To understand the magnitude of the 2020 upscale, one must understand the limitations of the official releases. Deep Space Nine was filmed on 35mm film, which is capable of resolving detail well beyond 4K resolution. However, in the 1990s, the show was edited, had visual effects (VFX) added, and was mastered on videotape for broadcast.
: At the time, upscaling was incredibly resource-intensive, requiring at least a GTX 1070 GPU and taking up to 20 hours per episode to process. Visual Performance & Limitations star trek deep space 9 s01 ai upscale 4k 2020
Shot on 35mm film but edited on Standard Definition (SD) video tape (480i), DS9—alongside Voyager —was locked in a technological prison. When Paramount refused to fund a full HD remaster (citing the $20 million+ price tag and poor sales of the TNG Blu-rays), the future looked bleak. That is, until 2020, when a tech-savvy fan asked a radical question: What if we let Artificial Intelligence do the work? To understand the magnitude of the 2020 upscale,
In , consumer-grade AI software like Topaz Video Enhance AI reached a level of sophistication where "regular" fans could achieve results that rivaled professional studios. This led to a surge of fan-led projects specifically targeting Season 1 . The "2020 workflow" generally involved: : At the time, upscaling was incredibly resource-intensive,