Handbrake: Upscaling should be available (and here's why)

[gordielachance]

Hi, I've been struggling for several hours with handbrake because the GUI does not allow upscaling.

The HandBrake GUI’s do not allow upscaling. Most of the time this is a bad idea as it reduces (not increases) the quality of your source file along with increasing the final file size. This is less than ideal. Most of the time, letting the playback device or software upscale to your screen size is much better. You don’t gain anything by upscaling with HandBrake.
https://handbrake.fr/docs/en/latest/advanced/resizing-video.html

I had to convert 1440x1080 videos (PAR = 1.33) to 1920x1080 (PAR = 1).
In the dimensions tab, when I change the width (default = 1440) to 1920, it resets to 1440.
In this case, for example, it's not upscaling and the behaviour of Handbrake breaks.

You should support upscaling. I think that it's not to the GUI to tell the users how to use the software.

In the very rare cases that this is needed, it can be done with the command line interface with the –width and –height options. Typically you would only use this if the software or hardware you’re using has a problematic or broken scaler.

Ok, but I use Handbrakes because it has a GUI. I was in a rush for an important client (24 files to transcode) and had absolutely no time to learn the command lines.

Please allow upscaling. At least there could be an expert option to check or something.

I've finally been saved using Vidcoder. The greatest irony is that it uses Handbrakes...

https://github.com/HandBrake/HandBrake/issues/405

[bradleysepos]

We have plans to add this to the GUI, but other features need to land first.

[andrewk8]

Is this a misunderstanding about how settings affect encoding and playback?

For your specific example (in 1.1.2), change Anamorphic to Custom. Un-check Keep Aspect Ratio. Change Display Width to 1920. What should happen is the video is encoded at the original resolution 1440x1080, but during playback the playback device should scale the width to 1920.

I don't have a sample video at that resolution, but I've used this technique on 640x480 and 720x480 to display at 853x480. Video is encoded at the original resolution but displayed "correctly" during playback.

[Anton1699]

I don't know whether this is related or whether I should open a seperate issue, but I'd like to have some sort of drop-down menu to pick what kind of up-/downscaler to use. (bilinear, bicubic, lanczos, mitchell, etc.)

[bradleysepos]

I'd like to have some sort of drop-down menu to pick what kind of up-/downscaler to use. (bilinear, bicubic, lanczos, mitchell, etc.)

This is planned for when we overhaul the dimensions UI.

[Anton1699]

That's great to hear!

[Xuchilbara]

I've been wanting this since I started using HandBrake, many years ago.

I understand why they didn't want to put this feature at first, but some users really know what we're doing and something so simple as upscaling should be allowed.

Just need to use a good algorithm like Lanczos, that's all.

[passat1]

This should be possible because some professionals are preparing recorded scenes from different sources for later production with another programs (Like Adobe Premiere, ...). For those programs is best (and are working much faster) if they have all sources in same resolution and framerate. Some older professional cameras are recording 1920x1080 in real 1440x1080 with DAR 16:9. These materials will be anyway resized by final program in 1920x1080 with PAR 1:1, but that will be much slower.
HB would be great solution for that if user would be free to set output resolution and AR at will.
If it is possible with command line interface, then there is no reason it could not be done with GUI.
Tnaks @gordielachance for pointing to Vidcoder as solution for this.

[Xuchilbara]

So, any news about this?
I'm tired of being so limited when trying to make a square pixels out of anamorphic without losing data (better upscaling than downscaling in this case!), or anything at all...
I really like HandBrake, but this one problem is annoying me since the beginning of times...

[sr55]

Nope. It's not something that's been worked on yet I'm afraid.

[Xuchilbara]

Well, as already said is a pretty basic, useful and needed feature. Without it the software is basically actually crippled. There are many reasons for the need of upscaling, and besides, as someone pointed, it's not the job of the app to tell users how to convert their videos...

I hope it will someday, but I think it's about time already. ;)

Thanks for the reply.

[akidee]

Without this feature the HandBrake version should not be >= 1.*

[Xuchilbara]

Without this feature the HandBrake version should not be >= 1.*

Exactly, it's far for “complete”...

[sr55]

Conversation locked to contributors only. This line of commentary is not helpful or correct.

[sr55]

Please see #2437 for tracking the dimension tab re-design.