It would be very nice if the face “enhancement” feature could be switched off.
2 Likes
Have you found that face distortation is dependent on the quality of the source material ?
I sadly have to add to the choir that 3.0 is a BIG step down. I’m running an rtx 4090 and while performance has improved for me, it can no longer preview properly. It constantly lags behind, i.e no moving picture in preview, then a jump. Once DONE processing, the preview starts working and runs for a long time after. Where is compare? Much less options than before, at least i can’t find a way to get the same granularity, and worst of all, the results are noticeably worse :(. I think it would be Better to keep this a separate “quick process” product, and use the existing one as the more stable and feature rich also going forward. My upgrades end in a month and I’m pretty upset that probably at that time you won’t have fixed this to an acceptable level. I’ll probably need to stick with the older version for a year or two until you get this functional…
3 Likes
Of course, the quality of the input material is always a factor, but since they are now giving faces ‘special’ treatment, this makes for a different situation. The problems with ‘enhancing’ faces is usually at its worst when the source image is low resolution, and the faces are small within the context of the image.
Closeups or large images of faces tend to look good; or at least as good a pre-facial enhancement faces looked. - The problem comes with small faces. It appears that the enhancement algorithm finds little, indistinct faces and overdoes the enhancement, which tends to create speckles and blobs where the facial features should be.
As I mentioned in a previous post, I’d appreciate it if they would provide a way to turn face enhancement on or off, OR provide a slider to control the face enhancement sensitivity level.
2 Likes
I find the Video AI 3.xx interface very frustrating. Things have changed too much and I can’t easily accomplish things that were easy with the v 2.xx versions.
How the hell do you mark the frames you want to process to stills ?
The Brackets for Start and Stop are gone. When I use the Trim, I can’t figure out where the beginning frame or the end frame are.
1 Then when I try to process it, either nothing happens or the output ends up somewhere other than intended. Nor could I find any instructions anywhere
2 Worse yet, prior versions put the output next to where the orig video appeared, now when I look at the Preferences, it looks like I can only set 1 permanent output folder. This is ridiculous.
Why can’t the Interface change minimally, so we don’t have to learn some totally new language. Change the engine as much as necessary but don’t mess w the interface.
I give the developers an F for failing to keep things easy, and especially for failing to provide a Manual, or a video with instructions. There is a video showing how to handle multiple videos at once, but I first need to know how to learn the new FYF%$%# interface.
ADDED LATER - Never mind some of the comments, I noticed that right at the start before importing anything there is NEW USER link and some things are explained. However selecting START and END Frames is not explained, as far as I am concerned, but the Export Location is still totally confusing to me.
6 Likes
“… Closeups or large images of faces tend to look good; or at least as good a pre-facial enhancement faces looked. - The problem comes with small faces. …”
That is exactly what I try to document with my examples shown.
The videos I’m actually processing are originally produced by professionals for TV but squeezed by whatever (270,000 frames into 1,800,000 kB) into progressive 1280x720 format, and mp4 container. Off course it’s a challenge to rebuild original resolution and enlarge again, even more challenging when speed matters (0.3 spf mean up to 22 hours).
TOPAZ has proven AI competence in their photo section where subject detection and face refinement can be done successfully. Well, single image processing @ 11sec/image cannot be applied 1 by 1, but at least TVAI should avoid to invent speckles and blobs when it detects small faces.
1 Like
How do i export multiple videos without making them all have the same settings? I tried adding 20 videos each with their own output settings but it will only export the selected video. If I select all it just makes them have the same settings. undoing all the work I did. Am I doing something wrong?
My issues with 3.0.2 are:
- Panning and zooming during preview causes it to stop responding and show the hourglass cursor of death. I have to kill it off and restart it.
- Processing 2K to 4K using Proteus takes 0.74 spf, whereas in TVEAI 2.6.4 it takes 0.52.
NVIDIA RTX A4000, Intel Xeon Silver 4216, Windows 11
With each iteration it got a little better, but now with V3, it’s actually worse than the V1. I can’t do anything with V3, and I don’t want to reinstall V2. I think the best solution is to extend free upgrades until end users see measurable improvement in video quality and processing speed. We really need a concession from Topaz for this. I’m sure end users, like myself, would appreciate it.
9 Likes
Hi. I can’t provide logs I’m afraid as I’ve uninstalled it, since it was completely unusable for me. It was happening almost every video I tried, plus I’m having the same issues others are wilth lack of features, previews not working well, and results taking so long it’s not feasible.
Can I make a suggestion please? Apologies if I’m repeating something already covered. I like this software and I want it to succeed - I’m even prepared to help try and trouble-shoot and provide feedback. But you cannot expect people to pay for software that is so clearly not ready, knowing they will waste their ‘1 years free updates’ while they can’t even use it. I held off on purchasing until v3 was out because v2, missing some offline reliability, is no good for me. The way things stand I therefore have no choice but to get a full refund and come back in a year and see if it works properly yet, if no other solution presents itself before then.
The alternative is to offer everyone like me an extension to the ‘free updates’ offer while you sort this out, which I think would be very reasonable. If I was offered an extra year of free updates, or as many months as it take to reach a stable v3 that has reasonable feature parity with v2.6.4, then I would not refund, I’d hang around patiently and help provide feedback and wait for it to get better.
Obviously it’s up to you what you do, but I feel there’s a lot of goodwill being blown with this release, and at present I feel like I’m paying you to beta test your software, which isn’t reasonable. You’re obviously under a lot of pressure trying to get the new version back to where 2.6.4 was. Offering loyal customers free updates while you do it would go a very long way in my opinion.
8 Likes
It’s been a big setback but I hope that they can improve. I hope it doesn’t take too long to get back to the same quality and speed as 2.6.4. Then obviously I want things to improve even more.
So far there’s been a huge delay with version 3 and nothing in that version is really any better than 2.6.4, but if they needed to rewrite the code in order to make the future product better I am totally fine with that, I just hope it doesn’t take too long to get there. Other programs are adding face enhancement for video and Topaz is falling behind.
I’d like to see huge speed increases too that use the full capabilities of my GPU.
6 Likes
I agree with your view. I hope Topaz will extend the update period for those of us who purchased 2.6.4 and have since then re-upped, purchasing another year’s updates.
VAI 3.0.2 is simply not a release product, for all the specifics others have articulated.
At this point, I’ve spent ~ 150 hours working with VAI 3.x.x. It was spectacularly successful on one video of a SpaceX launch that I took with a cheap point & shoot. It’s been unusable on seven others - DVD scale-up, DVcam video improvement, and other sources. The shortcomings have been so numerous and varied that I despair of getting ahead of them.
I’ve decided to return to VEAI 2.6.4. On the whole, it gives me better results, it’s faster, and it’s more stable than VAI 3.
I hope VAI 3 will eventually be the stable, innovative, and fabulous product we all want. Meantime, I’m aware that my update period is ticking away, and I don’t have a release product. Topaz needs to address this soon.
13 Likes
Right on! I think I’d prefer the facial recognition capability from V2.x to what is very problematic in V3.0.2. - I can tune Proteus to do a VERY acceptable SD to FHD enhancement; that is until it detects a small face. - Frankly I’d prefer not having that feature to having a feature that makes a mess or forces using a lower enhancement level to avoid the face problem.
AI is a miracle for image enhancement. However, it needs two things to do the job properly. First are recognition samples, which it uses to identify the parts of the image. Next, it needs ‘rules’ to keep the recognition/enhancement process in perspective. When you turn ‘details’ up or ‘sharpen’ up, the AI tries harder to see/enhance the image.
Presently, the face recognition is too aggressive in comparison to other recognition objects, which makes for that dialing in a good image that gets spoiled when it finds (and overdoes) a small face.
2 Likes
Agreed. As far as my testing has found, setting the recover details slider all the way to 100 just darkens a lot of edges of most everything.
1 Like
you’re right. there isn’t any face recognition feature / model or whatever in any version of VEAI / Video Ai since the beginning. i don’t understand why since 2 days, people are talking about this, telling that it must be turned on or off, that’s it’s there and does a bad job etc (lol).
this feature is not available yet in this software, and has never been available before.
5 Likes
I think some people are confused… there is currently no “face refinement” or face recognition feature in VAI. There never has been.
In Gigapixel, the face refinement feature uses a separate model when it’s enabled. I would imagine in VAI that such a feature, if it’s ever implemented, would also use a separate model, and increase the processing time.
This has been a frequently requested feature in fact. I would much rather have a face refinement feature than the new interface or the stabilization model.
7 Likes
** resolved
Make sure your environment variable is correctly pointing to your models directory!
The directory path was different for the betas, so I just had to update mine.
**
The ffmpeg command line does not work since the official v3 launch. The CLI was previously somewhat functional during the betas. However, ever since a clean install of 3.0.0 - 3.0.2, the CLI is not functioning and throws the same error on both of my computers. The CLI was the only reason I bothered updating, so it looks like I’ll be using a beta release from now on for my CLI workflow. I haven’t seen anyone else mention this specific problem, so it might be an isolated case.
The CLI does not appear to create any logs, so here’s a screenshot of the error message.
Regardless of what combination of parameters I try, an error is always thrown. Even with only the -i and -filter_complex parameters specified (with an output file), the same error is thrown - same goes for ffmpeg commands directly copied from the GUI!!
1 Like
Just updated to the new version on my Mac Studio now it will no longer export any videos the Preset box is now grayed and i can not select any options, If i click on a video or try export or apple E nothing happens not sure what is going on but this update has destroyed it ?
1 Like
I recently upgraded to Topaz Video AI 3.X. Using a very similar set-up, I processed a file previously processed with the 2.6.4 version, but now also with the new slow motion feature. I have got several dotty glitches in the output. The file is not usable in this way. I am attaching two short excerpts. You can see the first dot on the left upside corner, then the right bottom side. I am attaching two short excerpts named after me.
kind regards,
Antonino Chiaramonte
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Every time I update to a new version (installing in the same directory) my Windows 10 Start Menu tile disappears. Is there any fix for this? Other programs do not remove this tile when updating.
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