Yeah I’ll be cancelling my subscription then and potentially issuing a chargeback then in this case. This company continues to go from bad to worse and makes no apologies or real efforts and has been consumed by the greed of AI.
@a-cli-user-3 You changing your username out of solidarity/protest really made me chuckle! Thanks for that.
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First off, I’m glad I made you laugh! a-cli-user-2 was already taken! 
I wasn’t joking when I said I got Topaz EXPLICITLY for offline, local, automated workflows for enhancing my video library. That is the sole reason I bought it - so I could automatically upscale and process my local video library. Not so I could upload stuff to the cloud to be processed.
And I’m talking HUNDREDS if not THOUSANDS of individual videos.
This deserves to be shoved in their face.
At a time when a PC is pretty much unattainable, and even though I have enough money to buy a 5090, 64GB of RAM, the latest gen intel CPU and motherboard combo - I’m not gonna do that when it should’ve cost $2000, now it would cost over $5-6-7000.
This decision about the CLI just further adds to the economic discrimination happening.
You’ll own nothing. You’ll be happy you own nothing. And if you do own something, you won’t be able to use it.
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I’m just an FFmpeg nerd who saw TVAI as a useful extension to existing FFmpeg - the GUI was just a preview for me, but real workflows were done with CLI.
I’m on a Mac, so we Mac users got a whole year with no new TVAI models from about 5.1/5.2 (I forget the exact version). Then, a waiting game for local Starlight on Mac. Then, new Studio/Pro Terms. Then, just when local Starlight was coming for Mac in TVAI… BOOM! Subscription-only to get local Starlight for Mac. Being a Mac user, I could never get local Starlight without a subscription. Trial version? Nope we don’t do that anymore. Now, there’s absolutely no point for me without the CLI.
They claim a “thoughtful and deliberate decision”, but the truth of the matter is that one part of the company did not know what the other part of the company was doing…
This thread is a shambles - and poor old Kyle in support was left alone to defend / defer / deny. @kyle.topazlabs your colleagues did the real dirty on you - and you honestly deserve better than that.
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I find it quite audacious how it is argued that there will no longer be a CLI, and that this is being sold as a major advantage. No, it’s not about making workflows better without the CLI; they could do that with the CLI too. It seems to be about something else: they don’t want you to optimize thousand videos offline, and they certainly don’t want you to become a professional in any way and start rendering videos for others. Ultimately, they want you to use the cloud, and local offline stuff just gets in the way of that.
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You forgot that Starlight still is completely broken on the Mac - and, to be honest, never really worked.
The last TVAI „pre-Studio“ beta was the best regarding functionality/quality but was extremely picky about which videos/resolutions it worked on.
This was a bit better in the first Studio releases but there we only had 2x upscales regardless of the resolution you set.
And now, with macOS 26.2 (and persisting to the most recent beta of 26.3) it’s totally unusable again. Not to talk about the slow speed.
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I know that everyone who has posted here and in the release thread are not happy with this situation. For anyone who is upset by the news and decision of the company regarding this topic wishes to discuss canceling their subscription plans and remain using the older Video AI app under their original perpetual license purchase, or if you did not get one of those licenses, please email the support team directly at help@topazlabs.com so we can try and handle things cleanly and keep track of things for review later on by the product team and devs. The Video support team will try and assist as best we can with the resources we have and as always will pass along the feedback to those who need it.
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And I cant use advanced encoding without the CLI, because you neither buy x265, nor offer options for your integrated encoders. low, medium, high is not proper encoding options, sorry xD
Just out of curiosity what advanced options do you use? Can send them in a private message if you want.
@de-m-on I encode with Topaz and CLI to FFV1 lossless, and then run a separate process to encode to whatever distribution format I need like H.264, using vanilla FFmpeg.
- Preprocess with vanilla FFmpeg, save as FFV1 (deinterlace, chroma denoise, dedot, color conversion to RGB)
- Topaz process with Topaz FFmpeg CLI, save as FFV1 RGB
- Postprocess with vanilla FFmpeg using software codec, using all the advantages of x264. Final RGB>YUV conversion at either 422 or 420.
This gives me control over every step of the workflow.
But now I’ll just go hunt out another tool, because this will not be the last time that Topaz does a rug-pull. It is not a one-off, the rug-pull is a pattern and a trend. The message is received loud and clear.
”There’s an old saying in Tennessee - I know it’s in Texas, probably in Tennessee - that says, fool me once, shame on you. Fool me…err…twice - you can’t get fooled again”
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I do something very similar, except that I use ffmpeg RAW as the intermediate format.
I am really hoping that the export commands and command prompt being gone are a bug since I have been using them for YEARS now.
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I really wish this was a bug. However, I’m sure it’s intentional as there were several things leading up to this e.g:
- change to the EULA
- CLI documention removed
- A recent comment by Topaz support
Don’t be surprised if this is quickly moved from “Bugs and Issues” to “General” so it’s less visible. Topaz have been trying to keep this quiet as much as possible. But us CLI users are not going to let them!
Andy
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No CLI breaks my workflows and so…yeah…done with this app. I guess I’ll have to figure out some other solution.
And I get that I can spelunk the log to grab the command line, but it’s still a bad look to see what appears to be the sunsetting of this feature.
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I am really hoping that the export commands and command prompt being gone are a bug since I have been using them for YEARS now.
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LOL what a joke. You should refund everyone for being so dense.
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So, here we are moved to General from Bugs and Issues, as I predicted.
At first, I was surprised how long it took - but then I realised it would have given the game away if the thread had been moved before the “official” announcement of CLI removal.
But given how quickly this thread was moved following the announcement - that was rather rubbing salt into the wounds. Apparently, Topaz no longer consider removal of the CLI to be an issue.
I have no doubts whatsoever that the grand scheme behind this involves making more money, one way or another. We all know the official reasons give are utter nonsense, to put it politely.
Andy
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Well, at least they haven’t made this a personal message yet (as they’ve done with many other threads/posts that aren’t welcome)
Intentionally removing mission critical functionality is a feature, not a bug.
May I introduce to you our savior SeedVR2?
It’s a bit tricky to install at first, but after a couple of inevitable tries and errors you’ll have a working solution to upscale at least up to 1452x816 at 16Gb VRAM GPU.
You are totally welcome to ask any questions about best workflows and configurations.
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