If you're tempted by Topaz VEAI, look at free Hybrid and thank Selur

[User_Name]

In any case, I doubt that TOPAZ would have something like that on it's website if those companies didn't use it.

Absolutely. Unless it's some sort of advertising agreement mainly to be able to use the logos, I guess. I doubt modern companies would be manipulative and figure out how to legally use logos only sell a product, though.

There's bound to be examples of the work for Disney, Netflix, Amazon, etc., and it's probably just a coincidence that nothing comes up in searches. Well, except where Joe Nobodys are converting stuff on their own and discussing it in the Topaz forum. Surely that's not what the logos are there for, though. I'm just sort of puzzled that there's nothing official here:

https://www.topazlabs.com/learn

Or on their linked youtube videos. Lots of independent stuff, but one would think NASA and Amazon and Netflix projects would be sort of a big deal and worth showing off or at least mentioning.

Regardless, those big production jobs they imply were sort of my thinking about $300 charge to Joe Nobody. I don't know how that sort of licensing works, but I doubt Biden or Bezos pays $300. If NASA, Amazon, etc. are churning out commercial or scientific products with it then Topaz is big time and working with the big boys and raking in big amounts of cash, and "free for non-commercial use" wouldn't be outrageous to consider for the thousands (hundreds?) of casual users who are looking for a solution to fix a three minute VHS rip.

It is a good advertisement, though. Very impressive logos.

But again, that's not my initial point. My only point was that if someone was considering Topaz it might be worth ticking two boxes in Hybrid and seeing if that gives you essentially the same result you were hoping for.

[henrydotson]

You make some valid points about the use of logos and the absence of official mentions from big companies on Topaz's platforms. It does raise questions about the nature of their partnerships and the extent of their involvement in commercial projects. Exploring alternatives like Hybrid could indeed offer similar results worth considering. Thanks for sharing your insights!
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[lordsmurf]

In any case, I doubt that TOPAZ would have something like that on it's website if those companies didn't use it.

Absolutely. Unless it's some sort of advertising agreement mainly to be able to use the logos, I guess. I doubt modern companies would be manipulative and figure out how to legally use logos only sell a product, though.

There's bound to be examples of the work for Disney, Netflix, Amazon, etc., and it's probably just a coincidence that nothing comes up in searches. Well, except where Joe Nobodys are converting stuff on their own and discussing it in the Topaz forum. Surely that's not what the logos are there for, though. I'm just sort of puzzled that there's nothing official here:

https://www.topazlabs.com/learn

Or on their linked youtube videos. Lots of independent stuff, but one would think NASA and Amazon and Netflix projects would be sort of a big deal and worth showing off or at least mentioning.

Regardless, those big production jobs they imply were sort of my thinking about $300 charge to Joe Nobody. I don't know how that sort of licensing works, but I doubt Biden or Bezos pays $300. If NASA, Amazon, etc. are churning out commercial or scientific products with it then Topaz is big time and working with the big boys and raking in big amounts of cash, and "free for non-commercial use" wouldn't be outrageous to consider for the thousands (hundreds?) of casual users who are looking for a solution to fix a three minute VHS rip.

It is a good advertisement, though. Very impressive logos.

But again, that's not my initial point. My only point was that if someone was considering Topaz it might be worth ticking two boxes in Hybrid and seeing if that gives you essentially the same result you were hoping for.

I repeat: marketing bullshit.

There are wink-and-nod ways to use "big name logos" when there's no actual relationship between them. For example, if some puny nobody does even a single non-major project for the "big company", and that puny nobody vendor buys "OEM products" for that single project, then a desperate "OEM" may claim their customer's customer ("big company") in their marketing. The "big company" may not even realize it, as allowances to said mentions are buried in clauses in contracts.

I've dealt with this kind of BS before.

