Paid video 'restoration' software rant

[rrats]

Recent years saw a rise of paid software meant for video restoring. I am not talking about professional software (like ones made for manual film restoration). Instead, I am talking about automated consumer programs.

First one that drew a lot of attention to me was Topaz's super resolution app. VEAI is nothing more than a program that bundled denoiser, deblocker and ML platform together. And they are taking 200£ for it. Simpleness of the UI and it's sensational naming made a whole audience of idiots putting crappy YouTube videos in it, and expecting them to suddenly be 4k.The software is not even good for stuff like anime because it has been trained on real life kind of rubbish. Imo it only gives ok results when super resolutioning iPhone 3gs footage

Edit: or good looking HD footage


Then there are all the paid denoisers. A lots of them can easily get outperformed by an avisynth script.


The only things keeping avisynth/vapoursynth from becoming more popular restoration choices are the lack of braindeadness in its use, and the fact that they are free. There are people who think paid software is always better than free ones.
Thinkinf about it, the lack of pricetag may make more people to switch to avisynth

[lollo]

In experiments with my material (S-VHS / VHS captures), I found that there is nothing that Neat Video or Topaz Video Enhance AI can do that couldn't be achieved or beaten with Vapoursynth or Avisynth.

Topaz VEAI can perform well with some HD material. JoelHruska obtained good results also with SD videos.

NeatVideo in the right hands (i.e. poisondeathray) can perform a good denoising.

AviSynth and VapourSynth in the right hands (jagabo, poisondeathray and Selur) make wonders.

On my side, AviSynth is adequate: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCMsKcwn9Yh1MmNAs7I8nu4g and I do not see any need to "buy software"

[Selur]

It's like Apple products you pay for ease of use and fancy frontend, alternatively you could use Linux.
Personally I understand why folks are willing to dish a stack of money to have an easy interface for stuff.
Main positive aspect in this is that more folks are interessted in the general activity of video handling.

Cu Selur

[Hoser Rob]

This sort of thing is common with media software and software in general. It's a big dirty secret in computing that many programs that charge $$$ are just free open source CLI programs that someone wrote a GUI front end for. It's absolutely routine.

[rrats]

Main positive aspect in this is that more folks are interessted in the general activity of video handling.

that can cause a lot of mishandling too.