to 30 using interframe vs. using DAIN. I may revisit these to improve the TG videos from scratch.
Last edited by Corsair; 23rd Jun 2020 at 02:04.
I like the Credits transitions effects
I will link this version to my post and PCgamingWiki, 60 fps looks smooth.
Still, it's just interesting for me if double DAINed version would be better than InterFrame2+DAIN like now, maybe on some test. But someone need to rerun one example movie through whole process of ESRGAN dejpeg+4x manga 109.
I haven't tried the ESRGAN process yet, but if someone can provide the raw files I would be willing to run it through DAIN a few times to see how it turns out.
Last edited by Corsair; 23rd Jun 2020 at 02:03.
I can provide some example (Intro or one of the cs cinematics), but in time.
I definitely need a second PC
One to proceed whole ESRGAN process and one to sit in the evening)) Because it can't be the same PC) Any application that use video acceleration (graphic editor, even browser) can stop ESRGAN. Or sometimes can't.
For now my PC is busy with cleaning one video and after that there are a lot of Deus Ex 2 videos to upscale. I completed only two (Thief Trailer and remade Thief Trailer from Thief 3 with better deinterlace)
Contrast settings have been slightly increased so black areas are truly black removing several artifacts in scenes. File size has been slightly reduced from 4.52 GB to 3.96 GB. Download link is unchanged.
*Note*
Viewing may be device dependent. I can clearly see a difference on my IPS monitor, but cannot with my OLED phone. I don't have a TN or VA panel to compare.
Last edited by Corsair; 23rd Jun 2020 at 02:03.
How did you changes the aspect ratio of the movies?) By cropping?
I converted them to 720p using Wondershare UniConverter. Any further upscaling was done with Adobe Premiere Pro.
Going to add a note here...
I'm being far more meticulous with the T2 videos so it's taking much longer to complete. I will likely redo the TG videos once I am done with T2 since my results are proving to be worth it IMO. Once done, I have a program that does a decent job of removing elements from videos without totally destroying the background image. I'm going to try that with the various TG & T2 cut scenes so FM makers will have a blank slate video to use if they would like. Will probably make those at 15, 30, and 60 FPS. Then I will move on to T3.
Last edited by Corsair; 23rd Jun 2020 at 02:02.
For T3 check the job already done (and in fieri) by Akven
IIRC his videos are 30 FPS, not 60 and improved with Interframe, which does a decent job, but not as good as DAIN.
Last edited by Corsair; 21st Jun 2020 at 01:49.
I didnt touch fps in Thief 3. Just upscaled
Thanks and great job with the conversions Akven and Corsair! Nonetheless I felt the 4.3GB total file size was a bit much for permanent storage, so I converted them via Handbrake to H.265 MKV very high quality (CQ RF:14) and back to mpeg4 AVI at max quality via ffmpeg (-c:v mpeg4 -q:v 1 -c:a copy). Resulting total file size is 1.1GB and is nearly indistinguishable in quality to my eyes.
Edit: Download 981MB zip
Here's B14.avi for easy comparison.
Last edited by LeatherMan; 14th Feb 2021 at 03:01.
Sure, I could do that. Ultimately the best quality and file size would be achieved with fewer encodes as each re-encode has the potential to introduce artifacts (eg, if Corsair were to do the initial encode in H.265 instead of H.264). That's why I chose such high quality encodes for this. It's too bad we can't use H.265 or VP9 MKVs in Thief instead of MPEG4 AVIs, because the resulting file size would be smaller than the original 320x240 15fps videos.