I’m actually one of those ones that prefers Voyager as well. I’ve completed Voyager and am almost done with DS9. My work has been featured in a lot of online websites so that was pretty cool.
Playlist of samples I published if you are interested… https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLuSWTLWPMz7pLMZQULGdUnINa9EZgH8eJ
Unfortunately, Topaz VEAI has had issues handling audio from the beginning. It would in fact be better to extract the audio and then merge, just like you said.
Actually, your work was one of the factors that inspired me to do my own upscale (the other being the works of Joel Hruska).
I’ve been trying to figure out how to do this? And I haven’t had any luck. I’ve tried using Handbrake and VLC player to have a separate audio file and then use mkvtoolnix to add that audio file to the enhanced file Topaz made, but whenever I attempt it, it immediately fails and gets an error.
It’s weird because some shows I work on have sound, and some don’t. But everything I’ve worked on came from a DVD and is SD going to HD. And from what I can tell, the audio is the same, but some shows work and some don’t, and I can’t explain why?
There can be many reasons for that.
But right off the bat here are a couple of things that come to mind:
Without knowing more details, it’s difficult.
Thank you for the suggestion. I will give that a try and see what happens. Thanks again.
Even if it works, you don’t WANT the audio from VEAI. It is reduced quality and forced to stereo.
What I started doing was allowing the audio to be lost and then just re-inserting the audio from the original source file onto the newly Video Enhance AI version using MKVtooknix. That seems to work.
What worked for you regarding the variable frame rate? This is something I’m really struggling with. I have all of DS9 and Voyager ripped already with MakeMKV. And I run the file through the program, get it all at one frame rate, put the original audio back into it with MKVtoolnix and then afterwards the picture itself looks pretty decent, but the picture seems shaky and jittery. And I haven’t an easy way to deal with this particular issue. Since you’ve done most of both series, I was wondering if you could give me some instructions on what worked for you?
This is probably a silly question as I realize it’s unlikely it could be this simple, but I’m a newbie, so I’m going to ask anyway. Couldn’t you just take an episode of DS9 ripped with MakeMKV, run it through Dione TD to HD, and then make a second pass with Chronos to lower to frame rate back down to 23.98? That would fix the frame rate issue wouldn’t it? And would make the process substantially simpler?
Hello again community.
I have something new for you, upscaling Star Trek Voyager (Pilotepisode). Password always: VOYUp.
Comparison Images (DVD on the left, upscale on the right):
Videosample (downsized from 4K to 1080p for size reasons):
Let me know what you think!
After going backwards and forward in Season 4 constantly changing my mind, I took a break for a bit on upscaling Voyager to get back a bit of free time for work, so I had left this for a little bit. I did not see, until now, this post for Caretaker which interests me as almost every example I see is always DS9 - and while I like DS9, I have no intention of starting that project till Voyager is complete (whenever that may be lol).
Caretaker, I hate to say, was my first attempt at upscaling. It was literally the very first video I tried to use TVEAI to upscale - back on 1.6.3 I believe (or thereabouts). I remember it was my first experience also with VFR content and overall, that episode still gives me small nightmares upscaling.
Having said that, I was happy with how it turned out, and this post made me decide to go back and see if I can improve it.
Well.
Doesn’t this remind me of why I hate this episode.
One thing I completely forgot about was that Caretaker is different - like very different from most other episodes. I had forgotten that after all the work done originally, moving onto the next episode I had to start from scratch again as nothing worked. Using the same methods on Caretaker as other episodes just kept giving worse results. In the end, I chalked this up to it being a Pilot and the video quality being … different somehow.
I thought I would start with trying my current method for season 3 and 4, now after year or so experience and many updates, and surprise surprise, it failed miserably. Even today, after all this time and updates to TVEAI, something about Caretaker requires a specific process dedicated for that episode alone, whereas most usual episodes can copy a lot of the process.
Couple that with the most noticeable VFR of any episode, and double length, combine to make re-doign that episode a pain in the butt.
But anyway, after that long preamable back into a bit more information.
There are some photos I like in the attached, specifically, the CGI. The CGI I noticed on Caretaker has taken a lot more effort for me to get something I liked, and overall your CGI shots look pretty good.
The live image shots are a bit of mixed bag. I like some of them, albeit a bit smoother than I personally like (but thats user preference), but some show strange colour changes, particularly Kes’s face from the plant - her face is basically orange in the change.
I suspect this has to do with the ChromaNoise=True value of QTGMC. I know that enabling that will always colour shift the source image - sometimes its not noticeable, other times like the Kes image, stands out as strange.
Having said that, some pictures of close up Janeway look very nice.
The video clip has the telltale sign of decimating from 29.97 back to 23.976 in the opening battle scene. This is one of the frustrating things for me for this episode as while it is only about 2% video and 98% film, the video portions include the very first opening battle scene, not to mention the opening crawl. Its always irritated me that if I decimate like this, the very first scene of the episode feels choppy and strange.
My original upscale used transferring it back into a VFR video after upscale to preserve it, but I also don’t really like that as it makes it less compatible to work with.
So reading your post on the weekend gave me some oomph into re-looking at this episode and seeing if I can do better than my original first upscale - and also do better with the CGI. Its upscaling the live action at the moment, going to take all day today to complete, and then I have to do the CG scenes separately using a different method that seems to work well.
Ironically I still had trouble matching the quality (for me personally) on recent version of TVEAI, so its back into 1.6.3.
As its not even half way through, and the CG sections are being redone separately (and I am at work), I don’t have a lot to share, but this is an example from the opening scene with Janeway. Also happy to give some more examples once its actually done if desired.
Extremely well made guide that goes step-by-step and outlines the software and overall process. No improvements you could have made to your guide, everything was straightforward. Thanks for making this Derek.
Thanks! I’m glad you found it helpful 