[FalconFour]

It's time for an unpopular post. Maybe. And I'm sorry for this being my first post, but I've been wrestling to the peak of frustration with Hybrid as the "gatekeeper" for QTGMC deinterlacing using vapoursynth (if I don't want to go compiling my own video interface...).

I'm not interested in deep video coding subjects. I take no interest in ultra-deep parts of different fields, like going down to the atomic level of construction in the fields I work in. I work across many subject fields - electrical engineering, software, networking, physics, anything I can digest. I love going down from the 10,000-ft view people typically operate at, and dive down to 100ft, get deep enough to do things significantly-more-correctly... help people, build things, coordinate projects. That's my thing. I like "city planning", in a sense, but I don't enjoy construction. Writing code isn't fun, but in that sense, I can operate a saw and drill where needed. I seriously do not want to have to get down and start writing avisynth filter lines.

So, when I took on the matter of trying to digitize some VHS tapes Most Properly, I went down the vhs-decode path. Getting the hardware set up, getting the capture done, that was all relatively easy. I've now spent multiple weeks on the last step of the process: taking that video and running it through post processing to produce a great quality final output.

What I have:
- A digitally decoded version of the raw RF signal coming off the flying VHS tape heads - zero digital compression artifacts, lots of grainy analog noise from sloppy low-speed EP recording of the original tape. It's a solid video (stable), but noisy. And because it's mathematically-accurate decoding, it has slightly wrong contrast/color levels versus modern PC digital video.
- A low-quality linear audio track taken from the player at the time of capture
- A high-quality HiFi audio track taken from a different player, edited in Audacity to be a 1:1 time match with the linear audio track - so, laid together, it should be a perfect sync - but sometimes, even the linear audio wasn't a perfect time match (linear was recorded in time with the machine, but the decode re-based some of the time, causing de-syncs over segment snips on the tape).

What I want:
- Input FFv1 interlaced video. Deinterlace (broadcast video, not TC) the video, while QTGMC seems the highest-quality option to provide a ~60fps output at full resolution by making good guesses at smoothing the fields
- Denoise - HQDN3D seems a good option, though I was recently introduced to NLmeans, which seems even better for exactly this application
- Color correct - ffmpeg seems to output a pure black frame when asked to adjust "colorlevels", and TV black levels are "32" which need to be nudged outward a bit, improving the output video contrast and apparent quality
- Upscale and square pixels - take the non-square PAR video (input is 760x488), upscale it 2x to improve encoding quality while retaining all horizontal detail with the PAR squaring - output approx. 1300x976 to FFv1
- Audio sync - using a non-linear editor to align audio captures and then splice it with the video
- Produce a final output that looks nice on YouTube or etc.

What I get:
- Hybrid opens the file and immediately garbles the PAR. Preview is wildly distorted, like a 4:3 video on a 16:9 display. Without changing any settings, it immediately gets it wrong.
- What are these input options it's asking for? Aspect ratio is expressed as a colon-separated pair, like "4:3". It's telling me "1000x876" or such. I have no idea where this number came from.
- Yet, even after I struggle to get the correct number (it's supposed to be 352x413), it feels spring-loaded to collapse back to the wrong value. Slip on the mouse wheel, and the values get erased by changing the drop-down boxes around it.
- Load a different file, and even though I have saved these settings in every way I can find (I keep having to look-up the 352x413 number in a spreadsheet), Hybrid INSISTS on changing the values every time I breathe.
- Eventually, I decode the iconography in the interface to figure out that "��️����⬆️" means "Preview" in various locations throughout the UI.
- If I want to "preview" my filters, some weird issue with VapourSynth causes it to scan (not decode, but merely read-from-disk) the *entire* 27GB+ source file, freezing the program until it completes... then shows me the preview and lets me interact with it. Lord help me if I check "auto reload" - any time I move any control or dial, it restarts rescanning the entire file again to restart the preview.
- Audio! Yes, I'd love to add an audio track. Here it is. "+" it to the list (hey, have to learn that first - nice to have done a whole encode with no audio because I simply didn't press "+"). Can you give me a ��️����⬆️? Hmm. No audio. Uh, what'd I do wrong? Several minutes and countless changes and pages through the UI later, I can determine nothing I did wrong. I encode the video. It comes out with audio. Sure would be nice if I can get a sample to check the audio sync.
- How about getting a sample/preview? What? I can't select a time range to get a short encode? Oh, buried deep on the 6th level of settings, I have to UNLOCK the "clip" controls, then search the user-interface again to figure out where they appeared... finally, I find them, and I can set the settings.
- Profiles? I can't figure out what these relate to, where or when to select them, what they save, or what they load. So far, they don't seem to have any effect on my very, very basic needs (stop changing my resize settings - that's my key demand for presets). Even "save defaults" (which seems fairly "nuclear" an option) does nothing.

