When will Starlight be implemented in Topaz Video AI for Windows?
Unfortunately, the currently available models in Topaz Video AI 6 do not provide significantly better results than the free program ffmpeg.
Best regards
Richard
You are joking I hope ?
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Well Richard, many of us have given up on that idea since Topaz appears to be concentrating on subscription based cloud rendering. Plus, Starlight, as it now, would require some serious hardware at home for local processing.
Yeah it would be nice if Topaz updated and added new local models, but that doesn’t appear to be their focus for the time being.
The VideoAI software is likely based on core ffmpeg and that’s why you see the similarities. Using ffmpeg is the bulk of Topaz’s problems since it’s basically a program in constant development. My opinion
No, I’m not joking. I regret buying Topaz video AI. It was not worth it.
Regards
RG
I’ve found Topaz customer support to be fair and reasonable. Why don’t you contact them and see if they will give you a refund. Of course that would depend on how long you’ve had the software.
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The reason I asked about you joking is do you understand the difference between TVAI and FFMPEG.
From your response you clearly do not.
To say FFMPEG “Enhances” better than TVAI is comical.
Show some examples to back up your claim.
Thank you.
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Thanks for your feedback, Mike. I tested all the AI ​​models in Topaz Video on old VHS movies. I spent some time on it and I can confirm once again that for these movies (VHS, MPEG 720x576, 25 FPS) there is no significant difference in results between Topaz Video AI and ffmpeg program. I am not saying that ffmpeg is better, but the difference in my opinion is almost imperceptible. In contrast, the results obtained in Starlight tests on the same movies are excellent. Hence my question was whether similar models will appear in Topaz Video AI. But like you, I think Topaz may simply have no interest in it, which is understandable. I wonder if Topaz publishes the information about what power (CPU, GPU) is needed for Starlight technology to process simple VHS movies anywhere. I am dwelling on the subject because my only need is to remaster a dozen or so old family movies recorded on VHS tapes “as best as possible”. It would be nice to be able to do it by myself 
Regards
Richard
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Hello Richard - I too am in the same boat as you - looking to process a handful of VHS tapes. Have you come up with a schema for ffmpeg that you are happy with in your conversion process?
I have found this Website, bunch of “tools”, could be usefull 
Hello, sorry, I was 4 months on travel and now I’m back.
So now for me Starlight is very new.
I don’t understand the purpose between Video AI and Starlight.
What I understand is, that Starlight is an online tool where improvements are made online without any control of my Video AI software. Is this right?
And I have to pay an extra fee per clip or duration.
So the Video AI software is obsolate on the end?
Do Starlight use other improvement features than Video AI itselves?
Starlight is full cloud based, TVAI is just a uploading client for Starlight, or you can use Starlight Web Portal without TVAI for uploading Log in | Topaz Labs
Yes you pay per frames and becasue it’s running on H100 GPU Cluster i’ts very expensive for now. They promise give us slimmed-down Starlight working into TVAI soon, and we all hope something good will come out of this. Otherwise I don’t know if I will extend my contract
So I did my first payed Starlight upload, a 4min video SD to 1080p. It takes about 150min, that’s a long time, but I can live with because I rarely use it. The result is good, better than every local models can do…but although I think you can get close to this when doing multiple steps manually, but with a lot of effort.
What I noticed is that Starlight removes noise where it shouldn’t when its part of the content. There’s definitely room for improvements.
What I won’t accept is: Outputs are encoded with setting CFR 20
I pay $60 for a 4min video, wait 2.5 hours, and Topaz delivers this bitrate? You really should change this, go at least to CFR15 which is roughly the bitrate of Blu-Rays. I can understand when you don’t want offer lossless in case of saving your Internet bandwith, but CFR20 is not acceptable for a premium product.
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I’m new to this. I just tried uploading a video for processing through the web interface and I’m getting the message “Could not prepare input video for Starlight rendering. Please try with Topaz Video AI or reach out to support.”
Is the app fussy about what video formats it will accept? My files are at an unusual frame rate, they’re Super 8 captures at 18fps, might that be the problem?
I heard over WebGui they accept not many formats. I did it over TVAI and my source file was AVI lossless, this worked with Starlight.
