I found this forum after trying Topaz Enhance AI free trial

[diminlas]

I was not very happy with the results. lordsmurf and others here, are right to criticise it. I expected super results for a 480p video, but i only got very little improvement.
i have read here about qtgmc, avisynth solutions. Topaz wa easy to work with compared to them. My question is. Can i achieve great results for a 480p? And how?(which program).

[sum_guy]

How did you acquire your 480p video? capture card/dongle and what software did you use to capture it? Maybe you could upload a sample here?

[diminlas]

Thanks for the reply. It was an old soccer video downloaded from youtube which i was experimented with. Unfortunately i deleted it, and topaz free trial also ended. But reading the forums here renewed my interest about video enhance.

[sum_guy]

I don't know how much help I can offer, usually these videos are mangled by youtube's processes (compression/scaling). 480 is usually recorded by a camera interlaced, so either the uploader deinterlaced it or it somehow was converted to progressive somewhere along the line. It's a shame you don't have a sample, the experts here could show you some avisynth or hybrid methods to improve it.

[diminlas]

There. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UwHfYB7kpw4 Most of the channel videos are terrible as you can see. And i doubt it's on 480 as its says.

[Selur]

Seems like it's 480x360 and probably not worth trying to work with it.
-> I doubt you can get anything 'great' from such a source.
With BasicVSR++ you get something like



which probably is the end of the line, since with such a low resolution and basically mainly makroblocking the only thing you can really do is smooth the hell out of it. (DPIR might also be worth a try, but I doubt it would result in anything really better.)

Cu Selur

[diminlas]

Thanks. So in other words the source needs to be a solid SD to actually achieve something good out of it right?

[davexnet]

Thanks. So in other words the source needs to be a solid SD to actually achieve something good out of it right?

Pretty much, garbage in, garbage as they say

[Alwyn]

Seems like it's 480x360

There is a 480P version on YT. 640x480 AVC video BR 1103.

[diminlas]

Would be interesting to try and restore with Avisynth. I read here that Avisynth can produce amazing results. Not necessarily this video.
Hope someone assist me to a complete tutortial with Avisynth. Or a link if it's already been posted here?

[Alwyn]

Quick-fire "Neat Video" on the right:

Soccer Neat video on right.mp4

[diminlas]

Thanks. Yes, the improvement is visible although the source video quality doesn't help at all.

[Alwyn]

It depends a lot on what area you select for Neat Video to analyse; a uniform a colour/texture area is best. I chose the grass at the bottom of the video. In this case, I tweaked one of the noise sliders (can't remember which one!) but the result is instant so you can experiment with all the controls easily.


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[Selur]

So in other words the source needs to be a solid SD to actually achieve something good out of it right?

It's not only about the resolution, but the quality you got at a resolution.

[lordsmurf]

Quick-fire "Neat Video" on the right:

NeatVideo has improved over the year, but this is a great example of it being a sledgehammer, not a scalpel. The temporal filtering is blah. It's not you, it's the software lacking.

[Selur]

Personally, I would say it's simply a source no matter what, you can't get any good results, but if lordsmurf can show something good from that source I would be happy to see it.

Cu Selur

[SM1872]

I'm very sorry I can't solve this for you but having fed some older football clips through Topaz I find that it struggles badly with:

a) Football
b) Faces/bodies that aren't particularly close up

Sadly that VHS cassette of the 1984 Skol Cup Final (or similar antiquated cup name) won't see much benefit from it. Feel free to contact if you'd like to see what I'm meaning. Still have audio-free tests in TIFs and would just have to run through FFMPEG.

[lordsmurf]

Personally, I would say it's simply a source no matter what, you can't get any good results, but if lordsmurf can show something good from that source I would be happy to see it.
Cu Selur

There's a lot of room for improvement here, just not with resolution.

[rrats]

topaz seems to struggle with everything that is not clean halo-less SD video

[Selur]

Most of the ml based resizers one do a good job for normal videos on clean content.
Based on my experience with ml based stuff (not topaz) I would expect that it works fine for simple cartoon/animes even if the source has halos&co.

Cu Selur

[diminlas]

But thats my issue with topaz. They are trying to sell you that it make wonders with almosgt every video when in reality, it doesn't do much.

[Selur]

That's marketing. Each company will use images&co that show the strong suite of their product and not the points that limit it.
Personally I think having more people easy access to ml based tools is good and I'm impressed that they keep updating their models&co.
I understand where you are comming from, but especially to folks that make money with videos it's just another tool.

Cu Selur

[jagabo]

I think dealing with such a poor source is pointless. But here's the youtube 480p video with some AviSynth processing.