Hallucinations in Starlight/Astra Quality

I’m at a conundrum with Starlight/Astra speed vs quality. (Note: Starlight and Astra Precise produce the exact same results for me… I’ll just say Starlight from this point forward.)

Starlight Quality tends to clean up not only video noise but also things like static. But it does it too much, where it removes static that’s supposed to be there for effect purposes. Starlight Speed tends to in some cases actually add noise (like cloud-like slightly white bands on a black background), but it does leave original “effects” intact most of the time.

The biggest issue with normal Starlight Quality is that it tends to hallucinate particle effects, especially in scenes with mostly black backgrounds.

Could this improve in the future?

Original clip:

­­­­⁤⁤⁡⠀

Starlight Quality:



Starlight Sped:

This isn’t a complete solution, but I have found that the hallucinations can be reduced by processing source video from a 16:9 ratio. So, if the source footage is 1920 x 800, then re-encode it as 1920 x 1080 with letterbox black bars. (I just use Selur Hybrid with CRF=1 and very slow.) I haven’t tested this extensively however. The hallucinations still happen. Wish this could be fixed! :face_with_bags_under_eyes: