Does anyone experiencing color changes after running VEAI?
Yes. We all are
I see. Thank you.
Thanks for this post, definitely confirms some of what Iāve been finding. Iām primarily using Gaia to upscale 480p early digital video from 2000s. Artemis seems to be generally suggested by the app but it doesnāt look good with this kind of content.
I did notice you suggested CRF 15-16 and even 10, which seems pretty high bitrate. The file sizes will be massive, are you sure that high of a CRF is worth it for the detail the upscaling is producing? Iāve been running 24 mostly for 480p to 1080p upscaling. Iāll do some back to back tests though.
EDIT: I did some testing and a 17 second 1080p render came out (for my video) as:
CRF 10 = 162MB
CRF 15 = 72MB
CRF 20 = 35MB
CRF 25 = 16MB
I took some identical frame stills and compared them in photoshop. At 100% image size itās hard to tell the difference between images. You can notice some difference between the 10 and 25, with the live video though itās hard to spot. At 200% (i.e. playing it scaled up on a 4k screen) there is a notable difference in still frames. Just hard to justify almost 10 megabytes per second for some extra sharpness on beard stubble in still frames. I think Iāll stick to somewhere between 20 and 25.
I can see the difference between CRF 15 and CRF 10, CRF 15 and CRF 20. But now, Iām moving on to PNG lossless and use Adobe Media Encoder to combine the image sequence to NVEC h.265 because the file size will be smaller due to lower bitrate, but higher quality than h.264 at the same bitrate.
Is there a pattern on how color changes on each AI or its random?
The devs said that the color shift just happens when reviewing because of the color space. The final video will be as same as the original.
@viktorz3008 Thank you for this guide! Mad props. I canāt tell you how many times I mentioned to TL that we need a guide like this.
On that note, what do you recommend for combining multi channel audio with the video? They are reluctant to name any for obvious reasons.
You can use MKVToolnix to add the tracks or subtitles into the video.
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What I like to do personally is to output as CRF 0 (lossless) instead then re-encode my upscale to hevc via Staxrip.
I also noticed while trying to compare different encoding presets that veai messes with the gamma value by changing it to -0.2. I havenāt tested with png/prores outputs though, so keep that in mind.
For whoever is interested in this method and would like to give crf 0 a try, you can my have my staxrip profiles with the gamma fix and my custom x265 settings included here - downscale profile*.
Extract, then drop the files in AppData\Roaming\StaxRip\Templates, granted you opened staxrip already for the appdata folder to be created.
Hereās how to load a custom template:
Chose your desired resolution via this setting:
Edit 1: Forgot to mention to avoid doing 100% deblock/denoise nor upscales to custom resolutions with VEAI. i.e if I wish to enhance a 1080p video while keeping the resolution, upscale it to 4k instead then downscale it back to 1080p. Same goes for custom resolutions; 150%, 225% etc. Make sure to either upscale to x2 or x4 and completely forget about the other options, otherwise you simply just wonāt achieve the best quality possible for your input.
Edit 2: Same downscale profile but with a better (but slower) downscaler: Default - Soft algorithm.
Edit 3: Make sure to tweak the gamma levels when trying out different pass upscalings i.e.1.04 for two pass, 1.06 for 3 pass so on and so forth.
Updated all the presets so make sure to redownload if you have already, sorry for the trouble.
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CRF = 0
Great idea, but I prefer using TIF for h.265 encoding for less bitrate + size but higher quality. I prefer using h.265 for 4K the most. Cap at 60 Mb/s bitrate. -
Downscale
I tried and I failed since Iām working on a DVD project, and downscaling makes it worse. Iām still looking for a good software to downscale properly. Adobe still looks bad imo.
I believe that TIFF output would take much more disk space than crf 0 or even prores hq while delivering no discernible difference in quality (at least not on my 4k tv), but I could be wrong.
You should give Spline64Resize a try then as it is the most accurate of the avisynth resize filters.
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No, not TIFF, just TIF 8 bit uncompressed. It provides the best quality for NVEC to work on. At 60mbps, itās probably the best you can get from VEAI. It took me 11m to render a 4K video, and 11GB of space for a 23m video. Not a big deal. However, CRF 0 will give you hundreds of thousand bitrate which is unnecessary for a 4K footage. Itās heavy for nothing at all.
For downscale, I guess I will wait for AI downscale version then. A software downscale/upscale is nowhere compared to AI. Thatās why I still donāt want to waste my time downscaling. Unless I have a good software that will always come with a price. For now, I canāt recommend downscaling to anyone.
Thatās partly trueā¦ A 20 minute 3D animation upscaled to 4k was around 40-60 gbās if I remember correctly, but after the downscaling and x265 encoding process, the size shrinked to a staggering 113mb if you can believe that.