I tried Topaz (in demo mode), and
- I get an instant view of my video input/output. Side by side. With a seek bar, to check on different sections of the program.
- It defaults to offering a 2-second preview of the configured filters. Awesome. It syncs the input with the output as it displays the result. I can see exactly what the filters did (or did wrong).
- It's incredibly slow (preview rendering went from 6fps at worst, to 20fps at best).
- It has very limited options/controls, and offers no color correction (can't solve the black-levels issue).

It still left me wishing it weren't an irrational $300 price tag. If it were $30, I'd have already laid out my credit card.

Hybrid, by hiding tabs under checkboxes, and taking liberties (unconditionally, with no way to stop it/lock those settings) with resolution settings that it *incorrectly* interprets (mind you: the PAR is encoded properly in the input file - every other player/editor software plays it at the proper size) - leaves me just feeling like fingernails on chalkboard whenever I interact with it.

Sorry for this being my first post, but I just needed to get this out. Hopefully it can be seen as a point of improvement, discussion, argument, and progress. At the minimum, it can be seen as one case as to how "why would anyone choose Topaz when Hybrid exists?" is certainly not a mystery.

[Sharc]

From
https://www.selur.de/

Hybrid is intended for advanced users.
It's not intended to be a tool used by everyone. It's not intended to please amateurs who need a wizard-like interface..
If you don't know the basics about containers, video formats, etc. Hybrid is not meant for you.

Potential users should take this serious.

[Alwyn]

Clearly, FalconFour is not an amateur.

[lollo]

Clearly, FalconFour does not know AviSynth/VapourSynth and wants to use Hybrid, which is a nice piece of software, but just a GUI for them. And Hybrid itself needs some effort.

[Selur]

my 2cents:
Hybrid and Topaz fundamentally do things differently, its just that what they can do overlaps in some places.

It's time for an unpopular post. Maybe. And I'm sorry for this being my first post, but I've been wrestling to the peak of frustration with Hybrid as the "gatekeeper" for QTGMC deinterlacing using vapoursynth (if I don't want to go compiling my own video interface...).

Hybrid isn't the only tool out there which offers QTGMC in Vapoursynth, for example try StaxRip instead.

- Hybrid opens the file and immediately garbles the PAR. Preview is wildly distorted, like a 4:3 video on a 16:9 display. Without changing any settings, it immediately gets it wrong.

Hybrid reads the PAR through MediaInfo. If the video isn't flagged properly Hybrid will not know how to handle it properly.

- What are these input options it's asking for? Aspect ratio is expressed as a colon-separated pair, like "4:3". It's telling me "1000x876" or such. I have no idea where this number came from.

4:3 is a DAR (= display aspect ratio), Hybrid works with PAR (= pixel aspect ratio).
Maybe reading [INFO] About pixel aspect ratios,.. and the links mentioned there will help to clear stuff up.

- Yet, even after I struggle to get the correct number (it's supposed to be 352x413), it feels spring-loaded to collapse back to the wrong value. Slip on the mouse wheel, and the values get erased by changing the drop-down boxes around it.

Naturally settings can influence other settings,...

