Solution for old school cartoons

Topaz Video AI General
1

Hi everyone,
I have been searching the internet and bumped into topaz AI video 4.
I read some discussions and I believe that is what I want.
I would like to upscale and denoise some of my old school cartoons which now I have in mpeg, avi and mp4 format.
Some of them come from VHS rip and the quality is far from perfect.
More or less Topaz is what I want but I would also like to confirm with you before I go and purchase it, as I want to avoid buying something that will be an overkill.

So my question:

Is Topaz the right tool for what I want or I could do my job with cheaper products?

Thanking you in advance

2

I have found in my testing that I needed a mix of open source tools and Topaz to get the results I wanted for various like 90s/00s animated shows.

I would go from ISOs or Remuxes and then do QTGMC deinterlacing, pop them into TVAI for a cleanup and then use Cupscale/Waifu2X with various models.

In this way I could get the results I needed. Note that this testing was back around Topaz V2.6/V3 days. I haven’t really tried with the latest versions and latest models.

Ultimately it’s going to depend how picky you are and how much you value your time. You can download Topaz and run it in trial mode (watermark) to see if you get the results you desire?

3

No, Topaz Video AI is not the right tool for the job. It does a horrendous job with cartoons.

The best paid video AI programs for upscaling cartoons are VideoProc Converter AI and HitPaw Video Enhancer. The best free program is video2x. They all have models that are specifically trained for cartoons.

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4

Thanks my friend. I did not understand that I was so failed to correctlyjudge the tool.
I will take a look on what you suggested

5

cleaning up a cartoon can be done with TVAI but interpolating to a higher FPS … that is something entirely different.

6

And what do i need to change th FPS, in this case?

7

i´m not proficient enough to give detailed answers, but the program “flowframes” seems like a good 1st place to visit…

GitHub - lisiyao21/AnimeInterp: The code for CVPR21 paper "Deep Animation Video Interpolation in the Wild" also seems like something to watch out for.

8

I would say the best thing for you to do in order to see if Topaz supplies what you are looking for and meets your expectations, is to Download it and test it for yourself.
you can run it in Demo mode , which is fully functional. the only difference is that you will have a Topaz watermark on your rendered video, but that is not an issue if you want to asses the results of the video process.

9

Yeah I was about to do so. But wanted to check with the community as well to get a better view.

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10

I think that Artemis Medium Quality does a good job at cartoons. With them being from VSH though, I’m not so sure that will end up being the best model.

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11

Yes. I’d also recommend giving Artemis LQ/MQ a try.

You can use the free version of TVAI for that and maybe the result is OK for you (it’s not THAT bad even with cartoons).

12

The best paid video AI programs for upscaling cartoons are VideoProc Converter AI
What? That program is barely above shovelware. There’s only 4 AI models and there’s no settings to adjust for any of the models. Plus you can’t properly adjust the quality of the saved video file (no video or audio bitrate settings, no two pass option, etc). It’s junk.