Damn dude, youāre too much of a quality freak that youād rather wait for a downscaler thatās yet to exist rather than settle for less haha.
Well to be honest, Iāve been using madvr for quite some time now (3+ years to be exact) trying different settings etc. And to my experience, SSIM is miles better than any other downscaler out there, period.
In theory SSIM should be somewhat a more intelligent downscaler, it adds exactly* the right amount of sharpness if and where needs be. It could be sharper when downscaling very fine details, or for higher scaling factors. It will also be a bit smoother on less detailed regions, but that might not be particularly useful (although it does suppress source artifacts)*.
Itās strength I would say lies in the details, patterns and white areas. The only downside to it is that itās ressource heavy to say the least, hence why I omitted from sharing my personal profile with ssim on and opted for a faster yet good quality downscaler, but you made reconsider that.
If pure unaltered quality is what youāre looking for then this wonāt disappoint you I promise; I included new staxrip profiles in my original post containing the ssim downscaler. Please do consider giving it a try and see how it fares compared to the adobe downscaler.
I usually use MeGUI to encode with for my friends, so anything above 100mb/s bitrate will be destroyed completely with blocks all over the place. So I keep the bitrate at right amount. h.265 + nvenc + 60mb/s = perfect quality for me (at least with current state of VEAI and what technology can do). I tried to downscale some DVD then downscale to 720p from 4K. Even with 720p at 60mb/s, it shows aliasing in the edge. Iām not sure why, maybe Iām doing it wrong, or what idk. But anyway, I want to avoid artifacts. Iād better go with less enhanced details than artifacts here and there. So Iām using Gaia CG v5 all the time with movies because I only use to upscale DVD and Blu-Ray movies. If I watch the upscaled movies on my phone, itās beautiful. But on computerā¦ manā¦ itās better than the original, but still not enhanced enough. Maybe my monitor is too big, or watching 4K contents on mobile devices is better than my TV (LG OLED C9 55") or my PC monitor (Samsung Odyssey G9 49"). But downscaling is a good way to go, but at this point, itās not good enough for me. Watching on mobile devices will eliminate the grain I threw into the movies, but grain is visible on TV or monitor. Iām confusing right now lol. But maybe Topaz devs would have downscaling models later. Iāll pay for more if needed lol.
Then thereās definitely something wrong there. Youāre better off to switching to something other than MeGUI if you ask me. StaxRip, Hybrid or Handbrake come to mind since thatās what the kind people over at reddit recommended to me when I first started, so make sure to give them a try.
So, thereās two types of x265ās. The CPU one (HEVC) and the Nvidia one (NVENC).
People only go for nvenc for speedy encoding with (absolutely) no regard to video quality, because hevc (CPU) is just better, although encodes at a much much slower pace. 15 min NVENC = 1/5 hours HEVC depending on your CPU lol. But itās worth it at the end, since the video quality is superior, to the point that even the new and improved nvenc (first included in the rtx cards) still lacks in comparison.
As far as downscaling goes, what I like to do is to always scale down by x2. So in this case I would go from 4k to 1080p instead of 720p.
I hope my suggestions help you solve your issues my friend. I too have a LG CX 48" that I use as my main monitor, but I never did encounter any of the problems youāre having. Also, I hate film grain with a passion and consider it noise than needs to be cleaned post upscale, so you better stop purposely adding it to your encodes, or else 
.
I use MeGUI because my friend is using vsfiltermod that only MeGUI is capable to do so. I hate it, but I gotta have to use it. Otherwise, handbrake is the way to go.
I use Turing NVENC all the time in Adobe and Handbrake. It helps a lot for both quality and speed. Currently, NVENC is the best if you have 2000 or 3000 RTX series. However, MeGUI is software encoding only and it does what other software canāt, even Handbrake.
Grain helps eliminate the artifacts. If you use Artemis or Gaia HQ, you will see how grain helps you avoid artifacts/oversharpness. If you donāt add grain in 480p upscaled movies, you will end up with artifacts and unnatural faces. If you have a good footage from the beginning, then itās no longer an issue and you can put 0/0 for grain amount and size. On Netflix, you can see thousands of movies with grain, but when you watch them from 6 feet away, you canāt see grain. Unfortunately, grain is always there. Even VEAI doesnāt really remove everything, including grain, it only denoise and add its own grain (just a little).
You should never use NVENC for anything. It sacrifices both quality and significant size for speed. NO ONE legitimately uses it for production work.
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Thatās not true. NVENC + HEVC with h.265 will reduce the file size + higher quality at the same bitrate compared to h.264. In Adobe, itās hardware acceleration. Turing NVENC is better and currently used in 4K Blu-Ray movies. Better quality and smaller file size with superior speed. If you donāt have 2000 or 3000 RTX series, donāt use NVENC.
Itās very much true. Every encoding website worth itās salt will tell you never, ever use NVENC for anything.
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