Artificial intelligences are not only becoming more and more common in our everyday life, we can now even use them in a targeted manner. For example, for remastering beloved series delicacies that are not (yet) available in modern resolutions.
For Youtuber Billy Reichard, the various Star Trek series are apparently such a project out of passion: He repeatedly releases short 4K clips, most recently several from the adventures of the Voyager crew stranded in the Delta Quadrant around Captain Janeway, Commander Tuvok, the doctor and Co.
The results are quite remarkable – especially when you consider that neither professional, difficult to use programs nor particularly powerful hardware was used.
How does Star Trek in SD become Star Trek in 4K?
According to his own statements, Billy Reichard uses the freely available but fee-based Topaz Video Enhance AI and as source material episodes from Star Trek: Voyager and Star Trek: Deep Space 9 on DVD.
However, it is unclear whether these are versions in the NTSC (480p resolution) or European PAL standard (576p resolution), which is more common in the USA.
With an Intel Core i7 6700K including an Nvidia Geforce GTX 1080, the AI-supported upscale process requires Reichard 13 hours per 45 minute episode
How is the quality?
We compared the 4K clips from Star Trek: Voyager by Reichard with the respective scenes in the series on Netflix. We were actually able to determine a significantly higher quality, especially when it comes to the representation of the individual characters.
However, a meaningful comparison is difficult to make, because Netflix plays its videos only compressed – the same also applies to YouTube. In addition, Netflix reduced the transfer rate (bit rate) by 25 percent in the wake of the corona crisis.
more on the subject
According to Netflix & Youtube: Amazon Prime, Apple TV + and Disney + throttle transfer rate due to Corona
Consistently positive feedback
A thoroughly positive picture emerges in the comments. For example, user Latodar writes that the work looks really good and is "absolutely fantastic". Others, such as knightcrusader, want the community to work together to revise all episodes of Star Trek: Voyager.
What is the legal situation?? The rights to the Star Trek series are held by the US radio and television network CBS. If you have legal copies, for example in the form of DVD sets, this should not be a problem as long as you only show the consequences privately.
