Bad Error Behavior of Topaz Video

Topaz Video Bugs and Issues
1

I haven’t had a Topaz crash for several weeks now.

(The NVIDIA Acceleration app was probably the primary culprit.)

But my joy was premature. :slight_smile:

1. General:

And when Topaz does crash, it always behaves very unprofessionally, in my opinion.

When DaVinci Resolve (Studio) crashes (this rarely happens, but I’ve managed to do it with 5K, 6K, and 8K), you simply reopen it, and so far, nothing has ever been lost. It more or less permanently saves all your work. Very professional.

Of course, if DaVinci crashes during rendering (this has only happened once or twice with 4K and 5K ProRes), then everything is lost, but this happens very, very rarely and only under extreme conditions.

And Topaz?

Well, Topaz does nothing but render, so if it crashes, everything is lost. Does it have to be this way?

And that’s annoying, because it’s not just 1 or 2 hours of render time lost like in DaVinci Resolve, but 10 or 20 hours or even more!

That’s a very painful difference!
Working with Topaz is as fast as editing video on the Amiga back in 1995. :slight_smile:

Topaz writes a file during the entire rendering process:
You can recognize this file by the long string of numbers at the end of its name.

This file can be played by many players (like MPC), and Bandicut, for example, can easily create a complete header from this file (without re-rendering - natively).

Refreshing this file hourly would be good, but then I wouldn’t be able to go to work or to bed!

If Topaz crashes, then in my opinion… Completely senseless, this file is being destroyed!

Why can’t Topaz at least make a copy every hour and then delete the older ones itself?
(Twenty or more copies would clutter up the entire PC)
So you don’t just lose everything in a crash.
.

2. Now, specifically regarding today’s case:

I had a job running, 4K to 4K (no scaling), using Iris and Apollo to increase the frame rate from 20 fps to 60 fps.

(Yes, 20 fps – a special program, so a tripling of the frame rate → that’s why I used Apollo; otherwise, I would have used Chronos.)
Predicted render time: 12 hours at 3.3 fps.

Okay, I went to bed, and after a few hours, I went to the bathroom – and quickly copied the Topaz file (it was at about 33%).

So, after 12 hours, I went to the computer to check.

The white progress bar had reached the right end; it must have been practically finished !

Then, in the Topaz window, it said “Recoverable Error” in red.
Whatever that means, there was a button next to it to press to continue, which I did.
It started running at over 3000 fps, and I thought, okay, it’s repairing something…

The waiting time was initially displayed as a few seconds, then minutes, then hours, while the fps count steadily decreased from over 3000 fps to 300, then over 30… down to below 15 fps…
While its “supposed repair attempt” was still ongoing, I looked at the TOPAZ file it was writing, which was now growing ever more slowly:

It was significantly smaller than the one I had saved myself after several hours, about 10% of the project, whereas I had already saved 33%…

So I realized it wasn’t actually repairing anything; otherwise, it would just re-render the entire file!
So I stopped, since I’d already completed a third of it…
.

3. Why the error again now?

Well, I don’t know for sure, but I haven’t used APOLLO in a long time.
Whenever I convert from 30 to 60 fps or from 25 to 50 fps, I always use Chronos (usually in conjunction with Iris).

From memory, it seems that Apollo has crashed quite often, especially when used with enhancements (mostly Iris, but also others).

See the user here- same problem with APOLLO:

" I ran rendering of a movie and after three days of rendering it errored out

after reaching 100%

due to insufficient disk space and deleted the rendered temp file without giving any time to … "

→ my fastes disc - only for Topaz and DaVinci is 2TB NVME (4xPCi4) and 35% free
**

4. @ ALL:

**

Is there a tool I can use to write a script, or would someone write one for me—I’d even pay for it—that copies this stupid Topaz file every hour?

Best regards
seifenchef

2

Ha! I still have video files originally captured on the Amiga from VHS with Macrosystems VLab.

3

Hi,
Yes, I had this Draco video workstation, with the same processor as Apple at the time, so I could already use Photoshop back then (with a Mac emulator) while the PeeeCeee users were left out in the cold :slight_smile:
The Draco was about as fast as Topaz on basic models…
I overclocked it from 50 to 66 MHz; that was the limit. Why?

Because the memory couldn’t keep up—just like today… :slight_smile:

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4

Here it was an Amiga 4000 with tower mod and Phase5 Cyberstorm dual CPU 68060/50 MHz and PPC 604e @200 MHz.

I also used a Macintosh emulator, first Fusion, then ShapeShifter - making that Amiga the fastest 68k Mac at that time.

Those were the times (sorry for OT).

