so where's all the Topaz Video Enhance AI discussion?

[TubeBar]

I would find it hard to believe that I know about something the rest of the world doesn't know...

A month ago I read this about Topaz Video Enhance AI:
https://www.extremetech.com/extreme/314653-remastering-deep-space-nine

I found it on usenet and began testing on my little NUC Win10 box (I hate 10, I use XP for most things). Immediately I could see even at 6 sec/frame it was creating detail like magic.

A week later I spent $200 and bought the program, plus $200 for Windows 10 Pro Retail and another $800 in hardware to build a minimal gaming machine (I don't game), to give it the GPU it needed (about 10 times faster than CPU). I wanted to get the RTX 3080 but it seems mostly unavailable at this point so I settled for a GTX 1080 Ti.

After 3 weeks of testing, I created a better version of one of my most favorite movies ever, originally released at 480i letterboxed with a poor film to DVD transfer that appears to have had no digital cleaning.

I used all the tricks I know: IVTC, QTGMC and got it to 706x346p before I fed it to Topaz VEAI. I outputed it as .tiff images and fixed 949 frames with Photoshop. Most of the dirt and hair is now gone. The final version is an honest 1116x576p. I tried 720p, but it didn't look good. Still, the increase in detail is impressive. Like the DS9 article, I also saw the best results with the Gaia-CG model. If you search hard enough, you'll find the movie. I don't think I can post a link here (without getting banned).

I'm currently testing it on some live concert video, proshot and high bitrate 1280x720p, that I think I can get to 1920x1080p around 27Mbps with added visible detail without anyone knowing it was originally released as 720p. That's 150% more detail folks.

I just took at look at the lastest test- a noisy but detailed 1280x720p 50FPS video converted to 1920x1080p 50FPS with no noise and even more detail. I'm testing 3 minutes for each run. This one had settings:
run5 Theia-Detail: EU,P 100,100,30 150% 1920x1080

That's max sharpen, max restore detail, 30% reduce noise and looks awesome! I'm going to set it to do the full gig with these settings, about 90 minutes of video.

I had a theory that setting Topaz to upscale higher than the final resolution (later downscaled) might produce better results. After about 20 tests, I can say that is false. It only increases the upscaling time and size of your output.

For best results, set Topaz to scale to the desired resolution, but have it output to .tiff so you can tweak your x264 options. I wish they had a Lagarith output option, as it would allow the use of more encoders. With .tiffs, I only know of Virtualdub2 to handle those and the included x264 can be a bit tricky to use.

Topaz does work with Lagarith progressive input. Forget about using Huffyuv for input. It always thinks it's interlaced, even when it's progressive.

Now why am I one of the few using this software?

I tried the demo was slow as hell. The only upscales I ave seen that do a decent job (mainly used by studios and TV stations) are Black Magic Teranex which are hardware based. You get what you pay for. https://www.blackmagicdesign.com/products/teranex

[Alwyn]

I tried the demo was slow as hell.

So is every other program that does a lot of work on your video. depends entirely on your machine. Try QTGMC, try Neat Video. This is a 2023 product designed for 2023 computers.

[TubeBar]

My best PC is a 2019 iMac intel i9, granted it's not top of the line these days but it moves slowwww. Wouldn't the hardware based ones like Teranex be faster?

Personally I have never gotten any better results than what my TV or AppleTV 4K do on the fly. I have seen some amazing AI upscales I have no idea how they did, like this one on ARchive.org of a PD superman: https://archive.org/details/Superman4K

[taigi]

So, new add with new Topaz things on its menu.
Visible in a PNG attached.
Your opinion?

[rgr]

Stabilization? I tested and stay with Deshaker.

[TubeBar]

So, new add with new Topaz things on its menu.
Visible in a PNG attached.
Your opinion?

Not seeing anything there that FCP/Motion or Premier Pro/After Effects can't do. Adding FAKE frames which look like garage if you actually take time to look at them or slow motion, which to be properly done is shot at 60fps (or higher) and played at 24fps. Kind of looks to me like you get a cheap software for production effects. $300 is not exactly expensive when it comes to this stuff.

Eh seems pretty standard to me. I'd have to see videos w/ this on YouTube showing how great it is compared to expensive software.