Promenade scenes and Cardassian architecture are notoriously dark. Standard AI models often mistake video noise and film grain for actual detail, resulting in a muddy, "plastic" look. Top-tier 2020 workflows required a denoising pass before the actual 4K upscale took place. 2. Interlacing Artifacts
A comparison of how (like later CGI-heavy seasons) handle the AI process.
Software often struggles to differentiate between artistic film grain and ugly tape hiss. Blending them incorrectly results in a muddy "waxy" look on characters' faces. What a 4K AI Upscale Looks Like star trek deep space 9 s01 ai upscale 4k 2020 top
: Frames were often exported as thousands of individual images, upscaled via neural networks, and reassembled using tools like VirtualDub The Hardware
This level of quality came with an immense computational cost. Using an Nvidia RTX 2080, the processing speed was roughly 95 frames per minute. One 45-minute episode of DS9 contains nearly 66,000 frames, translating to a staggering 10.5 hours of processing time per episode . Multiply that by the 176 episodes in the series, and you begin to understand why these fan projects are works of true dedication, with workstations running 24 hours a day for months on end. Blending them incorrectly results in a muddy "waxy"
For now, if you want to visit Quark's Bar or stand on the Promenade in all their 4K glory, the fan projects are the only way to get there. And thanks to the work done in 2020, the view has never been clearer.
: Artemis-LQ (Low Quality) was favored for early DS9 seasons because it effectively handles the heavy noise and low resolution of the 1993 source. Its serialized storytelling
Star Trek: Deep Space Nine remains a high-water mark for science fiction television. Its serialized storytelling, complex characters, and dark political themes were ahead of its time. However, viewing the series today can be a jarring experience. Unlike The Next Generation, which received a painstaking film-to-Blu-ray remaster, DS9 remains trapped in standard definition.
The following are the top community projects and developments from 2020 regarding 4K AI upscaling for Season 1:
Session expired
Please log in again. The login page will open in a new tab. After logging in you can close it and return to this page.