As good as these ramasters may be, there's certainly an aspect that could use a bit more work and care: FMV sequences. From the rumors of them being re-rendered using the original project files, to the final product we've got, the results are a bit underwhelming.

But worry not: the set of upscaled and interpolated and aspect ratio corrected FMV videos I made for TombATI and Tomb1Main/TR1X, have been now converted to Theora/Vorbis to make them compatible with Tomb Raider 1 Remastered.

Main features:

• Upscaled to 1080p using AI upscaling methods, from the best version available, i.e. psx version, retaining as much detail from the original source material as possible.
• Framerate increased from 15 to 30 fps using AI interpolation methods.
• Aspect ratio corrected (more on that later).
• Original titles have been faithfully recreated in HD combining 6 different fonts, including a stencil font.
  

Let me copy-paste my notes from tombraiderforums:

There's already at least a couple of serious FMV upscaling projects that I know of. They've achieved pretty good results given the source material's resolution and framerate, but I always felt there were a few aspects that could be improved upon, such as:

• Extremely low detail, presence of halos and a bit over the top noise reduction.
• Picture a bit too punchy, contrasty and saturated for my taste.
• Aspect ratio (ah, the aspect ratio!). Source material is 320x208 (black margins on top and bottom included), which is roughly 4:2.6. Back then most TVs were still 4:3 so I assume the picture got a bit stretched vertically to fill the 4:3 frame and for this reason FMVs don't look as stretched on consoles. Be that as it may, I can't remember anyone addressing this issue... ever. So I had to do something about it. Here's a couple of examples that prove aspect ratio's wrong in case someone's raised a sceptical eyebrow (please don't mind color depth and banding. It's just the gif files):
  

Now, I'm well aware of the usual issues and artifacts caused by AI upscaling and frame interpolation. Even though I've worked hard to keep them to a minimum, a few of them still remain being their fixing beyond the amount of time I can devote to this matter at the moment, and/or beyond my technical knowledge and/or skill to fix them (E.G. Natla video stream on the laptop in the CAFE sequence, among others). Also, I've been very careful so as not to wipe out any remains of fine detail from the FMVs. The same applies to dynamic range. For this reason, I've kept noise reduction to a minimum and haven't fiddled with brightness, contrast, saturation etc. in any way to preserve as much picture information as possible. For the most part I think it works ok, with a few exceptions (E.G. the CANYON sequence may look a bit rough around the edges. I might just upscale it again with a little more aggresive noise reduction, and see if I can do something with some uncanny faces while I'm at it).

Text and fonts: I've combined 6 different fonts to recreate as faithfully as possible both titles from the CAFE sequence (LOS ALAMOS.../IMPERIAL HOTEL...). Every single letter has been meticulously and individually put into place and a tad of shadow added to mask as much of the original titles as possible. Fade in and out effects have also been carefully recreated to both keep them true to the originals and cover the original text. The result may not be perfect, but it's certainly the best I can do. In general, all the AI upscaling models I've tried are not particularly kind to any kind of texts. Magazine covers are no exception, so there's always some manual work to do after the upscaling to help it look better. Not perfect, though, but good enough:



Also, to preserve as much quality as possible up until the final stage of the process, I've worked with png sequences and wave files all the way through. Unlike other FMV upscaling projecys, audio quality remains intact in all the sequences.

Apart from all that, a big amount of Photoshop time has been dedicated to fix the warping artifacts introduced by the frame interpolation method:



Finally, a few video samples for you to feast your eyes on:






Enjoy!