Today we are releasing the next major update to Video AI, version 5.0.
This release is focused on making Video AI a project-based tool, allowing you to save sessions and come back to them at any time.
Previews and filter settings are now stored in Workspaces and can be saved to any folder or drive on your system.
Exports can now be paused and resumed even in cases of an app crash, system crash, or unexpected power loss. Paused exports are saved to disk and Video AI’s processing is completely exited, freeing up all memory and processor utilization.
Some more detail on the new features in Video AI v5:
1. Workspaces
Video AI now keeps a library of active previews and exports, allowing for project-style organization.
Your app workspace will be saved and reloaded to pick up sessions exactly where you left off using the same preview files.
2. Pause/Resume for Exports
You can now pause and resume exports in Video AI.
Prioritize different queue items on-the-fly, start up a different project, or even switch to a GPU-intensive game without losing render progress.
Even after system reboots, power loss, or unexpected crashes, your export sessions can be restored.
Paused exports are saved to disk, freeing up all CPU and GPU utilization.
3. Wonder UI Refresh
New colors & icons across all Topaz Labs apps for a unified, streamlined look.
4. Nyx v3
Nyx 3 improves the consistency of denoising across a wider variety of videos.
The accuracy of the auto-parameter estimation has been improved, and the sharpen control has been restored.
The model no longer sharpens by default, significantly reducing the unnatural grainy texture ( orange peel artifacts ). The figure below illustrates this issue in Nyx 2 and the result from Nyx 3.
Trimming Video Bug. When using Trimming video The Audio isn’t trim with it and it will just copy the whole audio of the entire video. The video itself will trim but not the audio. I have to rollback to the older version to upscale to fix the audio issue
My feedback may be a bit superficial but the new logo/icon looks really ugly and cheap. Reminds me of 20 year old shareware MP4 Media Transcoder for PocketPCs and phones. Do you really think that changing the colour scheme from blue to green is beneficial for the brand recognition?
I noticed something strange with the mp4 export. The video files I load show the entire video length in the timeline, but my exported test video was only a few minutes long. Anyone else seeing this?
Copy and Pasting settings to multiple selected files still does not work. You have to paste to each file individually.
Do you think you could reposition the CROP buttons closer together. At the moment you have to go from top right to far left to push AUTO CROP then back over to right to apply. Could the AUTO CROP button be moved over to the right closer to the cancel/apply buttons?
I personally liked it when the partially completed file was saved in the directory I wanted the final file saved. Now it looks like it’s in the original source directory as a temp file like “original.file.23423412.mkv” and is even split up between multiple chunks of video for some reason? Was much nicer when I could just go to the saved directory, open the file in VLC, and see how the video was turning out, second by second.
I figure this has something to do with the new pause/crash recovery function, which is neat, but I feel like there must be a better way to handle that.
Plus yeah, like someone else mentioned. Acid green accents are an eyesore. The blue/lavender color was perfect.
Thanks for the ability to save projects! But now, with a project saved (to a custom folder, specified in settings), the app is not opening. I am on Mac, the ball is spinning forever, I force quit, re-open, same thing. The work around so far - rename the project folder so that the app opens clean
I was hoping that in this version there would already be a sound signal (can be switched on and off in Preferences) when all the processes are finished, but it still hasn’t been included.
That is going to cause problems when the source file is on a slow drive, a space-constrained drive, a read-only drive, or simply a drive that is not the output destination drive.
In the case of having source and destination files on different drives, does that now add a time-consuming drive-to-drive copy when converting temporary to final (rather than an instantaneous in-place rename)?
Also, there are established places for storing temporary files (eg: %TEMP%) which avoids cluttering user project space and makes cleanup easier when things go wrong or are abandoned while incomplete.
EDIT: I went to extract the old icon to customize the Start Menu shortcut to escape the green glow and discovered the embedded icon is non-standard to the point that icon editors have trouble opening it: 1044, 522, 266, 100, 68, 50, 42, 34x33, 26x25, 18x17 (not 1024, 512, 256, 128, 64, 48, 32, 24, 16 square). If the OS ends up having to rescale the icons, they won’t be as crisp.
V5.0 still has the same Proteus override bug that I have reported on multiple previous versions, despite engaging with Kyle via support email for the last few months and him in turn passing this info on the bug onto the devs multiple times.
Glad to see that a pause function has finally been added, but to be honest the implementation is somewhat poor when you have multiple files queued up, because if you want to pause everything you can only pause one export at a time and even then you can only pause the next item in the queue once it has started encoding, so if you have tens of exports queued up it will take ages to pause the whole batch.
I really wish Topaz would take a look at other current media encoding software interfaces and take note of some of the basic functionality that these have had pretty much from the get go (from open source through to pro level software), especially with how multiple files are handled, as it seems they are really not appreciating how frustrating the current interface is when you’re trying to batch encode large numbers of files and not just do the odd video here and there.
if there will be no easy to use solution to view the video during processing anymore I would have to revert back to the 4.x version. in the last beta i was not even able to fnd the temporary file at all.
I think you’re on the right path with this UI. I’m not talking about the color scheme or the icon because it’s subjective and not important for the video restoration process.
It looks more like Gigapixel AI now, which is a good thing. I personally want something square-looking, like a real professional tool. For me, the Gigapixel interface is perfect.
I don’t know if it’s just some placebo feeling, but I have less problems grabbing the edges of the window now. During all of V4.x.x, I often couldn’t resize the window by grabbing some corners or edges.
It looks more responsive.
I think you could add just one little superficial setting. A way to change the accent color. I like the green one; it looks good, especially with the dark ones, but I can see some people complaining about that. The setting would limit them, in my opinion.
