YUV Super Resolution

Short Description

Download:

• Booklet, PDF (877 KB)
• Video for managers (short), WMV (7.92 MB)
  
• Video for developers (with technical details), WMV (7.98 MB)
  
• Demo application

Usually, video resolution is increased by using static image resizing methods. Such static upscaling methods work reasonably well, but for moving pictures it is possible to noticeably increase the quality of upscaled video by using information from neighboring frames. A number of these so-called super-resolution (or SuperResolution) methods are known, but their main weakness is extremely high complexity and, therefore, dramatically lower processing speed.

We have developed the YUV Super Resolution technology to provide competitive-quality video at a much faster speed, thus making the technology suitable for practical use. YUV Super Resolution uses a high-quality static image upscaling algorithm and high-resolution image refinement based on information from neighboring frames.

Examples of work

Original frame 222 from "Flower" sequence
Bicubic resampling	YUV Super Resolution

Original frame 163 from "Stefan" sequence
Bicubic resampling	YUV Super Resolution

Results of processing a frame from "Stefan" sequence with artificially added noise:
YUV Super Resolution without noise detection	YUV Super Resolution for noisy video

Objective results

The table below shows the comparison with a common upscaling method using the PSNR metric and standard video sequences (high-resolution video is compared against known original). Results pertain to the latest version and better than those presented in the demo video.

Video	Y-PSNR, dB
	Bicubic	YUV Super Resolution	Improvement over bicubic
Akiyo	34.2	35.9	+1.7
Crew	34.2	36.8	+2.6
Flower	22.1	24.9	+2.8
Foreman	30.2	32.8	+2.6
Mobile	22.3	23.9	+1.6
News	29.0	30.8	+1.8
Stefan	25.8	29.4	+3.6

Primary Applications

• Video transcoding including high-quality standard definition to high definition (SD-HD) conversion
• Flat-panel LCD and plasma displays
• Restoration of video

Key Features

• Maximum-quality multiframe super resolution with video upscaling by any power of 2 (other scaling factors are also possible, but they result in lower-quality video)
• Relatively fast processing, thus making the algorithm practical (the speed of a reference implementation in C is about 1.5 fps for a 704x352 to 1408x704 conversion on a Pentium 4 3.0 GHz computer)
• Adjustable speed/quality trade-off
• Fully consecutive processing available without the need to use future frames
• Special algorithm for noisy video upscaling
• Only integer arithmetic
• Fully automatic

Basic Deliverables

• Source code for a reference implementation in C
• C and assembly language source code for an implementation optimized for the PC (if required)
• C++ and assembly language source code for an implementation optimized for the PC (if required)
• Algorithm description
• Software description
• Verification instructions

Contact Information

For information on licensing, please contact our .