I’m enhancing some old DVDs and I noticed occasional large, black splotchy artifacts generated by the Proteus model at settings of 300% scaling or above. (I couldn’t reproduce it in Artemis or Gaia, or Proteus at 200% or 100% scaling settings. But 300%+ shows the artifacts.)
If you’d like to try it for yourself, here’s the input file. It’s a lossless AVI in the YUV420 colorspace using the free “Lagarith” codec.
Thanks for looking into this. Proteus is the model I use 9 out of 10 times. I’ve seen other instances of these black splotches too, so this isn’t a one-in-a-million case.
I have run over 200 DVD to 4K upscales (450%) using Proteus manual settings with problems whatsoever. I have done Start Trek DS9 in its entirety, and am now on season 3 of Voyager.
I take it you meant ‘without’ any problems? At any rate, the problem never occured for me with Proteus 2, only 3. And, as you can tell from my post, support clearly acknowledged the issue, and said it was on their todo list.
I don’t use the command line directly; not sophisticated enough for that. I drop the file into the UI of Topaz Video AI v3.0.5, upscale to 300%, Proteus model with all of its parameters set to 0, and export to ProRes. Simple. That’s enough to produce the error. Here’s a copy-paste of “Show preview command” in the UI if you want it:
E:\ffmpeg "-hide_banner" "-nostdin" "-y" "-nostats" "-t" "2" "-ss" "1.2929583333333334" "-i" "C:/Users/someguy/Desktop/Dropbox/VEAI_error_input_lagarith.avi" "-flush_packets" "1" "-vsync" "0" "-avoid_negative_ts" "1" "-sws_flags" "spline+accurate_rnd+full_chroma_int" "-color_trc" "2" "-colorspace" "2" "-color_primaries" "2" "-filter_complex" "veai_up=model=prob-3:scale=0:w=2112:h=1440:preblur=0:noise=0:details=0:halo=0:blur=0:compression=0:device=0:vram=0.9:instances=1,scale=w=2112:h=1440:flags=lanczos:threads=0,split=2[out1][out2]" "-map" "[out1]" "-c:v" "tiff" "C:/Users/someguy/AppData/Local/Temp/somenumber/temp/_tvai_867486382/%06d.tiff" "-map" "[out2]" "-c:v" "prores_ks" "-profile:v" "3" "-vendor" "apl0" "-bits_per_mb" "8000" "-pix_fmt" "yuv422p10le" "-map_metadata" "0" "-movflags" "use_metadata_tags+write_colr " "-map_metadata:s:v" "0:s:v" "-an" "-metadata" "videoai=Enhanced using prob-3 with recover details at 0, dehalo at 0, reduce noise at 0, sharpen at 0, revert compression at 0, and anti-alias/deblur at 0. Changed resolution to 2112x1440" "C:/Users/someguy/AppData/Local/Temp/somenumber/previews/VEAI_error_input_lagarith_prob3.mov"
FWIW my system is
Windows 10
AMD TR 1950X
64GB RAM
Nvidia RTX 3090 (24GB)
I know this. But my confirmation came from Topaz Labs support directly:
“I have shared all of this with our development team and they are working on a solution, however, this fix will take some time. In the meantime, please use v2, you should not find any advantage to using v3.”
Thanks, but no model manager in VEAI 3’s UI, so idk how to access that. (The black-splotch issue is not a show-stopping issue for me personally, so I’ll just live with it until it’s fixed. I just wanted to report the issue.)
Had it not been for Proteus 2, yeah, those blotches would have definitely been a deal-breaker for me. Removing Proteus 2 (at least from the UI, haven’t tried the CLI yet) is another area VEAI 3 oddly regressed, for no good reason.
Yes, I am a beta tester.
I’ve never seen that happen at my side, but I may have just not noticed it, so I wanted to make sure it was reproducible.
Also, if it is a reproducible bug with a lot of users, I think it would be a big request for a fix.
As I already mentioned, support has already acknowledged the issue.
As for reproducibility, for me it took a 1080p movie, upscaled to a pseudo pan & scan type of 270%. Those are rather specific conditions. The fact that we don’t hear about it often, does not mean it’s not a real issue, of course.
I tried different Proteus values and it was reproduced.
It occurs when the value of "REVERT COMPRESSION(compression)“RECOVER DETAILS(details)”“REDUCE NOISE(noise)” is small.
The value of “SHAPEN(blur)”“DEHALO(halo)”“ANTI-ALIAS/DEBLUR(preblur)” does not seem to be affected.
It does not occur at 2x, but only at 4x.
(VEAI scaling is 2x4x scale only; all other scaling is adjusted by Lanczos.)
I made an AviSynth script that patches a Proteus4X ProRes render with an equivalent Proteus2X render when it detects a hole, lol. ZIP file includes a demo.
But my confirmation came from Topaz Labs support directly:
Removing Proteus 2 (at least from the UI, haven’t tried the CLI yet) is another area VEAI 3 oddly regressed, for no good reason.