Load a different file, and even though I have saved these settings in every way I can find (I keep having to look-up the 352x413 number in a spreadsheet), Hybrid INSISTS on changing the values every time I breathe.

There is always logic to the madness.

Eventually, I decode the iconography in the interface to figure out that "��️����⬆️" means "Preview" in various locations throughout the UI.

Switching from icons to text for the buttons (View->Icon/text) might help if you are unfamiliar with the gui and are too unpacient to read the tool-tips.

- If I want to "preview" my filters, some weird issue with VapourSynth causes it to scan (not decode, but merely read-from-disk) the *entire* 27GB+ source file, freezing the program until it completes... then shows me the preview and lets me interact with it. Lord help me if I check "auto reload" - any time I move any control or dial, it restarts rescanning the entire file again to restart the preview.

Normally, indexing of the file only takes place on the first opening of a file (untill the source is changed or Hybrid is closed).
->No clue what you are doing.

- Audio! Yes, I'd love to add an audio track. Here it is. "+" it to the list (hey, have to learn that first - nice to have done a whole encode with no audio because I simply didn't press "+"). Can you give me a ��️����⬆️? Hmm. No audio. Uh, what'd I do wrong? Several minutes and countless changes and pages through the UI later, I can determine nothing I did wrong. I encode the video. It comes out with audio. Sure would be nice if I can get a sample to check the audio sync.

Encoding just a section of a clip is possible through the *experimental* cut support, but the issue seems more like you do not understand the concept of Hybrid using queues do set what should be done with audio, subtitles, chapter points.

- How about getting a sample/preview? What? I can't select a time range to get a short encode? Oh, buried deep on the 6th level of settings, I have to UNLOCK the "clip" controls, then search the user-interface again to figure out where they appeared... finally, I find them, and I can set the settings.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯ Sorry, but Hybrid has tons of options and tons of different stuff users do with it, not everything you deem worth of being in the front control is there.

- Profiles? I can't figure out what these relate to, where or when to select them, what they save, or what they load. So far, they don't seem to have any effect on my very, very basic needs (stop changing my resize settings - that's my key demand for presets). Even "save defaults" (which seems fairly "nuclear" an option) does nothing.

Reading [INFO] About profiles and saving settings,.... might help to undestand how profiles&co work in Hybrid.

=> Since Hybrid does not seem to be the right tool for you, try another one.
StaxRip is probably the most known alternative, but there are other guis which support using QTGMC through Vapoursynth.
https://github.com/emako/qvs
https://github.com/YohoYang/VSGUI
https://github.com/hclivess/videer
MeGUI (uses Avisynth instead of Vapoursynth, but also offers QTGMC)
FFAStrans (https://ffastrans.com uses Avisynth instead of Vapoursynth, but also offers QTGMC and a flow diagram approach to the gui)
...

Hybrid, by hiding tabs under checkboxes, and taking liberties (unconditionally, with no way to stop it/lock those settings) with resolution settings that it *incorrectly* interprets (mind you: the PAR is encoded properly in the input file - every other player/editor software plays it at the proper size) - leaves me just feeling like fingernails on chalkboard whenever I interact with it.

If you think Hybrid does make a mistake with the PAR detection.
read: https://www.selur.de/support
then:
a. share a sample which allows to reproduce the problem you have
b. create a debug output of what you are doing (how to do that is explained in the link)
c. post both in the Hybrid-thread.
(when asked friendly) I usually try to look into things and if I think it is a bug, I try to fix it, share a hopefully fixed version with the reporter of a problem.
If I think it's not a bug or something I can't or won't fix, at usually give at least some feedback about the problem. (which could also be that Hybrid might not be the right job for the tool)

Clearly, FalconFour is not an amateur.

From what he wrote, in regard of video encoding and filtering and using tools for this he just started,... so I would agree with the statement, that Hybrid might not be the right tool.

