In 2020 and 2021, the demand surged as global lockdowns sent Trekkies back to their backlogs. Communities on Reddit and dedicated Star Trek forums became hubs for comparing different "builds" of the upscales. Some fans preferred a "softer" look that preserved film grain; others sought a "clean" look that scrubbed the grain to resemble a modern digital production.
Inverse Telecine (IVTC) and De-interlacingBefore AI can process the video, the footage must be converted from 29.97 frames per second interlaced video back to its native 23.976 frames per second progressive film rate. Getting this wrong results in ghosting and stuttering.
Watch the Season 1 finale, "In the Hands of the Prophets." The scene where Winn confronts Sisko in his office. On the DVD, the shadows are a mess. On the , you see the sweat on Avery Brooks’s brow, the individual fibers of his uniform, and the dust motes in the Bajoran light. The emotional intensity doubles.
This was the most hardware-intensive step. In 2020 and 2021, upscaling a single 45-minute episode of DS9 from 480p to 1080p could take anywhere from 4 to 12 hours, depending on the creator's graphics card (typically Nvidia RTX 2080 or 3080 series GPUs). The software analyzed the video frame-by-frame, applying temporal consistency to ensure that details didn't flicker from one frame to the next. Analyzing the Results of the Season 1 Upscale star trek deep space 9 s01 ai upscale 1080p 2020 2021
The intricate details of Cardassian necks, the subtle ridges on Kira Nerys’ Bajoran nose, and the complex skin textures of Quark and the Ferengi are brought into sharp focus.
While Star Trek: The Next Generation received a glorious high-definition remaster from the original film, its successor, Deep Space 9 (DS9), remains trapped in the standard definition (SD) era of the 1990s. Between , a dedicated community of fans and tech enthusiasts leveraged rapidly advancing artificial intelligence to bridge this gap, creating unofficial 1080p versions of the series, starting with Season 1. The AI Upscaling Movement
For the most advanced projects, a final pass of post-processing was applied in professional-grade software like DaVinci Resolve. This stage could include color grading to correct the often-dull DVD color space, adding a subtle layer of 35mm film grain emulation to give the AI-upscaled image a more organic and cinematic look, and final compression to a high-bitrate h.264 or h.265 MKV file. In 2020 and 2021, the demand surged as
Released in September 2020, this version was upscaled to 4K before being compressed back to 1080p+ in x265 to preserve detail. It is known for its larger file sizes (roughly 26 GB per season) and inclusion of 5.1 audio. JoyBell & UTRCorp:
Season 1 is widely considered the most difficult to upscale because the early seasons were produced with lower-quality composite-to-component conversions than later seasons. Common issues reported in 2020–2021 upscales included:
While Star Trek: The Next Generation received a magnificent, multi-million dollar official film restoration, Paramount left Deep Space Nine (DS9) in the standard-definition (SD) dark. The studio cited exorbitant costs and complex practicalities. On the DVD, the shadows are a mess
This 2020-2021 upscale is currently the best way to experience the first season of Deep Space Nine on a modern 1080p screen. It respects the cinematography (the shadowy, noir-ish lighting of the station) while scrubbing away the digital haze of the 90s.
DS9 is inherently darker, both tonally and visually, than TNG. On modern high-resolution screens, the DVD releases appear washed out, murky, and riddled with compression artifacts.
This project was created by fans for educational/archival purposes. No copyright infringement intended. Star Trek: Deep Space Nine is the property of CBS/Paramount.