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5

The current crash recovery feature does this in a way where it writes out the file in blocks and then combines those blocks together as the final step. This does increase the file size and is not full proof in that it can also fail and lose blocks. That is something the devs are working on improving in the future to help reduce the full loss of a file when processing is ended by a crash or power lose.

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6

Hi, thanks for your reply.

But I still don’t understand.
The file that TOPAZ writes is a single file.
It is playable and, as I wrote above, can be easily provided with a header using the BANDICUT program, for example. (without re-rendering)

TOPAZ wouldn’t need to delete this file (if necessary, copy it again beforehand) before it’s finished with its final version, would it?

This is simply a bug that isn’t necessary and needs to be fixed quickly and easily.

→ I will try to use “Total Commander” to create a script that copies this file every 30 minutes and then deletes the previous copy… let’s see if I can get it to work…

→ -> Until then, I will try, as I have done before, to close TOPAZ in Task Manager after the job has started and only let ffmpeg-exe continue running… :frowning:

Best regards

7

It’s actually more convenient not to render the entire file at once; divide it into segments. I shared information about this two days ago; it’s the most logical approach. This way, even if there are errors, you won’t waste too much time. For example, I divide videos into 3-minute segments and then combine them. I can also pause the process whenever I want. I’ve even written small Python applications for this. But you should start the segmenting process in Topaz Video; it will be easier, and then combine them in the video editor.

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8

A much better solution is IMO using a script that duplicates the output file every so often.

That way in the (here rare) case of a crash you don’t lose much of the rendering progress and avoid the uncomfortable splitting and rejoining plus possibly inconsistencies at the splitting points.

1 Like
9

Okay, here’s an idea to get us moving forward…
But I have to say that this is anything but convenient.
Especially in TOPAZ’s timeline, which is unpleasant to use.

But okay, I’ll give it a try for large 4K/5K projects; it’s better than losing everything…
I’ll see if I can get the splitting and rejoining to work perfectly in Bandicut, which is lightning fast, but due to MPEG (GOPs, slices), the result isn’t always perfect…
as I said, this method is anything but convenient… :frowning:

kind regards

10

That’s exactly what I thought.
But I’m not sure now, I’ll have to check again.
( Maybe TOPAZ can say something about)
Is this File (which Topaz writes during rendering) perfect?
And if not, what’s not perfect about it?

Recently, luckily I didn’t need it, but I had the impression that the audio (in this temp file) wasn’t synchronized?

kind regards

11

I told you the easiest method, but you haven’t even tried it. You’re looking for something more difficult. If you use other methods for segmentation, you need the best quality segmenter, otherwise the quality will drop. That’s why I told you the easiest way: rendering by segmenting. Then the quality remains the same.

12

Except that the „other solution“ is much more convenient and avoids temporal inconsistencies at the switch points.

Also be aware that mpeg files of any variant (which I guess is the most common format) should be split At keyframes which wouldn’t occur at exactly 30/60/… mins.

13

From a purely practical point of view, I don’t see segmenting in TOPAZ itself as the easiest way, because it’s a pain to set the in and out points exactly in this timeline.
So I set an out point somewhere, and it’s not saved anywhere for me when I want to do the next segment at some point. So I have to search for it laboriously and set it as a new in point.

Bandicut works losslessly (so-called smart renderer, lightning fast), the only question is whether it really takes the entered in and out points with frame accuracy…
because of the GOP and slice structures of MPEG.

I still have to test whether it does that, but if it does, it would be easy.
I would create 3 or 4 segments, edit them in Topaz, and then merge them back together in Bandicut.

14

I didn’t notice that here. But then, I have seldom crashes - about never with the conventional models on the Mac and really really seldom on the PC for the conventional models and Starlight. Starlight on the Mac currently is a different case, but with it’s current quality it’s not worth the wait there anyways.

And, I don’t really trust TopazVideo(AI) in audio processing (especially for multiple tracks) so I often end up just processing the video only and afterwards remuxing the audio from the original again.

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15

you would remux, not re-encode.

in case of ffmpeg it’s the concat command for appending files and the c:a copy and c:v copy to just copy the audio and video instead of re-encoding it.

If you use MKV it can be done even easier with a GUI: MKVToolnixGUI (this one would also restore aborted mkv encodes)

16

When working with splitting on large projects (< 10 or 30 hours of rendering), Topaz itself would have to split the file.
→ For example, if requested in advance, into 2 or 5 etc. parts… if parts are lost in the end, there should be an option to render only those parts again…

That would be the only practical/professional option.

However, given how unreliable the Topaz GUI has been in my experience so far/or on my computer (?), I really can’t imagine that happening…

kind regards
seifenchef

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17

I literally made a post a few days ago with a .BAT compiler that does exactly this:

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