Upscale Video8 - Suggestions

Topaz Video AI General
1

First of all, apologies if other people have already asked the same question.

I bought Topaz Video AI to upscale my old family movies. So far, I am really impressed with the outcome. All my MiniDV movies from the mid-90s to 2000 look great in upscaled Full-HD.

However, I struggle with upscaling Video8 films from the mid-80s to the 90s. The problem is that I no longer have the original tapes, just the digitalised files from 10 years ago. All the videos are in MPEG-4 format and have a resolution of 852 x 480. A 45-minute video is approx. 550 MB. As you can see, it’s a terrible source file for upscaling. I have mainly played with the AI model “Proteus” with different “Recover Detail” settings.
As a first stage, I just want to enhance the video quality. Later, I would like to upscale the video to 720p or 1080p.

So far, all my attempts ended up with weird black spots, especially around the eye area, or no visible changes to the video.

What would be your recommendation for enhancing Video8 MP4 videos? Which AI model/enhancement settings should I mainly apply?

I only bought Video AI to recover my old family videos, so I am very new to video enhancement. I am working on a MacBook Pro M1, so even previewing takes a long time. :sweat_smile:

Any recommendation is highly appreciated. :blush:

2

Are the Video8 files still interlaced? If so try setting the video type to interlaced and using Iris or Dione in the first pass to deinterlace and restore some of the video and then do an upscale as a second pass.

3

Thank you for the advice. Unfortunately, the videos were already de-interlaced when I digitalised it. What setting would you recommend for enhancing the video? Thanks.

4

Try using Iris then to help bring back some detail. You can also set the model parameters to manual mode for more fine tuning of different aspects.

5

Thank you. I will try that out. :smiling_face: