Topaz Video AI Beta 7.1.0.0b

Topaz Video AI 7.1.0.0b

Hi everyone,

Today we have a new Beta release with a few new updates!
See more details below:


7.1.0.0b Downloads


Improvements and Fixes

  • Cross-Scene Artifact Suppression for Frame Interpolation
  • 10x Faster Starlight Mini in the Cloud
  • [PRO ONLY] GPU selection
  • Fixed export resolution limit for the VP9 Codec

Just in case you missed it!

  • Film Stock Presets: Light, Medium & Strong
    • Note: Enables 2nd enhancement when selected
  • MiniDV Preset
    • A great starting point for interlaced MiniDV videos
  • Added option to disable live export in preferences
  • Added option to disable live render in preferences
  • EXR Alpha Support: Big for professionals. Available to all.
  • DPX Non-Conversion: Big for professionals. Available to all.
  • Fixed cloud renders from duplicating frames when using frame interpolation.

Cross-Scene Artifact Suppression for Frame Interpolation

With Scene Detection enabled, the Slow Motion function for videos, is better equipped to handle videos with cuts. This enabled feature will treat each shot/clip between cuts as independent entities. This will prevent blending/smearing of frames from the previous or next shot from your full video.

  • While rendering, this will split the scenes as individual parts. Ref Image: (Green) Original Source, (Red Arrow) Scene parts, (Yellow Arrow) processing scene.

  • Within the Render Queue, if a process errors and the “Retry Failed Scenes” message populates under the Status section of the render Queue. Simply Click the highlighted “Retry Failed Scenes” button to continue the render.


    image

  • If a crash does occur, the individual parts will remain so that you can continue from where you left off rather than having to re-render the entire video.

  • Once the entirety of the render completes, the individual scenes will be stitched back into a single video. Ref Image: (Green) Original Source, (Blue Arrow) Rendered Video.

Known Issues:

  • Preview has been disabled. It will produce successful renders.

  • Mac Preview will look incorrect. It will produce successful renders.

  • At this time, you will need to export locally to take advantage of this feature.

  • Please note, that FPS are currently exporting at a variable rate with this option.


Starlight Mini: 10x Faster in the Cloud!

image

Starlight Mini, the second diffusion-based upscaling model Topaz Labs has released, is now up to 10x faster in the Cloud when compared to its original iteration. Starlight Mini brings what makes the Original Starlight so special, into a more friendly and cost effective alternative on the Cloud.

Some Starlight Mini Reminders below

  • Starlight Mini is still a large resource intensive AI Model, so long renders are expected.
  • Recommended to use square-pixel video footage at or under 1920x1080 to avoid any aspect ratio shifts
  • Starlight Mini renders up to 4K resolution. Note: Starlight Mini output resolution options are limited.
  • Starlight Mini is a standalone enhancement and can’t be combined with other filters.
  • Please note that if you have text that is too small, blurry or inconsistent, the result may not be “sp3ll3d” correctly. If you can barely make it out, so will the AI model. It may assume that the text is a texture or pattern.
  • If you have interlaced videos, it is recommended that you deinterlace first before enhancing with Starlight Mini.

Learn more about Starlight Mini: Here


Pro GPU: Selection

Those with Pro accounts that have multiple GPUs, will be able to select the specific GPU for processing.


Just in case you missed it!

Presets for Film Stock

The following Film Stock Presets will require a second pass enhancement. At default this feature is not enabled. Please refer to the Second Pass Enhancement web doc for enabling and more information.

Film Stock 4K Light


This setup is for film or progressive older footage that need a light touch to bring out some details.

  • 4K preset
  • This preset has stabilization enabled as many older family films did not have a physical stabilizer for the time. You can disable this task for faster results.
  • Much of this setting can be used as a base and further modified to your liking.

Film Stock 4K Medium


This setup is for film or progressive older footage that need an extra push from the light touch version. This uses a different set of filters for the overall treatment.

