I posted this in the FB group and I thought I would put it in here as well.
It is a brief historical recap of VEAI that some newer members might appreciate. This recap does not go all the way back to its beginnings, but many months ago VEAI had basically only 3 AI models: Gaia-HQ, Gaia-CG and Artemis, later split into HQ and LQ.
Each one had its shortcomings but it could also do ‘magic’ with the right source. For example, in those days Artemis was a lot more ‘hit and miss’ - It would fail miserably with 75% of videos, but with the rest it sometimes produced astoundingly clean and clear results. No one could predict or explain the reason for that. In only one VEAI release (I think version 1.2) they also included the first Artemis MQ, which then disappeared in subsequent versions, much to the dismay of a few super-fans. Artemis MQ reappeared only in fairly recent versions.
Gaia-CG was by many accounts much superior compared to today’s version. Gaia-HQ, on the other hand, is largely unchanged.
Back in the day, Gaia was a favorite for most users. Some of us beta testers came up with a brilliant idea that we pitched to Topaz - wouldn’t it be great if Gaia had adjustable parameters for detail, noise, etc. In response, they said it was not possible to adapt Gaia in such a way, however what they came up with as a ‘solution’ is the Theia model. No, it did not come even close, but that’s how Theia came to be.
In the months that followed, Topaz tried and failed to improve Gaia-HQ by any significant amount, and Gaia-CG became weaker. They then turned all their efforts into developing Artemis, and later Dione, into what we have today.
About 4 months ago, Topaz had sort of an ‘epiphany’ and Artemis v9 was born. It was totally revamped to work fairly well with most videos. My guess is they discovered a good way of getting information from several frames to incorporate into each individual frame. In any case, v9 remains one of my favorites to this day. The jury is still out on whether any of the Artemis version updates so far since v9 have been quality improvement or deteriorations. In my opinion, it’s mostly the latter.
For clarification, the Artemis v9 I am referring to included HQ, MQ, and LQ. There is also the Artemis AA v9 (anti aliasing), but that is something different.
