Please i beg you to add a custom output bitrate for mp4 h264 vids, since the default bitrate is way above the limit that makes a difference in image quality this makes the file larger and rendering taking way more time than it should.
Make the custom option where you can digit the value you want from at least 1.000 to 100.000.
Thanks.
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Please no all capitals and the correct section to post in is the Video Enhance AI Discussion, not the Showoff Spot/ Video Enhance AI section.
The output is CRF, not constant bitrate, which is much better in staying at the same quality level. Only for fixed bitrate usecases you need the bitrate mode.
I wish the software explained better what CRF was - I never heard of it before and have no idea what to change it to beyond the default of 17. Range appears to be 0 to 35. Is 0 or 35 more compressed or less?
I don´t want to be that guy or sound rude… But:
google: “x264 crf”…
Seriously… Of course, we could expect VEAI to explain everything, but the line has to be drawn somewhere. If something that easy, that is explained for decades in millions of FAQs, Manuals, Readmes, etc… has to be explained - what else will we expect? “what is a file” ? “what does MP4 stand for” ? “What is Prores…”. I am a total fan of “user friendlyness”, but 1 minute of reading and googling isn´t too much to ask in my oppinion.
to answer your question:
the lower CRF, the better the quality, the bigger the file. CRF = 0 = losless. 17 is a good starting point, that´s why its chosen.
I second this about adding bit rate option. Please allow me to explain further why.
The problem
Video Enhance AI can take a considerable amount of time to complete. Until the job is finished there is really no way to tell how large the file is going to be when we use CRF. In my last case the video ended up taking over 200 GB, the disk got full and Video Enhance AI crashed.
Video (perceived) quality is paramount for the users, right? After all we are “enhancing” a videos with Video Enhance AI. So I assume most users just set the CRF to 0 or leave it to default. Setting the CRF to, say 26 tells the user nothing about how the end result will look.
Bit rate is very important for streaming videos these days and CRF says nothing to the customer about file size, quality, perceived quality, encoding time etc…
Since I am producing videos for streaming, the bit rate is crucial to ensure that the video maintains a certain bandwidth and does not have to be transcoded. Since Video Enhance AI does not allow to set the bit rate I have to set the CRF to 0 to avoid as much generation loss as possible, since I will have to re-encode the video at a later point to the desired bit rate.
Now you might say, “why not just set the CRF to a higher value?” Doing this will degrade the video and further introduce generation loss when I have to re-encode the video again.
It is obvious that Topaz is trying to keep these available settings at a minimum, making the UI as user friendly as possible. But please remember that it is extremely inconvenient to have to do the job all over again because the file size got too big or the bitrate was too big or too low.
Possible solution
Please add the possibility to set the bit rate for the video. It will be a tremendous help for streamers, podcasters, vlogers and the like. At least add the option to set the bit rate for the video only.
Temporary workaround
For now, a workaround is to export the video to images and later concatenate these to a video in another software like FFmpeg. As you can understand this is very impractical because the images will take a huge amount of space and it will require a lot of tedious work with the settings…
They could do that, or something I think a lot of programs (not just VEAI) should do is allow people to put in their own FFMPEG script to use during encoding, that way you’ll have full control of the video with minimal generation loss.
Of course, not everyone will know what it is/how to use it, so in that case, it should be only accessible through some sort of advanced option menu/toggle. That way, people who know what they’re doing can use it, and those who don’t can stick with the built-in one.
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