Cu Selur

[lordsmurf]

electrical engineering,

Something I've noticed in recent years is that people tout EE as if it's supposed to impress others. "I'm an EE!" apparently means you have deep understandings of everything but video. Video has all that basic algebra, and low-level coding, and the boastful EEs are lost? Doesn't speak highly of that profession, does it? Actually, now that I think about it, it probably makes perfect sense. After all, Boeing has lots of EEs, right? Designing planes that fall apart mid-flight takes some serious design skill + total stupidity, at the same time.

It reminds me of MBAs. For decades they've given those things out like toilet paper in a public restroom. How many MBAs does it take to screw in a lightbulb?

And because it's mathematically-accurate decoding, it has slightly wrong contrast/color levels versus modern PC digital video.

Nope, BS.

And Hybrid itself needs some effort.

Reading is hard.
Math is hard.
Effort is hard.

[lollo]

And Hybrid itself needs some effort.

Reading is hard.
Math is hard.
Effort is hard.

Yes.

Aptitude from FalconFour is not adequate. You want to use QTGMC? Learn basic AviSynth, a GUI is only a shortcut where you may have no full control.
There are other points obscure in his post, like color correction with ffmpeg???, stange numbers for captures and upscale???, denoise VHS captures with a spatial-only filtering???, but that's another story.

And as always, Selur is providing all needed support, so thanks again to him!

[lordsmurf]

There are other points obscure in his post, like
color correction with ffmpeg???,
stange numbers for captures and upscale???,
denoise VHS captures with a spatial-only filtering???,
but that's another story.

<chuckles to self> Nice catches. I didn't even see those until a skim just now. Mostly because I quit reading the bitchfest after the first paragraph bragging about stuff that doesn't matter.

And as always, Selur is providing all needed support, so thanks again to him!

We cannot say this enough.

[Sharc]

And as always, Selur is providing all needed support, so thanks again to him!

We cannot say this enough.

+1

[Alwyn]

I know I'm talking to a brick wall but, given you lot are in pile-on mode,

You want to use QTGMC? Learn basic AviSynth, a GUI is only a shortcut where you may have no full control.

That's one of the more non-sensical things I have read recently. The whole point of a GUI is to allow users who can't learn/use the base code to achieve similar results. Do you make your websites in basic HTML? Do you use Word for DOS?

What could possibly be in your mindset to deny people the opportunity to improve their videos by accessing QTGMC through GUIs such as Hybrid or Staxrip? And you you should know you don't need 20 options set up in QTGMC ("full control") to make a significant improvement on normal de-interlacing techniques; I just cannot understand why you would sledge people for using a GUI.

Why do you think Selur and Prowo spent/spends thousands of hours on their GUIs? I'll tell you why. To make it easier for the multitudes to achieve something better with their videos. And good on them, many of us normal people really appreciate their GUIs. For you to continually belittle people for using GUIs is rather quite strange.

As for "basic AVISynth", QTGMC is hardly "basic".

[lordsmurf]

You want to use QTGMC? Learn basic AviSynth, a GUI is only a shortcut where you may have no full control.

That's one of the more non-sensical things I have read recently.
As for "basic AVISynth", QTGMC is hardly "basic".

Well, that's part of our point. The self-described EE, that dabbles in overly complicated vhs-decode (though misunderstanding it), and CLI's with ffmpeg, etc, can certainly do the same with Avisynth. I would suggest that post is just pointless grousing about Hybrid not cooking his breakfast, or giving him a reach-around, or something.

The more curious aspect is what lollo picked up on: WTF is with all the oddball resolutions?

I can respect differing opinions on software, but that was some long-winded crazy bullshit in that post. I know you like to be a contrarian to everything these days, but you seriously need to read that nutty crap again.

[lollo]

Alwin, honestly, I won’t spend any time replying to your non sense. Everything has been said hundred times, and the fact that you use a GUI does not allow to do not know at least the BASIC of what’s behind. Or just stay minimalist as you. End of the discussion.