  • 4K preset
  • This preset has stabilization enabled as many older family films did not have a physical stabilizer for the time. You can disable this task for faster results.
  • Works best with high contrast black & white films like the example above. Please ensure that “Black & White” is checked (within the Input Settings -Gear Button next to Presets), if your film is grayscale.
  • Much of this setting can be used as a base and can be partially modified to your liking.

Film Stock 4K Strong


This setup is for film or progressive older footage with lots of grain/digital noise.

  • 4K preset
  • This preset has stabilization enabled as many older family films did not have a physical stabilizer for the time. You can disable this task for faster results.
  • Great results for 8mm/Super 8mm films digitally captured with products such as Wolverine Data MovieMaker PRO, Kodak Reels Digitizer and Eyesen Film Scanner Digitizer.
  • Also good results with grainy 16mm telecine digital files.
  • Much of this setting can be used as a base and can be partially modified to your liking.

Preset for MiniDV

This setup is for MiniDV or digitally captured videos that made use of Interlaced footage (horizontal fields) for the time. MiniDV saw a large range of quality variations and conditions throughout it’s reign beginning around 1995 and ending around the late 2000’s. There was a huge use case scenarios with home movies to actual television shows and feature films.

MiniDV Int HD Basic


Due to the large quality and use case scenarios, the settings is a basic starting point for interlaced MiniDV footage. The intention of this preset is to get an average result that looks good in many cases. This setting is therefore intended to be modified.

  • HD Preset. Can be adjusted to 4k.
  • To make use of the Interlaced footage the settings are prepared with the Interlaced Video Type category.
  • The resolution is set to custom in order to keep the aspect ratio and pixel type as Square Pixel. Change accordingly.
  • This setting is intentionally and fully modifiable as a solid base for further refinement.

Disable Live Export


You can now disable or enable the Live Export viewer.

  • You can find this option within the Preferences menu under the Advanced Features section.
  • Please note that this is enabled by default.

Disable Live Render


You can now disable or enable the Live Render function.

  • You can find this option within the Preferences menu under the Advanced Features section.
  • When disabled, areas that do not have a rendered preview will automatically play the original source.
  • Please note that this is enabled by default.

EXR Alpha Support


EXRs with an Alpha channel, can now be supported by giving you the option to enable Alpha channel outputs via the codec settings.

*Note, that at this time EXRs with Alpha may show transparency of the alpha as a checkerboard pattern in the preview. Outputs do not perform any matte operations, so the full of the RGB image will remain intact. Refer to the example below:


DPX Non-Conversion


No longer will DPX files need to be converted to Tiffs when working with Video AI. Now you can use DPX files like any other image sequence.


Enjoy the updates with 7.1.0.0b!

9 Likes

Does scene detection work with PNG output? I tried a super short clip with one change, and it came out the same as the version before.

Starlight Mini for macOS please? don’t care about the cloud, sorry… Thanks.

12 Likes

No Starlight Mini for macOS with M-series chips yet? When’s it coming?

8 Likes

Nothing for me here unfortunately. Wake me up when local starlight mini gets a 10x speed boost.

19 Likes

“…in the cloud” Man, I can’t wait for open source solutions to take off.

10 Likes

Pay to play… This stuff doesn’t just work off fairy dust.

Sorry to sound harsh but this is just the way things work.

2 Likes

I’m so disappointed I can’t even put it into words. Weeks and months of waiting for this?? You’re listing the presets from the last beta again to fill out the text a bit??? Are you serious??? People are waiting for news about computing on their local computers. Will there be anything coming or not? Why isn’t anyone from Topaz telling us whether there will be updates to SLM that we can use on our home computers or not??

