Nvidia's AI upscaling now works on web videos

[Daniel Sims]

Something to look forward to: The AI upscaling functionality in Nvidia's RTX graphics cards is typically used to improve gaming image quality and performance. However, the company plans to bring AI-assisted upscaling to web videos next month for users with Ampere and Ada Lovelace graphics cards.

Nvidia announced that starting in February, PCs with RTX 40 series or 30 series GPUs will upscale 1080p videos to 4K in the Google Chrome and Microsoft Edge browsers. It's unclear why it won't work on RTX 20 series GPUs, which have DLSS functionality similar to the 30 series.

The company also didn't explain why these limitations are in place, but the system is presumably in its early stages and could improve over time. Hopefully, Nvidia doesn't take long to bring the feature to Firefox.

As part of its "Nvidia Studio" announcements at CES 2023, Nvidia unveiled a short video demonstrating RTX Video Super Resolution. The clip compares 1080p Apex Legends gameplay with the footage upscaled to 4K. A zoomed-in shot shows that the upscale effect smoothens blocky artifacts on near and far objects.

The demonstration doesn't show much movement, and the motion is slow, so it's unclear how Video Super Resolution will handle fast-moving footage or shot transitions. Nvidia also only presented an upscale from 1080p to 4K.

The company's well-known DLSS feature upscales games from and to a broader range of resolutions through its quality, performance, and ultra-performance modes. Focusing first on upscaling from 1080p makes sense, as it's likely the most common web video resolution. Hopefully, Nvidia will eventually try to add upscaling from 720p. The results might not look as good, but there's enough 720p content on the web to warrant testing.

The Apex Legends demo implies that Nvidia primarily expects viewers to use Video Super Resolution to watch 1080p gaming streams in 4K. However, the company said the feature works on any video. The clip shows a YouTube browser window, but Video Super Resolution could also work on other sites.

Every prominent streaming service except Netflix and YouTube restricts PC users to 1080p, so Nvidia's new feature could be a solid workaround if it functions on sites like Amazon Prime Video or Hulu. The company didn't indicate whether users could someday apply Video Super Resolution to videos stored on their computers.

Permalink to story.

https://www.techspot.com/news/97151-nvidia-ai-upscaling-now-works-web-videos.html

 

[yRaz]

I don't see this being all that useful, might be nice for pepple with data caps but if you can afford a 30 or 40 series card you probably aren't too worried about that.

Also, this is a browser extension, how useful will this be on a desktop computer watching things on a monitor? On top of all that, my Samsung Q90b already has great upscaling so it's not like building an HTPC just to upscale content is worth it.

I guess its a nice feature to have I just don't think it'll be all that useful

 

[bandit8623]

Pretty sad they lock it to 3000 and higher. gotta sell sell sell

the 2000 seriews has plenty of power to this same feature. nvidia broadcast uses some of the same features and the 1000 series can do that.

 

[Eldritch]

Cute. Now please tell me how much data cost you saved me and how much the electricity bill you increased.
Great for those old videos though.

 

[Watzupken]

I get super sharp video quality watching them on my tablet or mobile phone anywhere, with proper display that can do HDR very well, there is little reason to sit in front of a big monitor (mostly with fake or no HDR), to watch an upscaled video. If one needs a big screen, might as well watch it on a proper TV which can also run 4K video natively. The feature is nice to have, but the use case is fairly weak.

 

[Watzupken]

Pretty sad they lock it to 3000 and higher. gotta sell sell sell

the 2000 seriews has plenty of power to this same feature. nvidia broadcast uses some of the same features and the 1000 series can do that.

This is not new. Nvidia rarely delivers any new features to their "outdated" GPUs. Everything "requires" some sort of dedicated hardware. It may truly be for this case, but regardless, this is their usual practice.

 

[nnguy2]

So this is only for streamed gaming contents and not general videos?

Article mentioned Netflix up converting in the future but that seems tk be a wish list.


Also you CAN stream 4k from Netflix on pc. Need chromium based browser and 4k monitor and MS codecs.

 

[punctualturn]

This is not new. Nvidia rarely delivers any new features to their "outdated" GPUs. Everything "requires" some sort of dedicated hardware. It may truly be for this case, but regardless, this is their usual practice.

Yet, thats never mentioned as a big con/reason to avoid when the influencers review them and instead keep pushing dlss and all their proprietary cr@p down our throats every single day.

Until AMD stop providing their tech as open source, I will keep giving them money.

 

[neeyik]

It's unclear why it won't work on RTX 20 series GPUs, which have DLSS functionality similar to the 30 series.

