Reuse

Extension (predicate logic)

Engineering

Pure mathematics

Exploit

Computer security

Theoretical computer science

Dimension (graph theory)

Data mining

Computer science

Distributed computing

Waste management

Computer architecture

Mathematics

Pipeline (software)

Image (mathematics)

Computer engineering

Upsampling

Artificial intelligence

Software engineering

Programming language

Extensibility

Video super-resolution (VSR) approaches tend to have more components than the image counterparts as they need to exploit the additional temporal dimension. Complex designs are not uncommon. In this study, we wish to untangle the knots and reconsider some most essential components for VSR guided by four basic functionalities, i.e., Propagation, Alignment, Aggregation, and Upsampling. By reusing some existing components added with minimal redesigns, we show a succinct pipeline, BasicVSR, that achieves appealing improvements in terms of speed and restoration quality in comparison to many state-of-the-art algorithms. We conduct systematic analysis to explain how such gain can be obtained and discuss the pitfalls. We further show the extensibility of BasicVSR by presenting an information-refill mechanism and a coupled propagation scheme to facilitate information aggregation. The BasicVSR and its extension, IconVSR, can serve as strong baselines for future VSR approaches.

BasicVSR: The Search for Essential Components in Video Super-Resolution and Beyond