All Credit goes to G0DSP33D_95, I will link the reddit post with all information.
Hello Everyone,
Thank you for being patient and waiting for me to complete this project. With countless hours behind the upscaling and encoding of this project I am happy to announce that stages One to Six are complete. In as high of a resolution as possible without degradation and loss of quality. Below is the fixes applied to each video file. I have started on the Battle and Extra Stages as well and will make a separate post about those.
Encoded from DarkDreams DVD rips
Please expect some level of loss in one or more areas as I am working with low res video for source.
Resolution: 1440p Preserving original aspect ratio without cropping.
Noise reduction: limited it to just enough to clear up the image and sharpen whatever was blurry with anti-alias and deblurring effects.
Deblocking: removed some blocking in frames especially the CGI race scenes
Compression repair: This is where the AI portion would essentially come in and estimate what is missing and what is just super compressed.
Framerate: I have kept the original framerate as to not take away from the immersion.
Both English and Japanese Audio and Subs are preserved (where applicable)
Output is now in MKV format and the file sizes are much smaller. Almost half of the first encode. Meaning subs and dual audio are coded in (where applicable).
Finally the output is H264 with the Highest preset.
[**EXAMPLE PHOTOS**]
[**First Stage Before**]
![first stage before](https://preview.redd.it/initial-d-complete-remaster-project-complete-v0-u9b17nt9gfod1.png?width=1080&crop=smart&auto=webp&s=a04d525e9ed5034a7247e57f503657eebdcfd843)
[**First Stage After**]
![first stage after](https://preview.redd.it/initial-d-complete-remaster-project-complete-v0-tgbd5iu9gfod1.png?width=1080&crop=smart&auto=webp&s=7482b71148c7d91910af1a3064e6e696ce3c546d)
[**Second Stage Before**]
![second stage before](https://preview.redd.it/initial-d-complete-remaster-project-complete-v0-avgvynt9gfod1.png?width=1080&crop=smart&auto=webp&s=f6fbb4e178628f59cdb8e3b414f8387a147eac94)
[**Second Stage After**]
![second stage after](https://preview.redd.it/initial-d-complete-remaster-project-complete-v0-ouyivnt9gfod1.png?width=1080&crop=smart&auto=webp&s=b853a64d661b1c1a2fc6c8dee712dfe72a987583)