16 Likes

When we get VFR out with the new “Scene Detection” function then it’s useless. For Beta it’s ok but for Life it must be CFR

3 Likes

Hello everyone, I too thought I would see something new in this new beta update of TVEAI, but it is more than disappointing. Months and weeks without more news, and with the length of the wait, I would have hoped to really see new models for example, a higher speed for Starlight Mini locally, at first I thought that the software was dead or if they were going to make a new software since there was nothing left, I asked myself the question. Because this had already happened to other software, no more news, then one day they announced that they had redone the software from A to Z for better optimization etc… But there, months and weeks to release what we already know in the previous beta version concerning the presets and the higher speed of starlight mini in the cloud etc.. Either they are making fun of us, customers who pay a fortune each year to use the software, or they only listen to themselves and not the customers what they need most… It makes you think when you see that sincerely! If there will be more disappointed than us two, we will understand why… When I read the news of this beta, I said to myself no point in installing it because there is nothing new. Either the development team behind it is frankly not motivated to really release more correct things than what already exists, or the developers do not care about the customers who pay for expensive software and the payment each year for the update. When I see this new beta, I honestly have no more words to say… just DISAPPOINTING

10 Likes

Have to agree that this is disappointing. 3 things that should be fairly easy to fix or implement but still haven’t been addressed:

  1. Fix the pause/resume feature for the Starlight Mini model. This has been reported since the first Starlight Mini Beta release.
  2. Fix the rotation of vidoes. This has also been reported since the first Starlight Mini Beta release.
  3. Fix LUT for the Starlight Mini model.
9 Likes

For me, this choice of splitting and creating various videos according to the “found” scenes can be okay, but it has to be an option and a choice: I would like to have the option of having the usual “single” video as usual but obviously with the scene changes optimized to eliminate the interpenetrations between one scene and another!
@erasmo.topazlabs @tony.topazlabs @dakota.wixom

The release notes state it stitches the parts back together to make a single output video.

The thing with SLM was for me foreseeable.
They invested in huge render machines and want to make “the big money”.

Again: this business model/case is absolutely unrealistic.

Cloud rendering costs =
90 credits per minute x 45 minutes = 4.050 credits “per VHS/S-VHS/Hi8 tape”.
4.050 credits per tape x 90 credits (per minute) x 0,07$ (per minute) =
270$ per VHS-/S-VHS/Hi8 tape.

100 tapes VHS/S-VHS/Hi8 = 26.999$
150 tapes VHS/S-VHS/Hi8 = 40.498$

Who should have and spend so much money only for video rendering?

9 Likes

Right you’re right… I hadn’t noticed that in the end it still remains the only “final” merged video!

Let’s say, at this point, it would be nice to be able to choose to have both “types” of processing anyway, i.e., both the FINAL UNITED video with the various optimized cuts, and to have the various clips of each scene change (which can be useful for video editing of them)!

1 Like

surely not private peoples who don’t earn money with family vids uploads. The Cloud is professional use only, or rarely private users having some rare vids they are worth to buy the high price, but not for the mass. For mass we have TVAI and I’m say thank you giving us SLm. But now again nothing happens , as we had before. Topaz does not fix reported mayour bugs and ignore suggested must have functions like pause/resume, the program still drops last frame since x-versions etc.

7 Likes

In addition I don’t feel really comfortable to send private/family footage through the web.

5 Likes

Why doesn’t anyone at Topaz feel addressed? What are your future plans? Will there be speed updates for Starlight Mini or not? I don’t mean updates for the cloud model, but for home computers. Why aren’t you talking openly and transparently with us?

14 Likes

I noticed my non-beta install of topaz just prompted me to run system check and redownload starlight, was it improved for non cloud in any way?

Sometimes for iphone rotated video (the video is portrait to the viewer, more tall than wide) and starlight it handles it wrong in the export command:

  1. This results in no error, but the output is not correctly rotated (video is more wide than tall and is 90 degress clockwise versus the source):
    “scale=w=568:h=320,setsar=1”
  2. This results in error
    “scale=w=568:h=320,setsar=1,crop=w=320:h=568:x=0:y=0”

So it should not try to crop, but instead should add a rotation flag of 90 degrees just like the source.

Please add iphone portrait mode low res videos to the video clips I assume are used to test releases internally. I already submitted logs for the past beta release related to this, same error.