Nvidia have said support for the 20 series will come later. The 30 and 40 series have Optical Field Accelerators, which the upscaling will certainly be using, so there’s probably still a lot of work to do in making it perform well enough without an OFA.

 

[poltevo]

The benchmark for this sort of upscaling is offline (see Topaz, for instance). Its pretty incredible that this feature will be available for streaming video. This significantly increases the utility.

I completely agree that the most interesting usecase is upscaling 720p videos. There are also potential image quality benefits from downscaling or downsampling the resultant 4K videos back to 1080p or 1440p. That way even those of us with low resolution monitors could benefit from a cleaner image.

Another usecase is 360/180 videos, which are notoriously low quality. Upscaling these from 4K or lower to 4K+ could be very useful.

 

[digibluez]

Yet, thats never mentioned as a big con/reason to avoid when the influencers review them and instead keep pushing dlss and all their proprietary cr@p down our throats every single day.

Until AMD stop providing their tech as open source, I will keep giving them money.

RTX portal /witcher gough gough, nvidia is smelling like epic scumbags, I love my new 7900 xtx

 

[poltevo]

So this is only for streamed gaming contents and not general videos?

Article mentioned Netflix up converting in the future but that seems tk be a wish list.


Also you CAN stream 4k from Netflix on pc. Need chromium based browser and 4k monitor and MS codecs.

Looks like any browser-based video stream is potentially open to this.

Sure, if you already have a 4k stream its not much use, but there is tons of content which is 1080p and below.

 

[Lounds]

RTX portal /witcher gough gough, nvidia is smelling like epic scumbags, I love my new 7900 xtx

I can't believe CDPR have made The Witcher 3 run like **** just so Nvidia can sell more cards. The fact you can't play the open world fine on a 3080 even at 1080p says it's all about pushing that DLSS3 crap. There's plenty of RT games I've played on my 3060ti that run fine and look great, so it's literally down to the Devs being pushed into adding more RT calculations than the older hardware can cope with.

 

[jezwinni]

It says in the article that this isn't for playing local video, but couldn't you just copy the path into chrome and play local video that way?

 

[letsgoiowa]

I don't see this being all that useful, might be nice for pepple with data caps but if you can afford a 30 or 40 series card you probably aren't too worried about that.

Also, this is a browser extension, how useful will this be on a desktop computer watching things on a monitor? On top of all that, my Samsung Q90b already has great upscaling so it's not like building an HTPC just to upscale content is worth it.

I guess its a nice feature to have I just don't think it'll be all that useful

You don't think upscaling the tremendous majority of video content on the internet is useful?

 

[letsgoiowa]

Pretty sad they lock it to 3000 and higher. gotta sell sell sell

the 2000 seriews has plenty of power to this same feature. nvidia broadcast uses some of the same features and the 1000 series can do that.

It's not locked to 3000 series only. Turing support is coming later.

 

[punctualturn]

I can't believe CDPR have made The Witcher 3 run like **** just so Nvidia can sell more cards. The fact you can't play the open world fine on a 3080 even at 1080p says it's all about pushing that DLSS3 crap. There's plenty of RT games I've played on my 3060ti that run fine and look great, so it's literally down to the Devs being pushed into adding more RT calculations than the older hardware can cope with.

Does not surprises me, to be honest.

Reminds me of this:

AMD says Nvidia’s GameWorks “completely sabotaged” Witcher 3 performance

There are plenty of performance issues in The Witcher 3, but who's to blame?

arstechnica.com

 

[bandit8623]

It's not locked to 3000 series only. Turing support is coming later.

Good to know

 

[poltevo]

It says in the article that this isn't for playing local video, but couldn't you just copy the path into chrome and play local video that way?

Worth a try. If Chrome can't do it natively, then there might be an extension for it.

 

[IksPiks]

This is not new. Nvidia rarely delivers any new features to their "outdated" GPUs. Everything "requires" some sort of dedicated hardware. It may truly be for this case, but regardless, this is their usual practice.

Would be nice to get "cracked" drivers then.

 

[AmigaInside]

Upscaling has always been frowned upon in video (crap in=>crap out), I don't really understand why this is touted so much, in games too. Are Nvidia's algorithms really THAT good? Can they really convert a VHS rip to 8K glory?

I doubt it, since even meticulously prepared restorations for Blu-Ray/UHD release often disappoint, due to excessive or miscalculated use of various noise reduction and "AI upscale" tricks. I wonder how on-the-fly AI can do better.