Okay, so I got an email stating that Starlight Mini was available on Astra. It took me a rather long time to find it. I found it quite difficult to find; if I wasn’t looking for it I never would have guessed that it was even there. Somebody might want to rethink that interface design, or place some instructions there to help newcomers find their way around. So I uploaded my video, it rendered quickly, and I downloaded it. Apple Quicktime refused to play the resulting mp4 file. So there is something not quite right with your encoding engine. No problem, I dropped it into handbrake, and re-encoded it, now it plays fine. Only, it is a very weird resolution - 1280 x 848. I was expecting it to upscale to 1080p, not 848p, as that is what the regular Starlight web model gives me. The original video was 720 x 480, so I could understand 1440 x 960, as that would be a clean 2x upscale. But 848p? That is not even a 2x upscale. The quality was also not very good, not as good as Rhea, (but how could it be good if it’s not even a 2x upscale?) I was really excited to try Starlight Mini, as the regular Starlight model has lots of ghosting and strobing issues with high motion scenes. I look forward to trying Starlight Mini again once you get it fixed.
Hmmmmm… Are they playing around with names again? Most recently, the two variations of Starlight available in Astra were called Precise and Creative. Is there really one called Starlight Mini now, as well?
The name game has been baffling.
Starlight Mini was renamed Starlight in Topaz Video for local processing, and coexists with Starlight Sharp in the app.
Starlight can also be exported to ‘the cloud’, costing credits to run. Is the cloud version the same in terms of quality, but simply runs faster on the cloud hardware?
Circling back, has something called Starlight Mini been added to Astra?
| From their email: |
|---|
”Here’s what’s new - More models. Precise Mode now has an expanded library
of enhancement models. In addition to Starlight, you can use Proteus for
all-purpose enhancement, Starlight Mini for fast-motion, Nyx for
denoising, and more, including new affordable model options.”
Creativity slider. Creative Mode now has a 3-level “Creativity Strength” slider (Subtle, Medium, and Bold) for more control over the creativity.”
Thank you for sharing this! Guess maybe I’ll see that same email. Sometime… 
Or maybe not… 
It would be great if I could use Starlight Mini directly as a web app. That way, I could upload videos without any loss of quality, whereas the local app re-encodes them before uploading.
I want at least uploading in 4:2:2 and not 4:2:0 …
It hurts very much, because my source is cgi-videos with only 320x160p
The issues around the export not playing in Quicktime and output resolution not adhering are known bugs that the team is looking into resolving.
As far as the naming, Starlight Mini in Video AI was renamed to Starlight in Topaz Video.
In Astra, it was added as Starlight Mini. It is the same model.
The original Starlight that was first released in Video AI v7, is now Precise - Starlight Quality in Astra.
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