Hi there
Help is desperately needed by someone who doesn’t know anything about video formats, processing, enhancing…you name it:
I have lots of video material (family) between 35 and 20 years old. It was originally taken in Video 8 or mini DVD format. I had everything converted on CD (by a professional service) way before HDTV existed. The original tapes are no longer usable (I suppose).
With Win 11, I got Clipchamp and had it all converted into .mp4 with 30 fps and 1920x1080.
I would like to use Topaz Video to enhance quality to a reasonable degree; but I certainly won’t check every scene to find the best settings. I have more than 4000 credit points at Topaz and a Win 11 PC with 32 GB Ram, Ryzen 5 CPU and AMD Radeon RX6600 8 GB GPU.
Can anybody tell me what I should do to get the best result in terms of effort/result ratio? Should I start with the CDs or with the Clipchamp mp4s? Which Topaz model should I choose? Which settings?
Whoever considers answering should think of me as a toddler: Take nothing for granted.
Thanks a lot in advance
Which model to start with: For family footage like yours, I’d recommend starting with either Proteus or Iris. These are our core enhancement models and are great for improving overall clarity, reducing noise, and sharpening older footage without requiring a lot of manual adjustment. Both have an automatic mode that will analyze your footage and apply settings on its own, so you won’t need to tweak anything manually if you don’t want to.
If you try those and feel like the results could be better, Starlight Mini is worth exploring as it can produce more impressive results on older footage. However, your AMD Radeon RX6600 doesn’t meet the minimum system requirements to run Starlight locally. The good news is you have cloud credits, which means you can run Starlight through our cloud rendering service instead without needing to upgrade your hardware.
Here are a couple of resources to help you get started:
Here is our Quick Start Guide for Topaz Video as you get started with the app, which includes descriptions of each filter’s use case and video tutorials.
Additionally, here is a Topaz Video overview video.
You definitely should start from the very beginning: the CDs. Any conversion in general adds processing errors and it’s harder to correct them afterwards.
I’d recommend Starlight mini with a minimal resolution first and Iris FullHD as a second part.
Export settings for Starlight Mini - mp4 High would be enough, but you can set constant bitrate 50 Mb/s for example.
I know it’s a long process but there is no better alternative than Starlight Mini for an old footage (in Topaz ecosystem).
Thanks to both of you. I’ll certainly be back with more questions… In the meantime I’m fighting other wars…
