I’ve been upscaling a movie to 4k using video enhance ai, while I was at work my computer rebooted unexpectedly, now i have a 37GB turkey of a file that cant be opened with any video software or anything,
Please tell me there is something I can do to turn this anomaly into a normal video file.
Thanks
Unfortunately, the file is broken.
to prevent this from happening maybe save the processed video to images so you can continue anytime something goes wrong. try to repair the video file if possible and then extract the frames maybe via the free video to jpeg converter and then continue as suggested. 
I’ve been complaining about this issue for a while now as well, curious as to why there is no solution for this: Is there a reason why all work is lost if program or computer crashes? - Video Enhance AI Discussion - Topaz Discussion Forum (topazlabs.com)
Not a software issue. It’s just a problem on your end that you need to figure out. Like driver (has to be Studio Driver), chipset driver, PSU, motherboard BIOS firmware…
I guess you’ll be surprised to learn that drivers are software. So, yeah, it could be a software issue. Trying to find why the computer is crashing only solves the problem if that culprit can be found. There are many reasons why it would be great for VEAI to be able to resume where it left off during crashes, as well as just the ability to pause and resume.
There is a solution to this kind of thing happening: Allow us to output the video into an mkv container instead of an mp4 container.
If ffmpeg encodes a video to mp4 and it gets cancelled part way through, the partially complete mp4 file is not usable.
But if you do the same thing with an mkv file, the mkv file still works.
Another advantage of the mkv container is that it supports more audio and video codecs than mp4. So if the source file uses an uncommon audio codec, you can still almost always just directly copy the audio stream into it instead of re-encoding it to aac.
I’m not really sure why using the mkv container hasn’t been added as an option to VEAI.
do not save the file to a video file. save it to images and make a viedeo of the images after.
This is a solution.
It could also be an hardware error.
Since 99% of the people are not investing in ECC RAM and intel don’t want to support it for non server/workstation applications.
You can get it via AMD (inofficial) but the Mainboard has to support it.
I might recommend a Universal Power Supply and either 1) setup notifications via email/sms to alert you when the power is cut and on battery backup or 2) put TeamViewer on it and you’ll be able to interact with your computer remotely
having a UPS would provide you with an hour or two of power via battery, just enough time for you to notice and take action. They aren’t really cheap, for a decent one atleast…but well worth it when your PC isn’t exactly spec. I have an i7-7700k OC’ed to 4.9ghz and 64gb ram and there’s nothing that can make it gag, even though it’s a few years old now. Still feel the desire to upgrade the CPU though lmaoooo
There is a possible solution to this which has worked for me when a windows update interrupted a long encode and left me with a garbage, unplayable mp4 file. It’s called untrunc.
The reason the mp4 file is unplayable is because an mp4 requires some metadata to tell it how to actually read the data contained within it. The problem is that these additional instructions are only written to the end of the file once it is finalised.
Untrunc is a program that will attempt to take this metadata from a similar mp4 and “transplant” it to your broken mp4 in order to make it work. To get a similar mp4 you can use VEAI on a shorter clip with the same settings. Once you have that, try untrunc on it and if you’re lucky you’ll be able to salvage your broken file.
It is a command line tool, and the source is on github. I used a pre-made windows build which is rather out of date, but it did the job. Might be a bit late for OP but hope this helps someone else encountering the same problem.
This is an interesting solution, thanks for answering!
It’s a pity that the video wrapper used in Topaz for high quality export is the fragile MOV wrapper - rather than the more robust MXF wrapper. MOV files are often not playable until they have been completed (so growing files are trickier to handle and a crash during creation renders the resulting file unplayable).
AIUI MXFs are more robust than this and can usually be played whilst being created and often rescued if the power is pulled during creation etc. (It’s why MXF is usually used in broadest instead of MOV)
ISTR that MKV also survives partial creation better too?
Another vote for something that formally allows for recovering or pausing a long-running VEAI process. There’s several decent workarounds suggested here (Thanks for the Untrunc suggestion!) but I’d really like to see something more formal baked into the product. I have worked with “enterprise” software (think long database loading tasks) that does this kind of thing and a formal logging/job recovery process is technically feasible. If asked I can give you the broad outlines of how this could be implemented.
Had this issue last year and found root causes & solutions:
Power supply output watts and quality. VEAI causes continuous high loading to power supply and speeds up its aging. I purchased VEAI a year ago and running it on RTX 3080 24/7 and my two 850w power supply died consecutively within 3 months (constant rebooting before dying) until I replaced it with a 1000w one.
Solution: Replacing over-used power supply with a new one. Weeks earlier I purchased a Mac mini M1 16GB to do VEAI processing specifically (8GB is not enough if used in 4K video). Only 40w power consumption in its maximum.
Windows update: Even though the service is stopped and disabled in Windows 10 Services, it will re-start a few days later without reason and interrupt VEAI by rebooting.
Solution: Pausing Windows update in Settings but after one month I have to do the update before pausing again. Removing “wuauserv” completely might be a solution too (and is doable).
Using “mkvtoolnix” to split mp4 file into several small segments and merging each processed one into a whole is also a solution, though troublesome.
I also would like to see saveable/loadable rendering states
How fast do you find the M1 Mac Mini vs nVidia GPUs ?
When I begun video processing via VE AI I had a new PC with an Nvidia 1070 ti. Both the Nvidia and the power supply died after only 1,5 years in December 2019 but were replaced under warranty. Since then I use a similar power supply (Seasonic Focus+ 550) and the RTX 2070 Super (215 W at max). No issues so far. I can also lower the overall maximum power usage via the MSI Afterburner tool to maybe 80 %.
Since then I use a similar power supply (Seasonic Focus+ 550) and the RTX 2070 Super (215 W at max).
I think that doesn’t give a lot of headroom. Keep in mind the other components in the system that also use power, such as the CPU, fans, motherboard chipsets, etc.
The CPU might be rated for say a 105W TDP, but in reality it might sometimes use like 150W or even 200W.
When I buy power supplies, I think: What is the maximum amount of power the system will draw? And I double it for the power supply I get.
Partly because it guarantees there will be no problems, even with transient spikes (if the graphics card uses 300W on average, it’s still possible to have spikes where it draws like 700-800W for a few milliseconds).
But also partly because power supplies usually run most efficiently at 50% usage.
