Topaz Video AI v3.1.0

[TicoRodriguez]

I think that adjusting with ANTI-ALIAS / DEBLUR (cmd: preblur) will produce better results than adjusting the sharpening with SHARPEN (cmd: blur).

preblur
Adjusts both the antialiasing and deblurring strength relative to the amount of aliasing and blurring in the input video.

blur
Additional sharpening of the video. Use this if the input video looks too soft.
The value set should be relative to the amount of softness in the input video - if the input video is already sharp, higher values will introduce more artifacts.

For the ANTI-ALIAS / DEBLUR, a PLUS will set the value to DEBLUR and make the image sharper. Conversely, a MINUS will result in ANTI-ALIAS, making the image blurred.

Artemis vs. Proteus

Took a while to find the post Richard mentioned. Here’s a copy of the post, as I could not generate a direct link to the great post by Joel Hruska. No intention to plagiarize; just to facilitate the discussion here. General advice to the group: Use Proteus, but ignore the auto tuner. The auto tuner can be useful, but it does not give the kind of achievable quality boost that Proteus can. How to Configure Proteus: When testing Proteus against content, you should use the following settings: R…

[kingdom-3809]

As soon as all models are downloadable and the program is usable offline I will venture an update from 2.6.4.

[ole.solev]

Another useless answer.

[Chase]

Huh? How would buying a license only last 2 months? What happened here?

[TicoRodriguez]

Poor thing.

[alanhusband-677420]

Your license should still be valid for v3.1 if was bought 2 months ago. If you can’t login you should contact support.

[ian.seward (ian seward (no email))]

The old perpetual licence model worked on major version releases. So you could buy V1 and 3 months later V2 is released and you don’t get any updates. Topaz is much better as you get 1 year of updates, which is a much fairer way of doing things.

[ezekiel.gonzales]

huge upgrade to performance so thank you. just got one question. any word on av1 support for amd 7900 xtx or xt cards? also smart access video or ai accelerator support for amd?

[meimeiriver]

@TicoRodriguez

For the ANTI-ALIAS / DEBLUR, a PLUS will set the value to DEBLUR and make the image sharper. Conversely, a MINUS will result in ANTI-ALIAS, making the image blurred.

I always wondered what the heck a negative antialiasing did. TIL.

[nicolaus.berglmeir]

The latest update crashes already when creating a preview.
Settings: Motion Deblur, Enhancement: Progressive, Artemis, Strong Halo.

The creation process stops almost at the end of 15 secs and the preview video is not finished.

[meimeiriver]

@MikeF

Thought that would make a difference

Although I am eternally grateful for your tweaks, and the woman with the red lips looks a whole lot better (when does a woman with red lips ever not look good? ), I ran some extra experiments. A nose closeup with your current settings:

Still too much artifacting, IMHO. So, now with sharpen = 0

Better, of course; but, for upscales, I really like that bit of antialiasing, so I flipped the sign on AA again:

Looking very good. Then add some minute dehalo-ing:

Got a clearer picture, but crispier nonetheless, and staying on the ‘good’ side of AA (aka, getting rid of the zig-zaggies).

[darren.ocarroll]

Good speedup in this version. 7950x & 4090.

An issue:
1080p25 to 4k50p. proteus auto. fast chronos
I am getting a 1 frame blend instead of cut between some scenes

Scene detection should stop this from happening.

I’ll try non-fast chronos next time but it should be safe from 1 frame blends in either mode.

edit: same issue on chronos. A cut between two shots is becoming a 1 frame blend. The AI model does not seem to effect it

input file is prores 422 1920 1080 25p

[sascha.paris (Säschu)]

Jup. Same issue here. System is Mac OS Ventura on a 16GB Mac Mini M1. That preview thingy is slowly getting nerving. Sometimes preview shows in split screen left and right completely different videos, parallel upscaling of >1 Videos is in progress.

Sometimes I really miss the quad preview from V2.6, and also it’s flawless preview during encoding. Please further optimize that in 3.x somehow…

Otherwise the the last few releases was worlds away from the initial - super buggy - 3.0x releases- The 3.x branch is heading towards the right direction ;o)

[MikeF]

What your seeing from scene to scene is why just using the estimate in proteus never seems to work over an entire video. The real trick and this takes some trial and patience is using ‘Relative to Auto’. Hopefully the video is fairly consistent with the type of problems from scene to scene. What won’t be consistent is the values to repair the problems. Relative to Auto goes a long why to help with the problem.

I also try to limit my upscale to 2x or a max of 225 percent for a single pass with TVAI. I also if I’m working with a very low res input file I will use conventional methods to do a slight upscale for generally a better result. Say 512 width to 640 or 720 to 854. It’s not much but I find that it helps. I also do these at a lossless or very close to lossless conversion.

[robert.gordon]

I posted this in another topic but it didn’t get any traction. Could someone test downscaling a video? Version 3.1.0 is taking magnitudes longer than version 3.0.12 to the point that it’s unusable. Upscaling is also much slower. Thanks.

[meimeiriver]

@darren.ocarroll

I am getting a 1 frame blend instead of cut between some scenes

That is the sort of thing that makes me abort the entire process. Hope they fix it for you soon.

[meimeiriver]

@MikeF

What your seeing from scene to scene is why just using the estimate in proteus never seems to work over an entire video. The real trick and this takes some trial and patience is using ‘Relative to Auto’. Hopefully the video is fairly consistent with the type of problems from scene to scene. What won’t be consistent is the values to repair the problems. Relative to Auto goes a long why to help with the problem.

Yeah, I always tweak ‘relative to auto’. I just had no idea sharpening had such detrimental effect on the overall picture quality (for some reason, I got it in my head it would just work on edges).

@MikeF

also if I’m working with a very low res input file I will use conventional methods to do a slight upscale for generally a better result. Say 512 width to 640 or 720 to 854. It’s not much but I find that it helps

Yeah, same here. In fact, with video that is too low-res, I scale up a bit (Lanczos), then let TVAI take over. The trick, I found, is to allow for enough scale ‘room’, as it were, for TVAI to perform a usable, visibly repaired upscale, but not let it come from such low res that it starts mangling faces.

[soapmak3r (john.marshall-0917)]

I see no incentive for anyone to pay to receive incremental updates to 3.x with the program in it’s current state since the release of 3.
Currently, the incentive is to not upgrade, or participate in any kind of testing of the updates and maybe consider upgrading once the bugs are ironed out and performance has been improved.

[kiprode]

When I try stabilization I get the blurred image on the right.

iMac (Retina 5K, 27-inch, 2019). 3.7 GHz 6-Core Intel Core i5. 32 GB 2667 MHz DDR4. Radeon Pro 580X 8 GB. SSD. Monterey 12.6.2

[johnnystar]

I would have agreed with you, until I realized that this is ‘bleeding edge’ software, or software based on largely experimental new technologies. As such, Topaz is doing a better job keeping it working, and stable, and speedy, and effective, than any comparable commercial competitors out there. Are there bumps and setbacks along the way? Yes. However, with the price of admission, we get to ride this A.I. ship, and boldly go where no video program has gone before.