Bottom line, unless you have an annual income of more than $1M, the “commercial use” part of the Pro license is meaningless to you and there are no restrictions on your use of the standard version.
An additional $800 is a heck of a big premium just to get back multi-GPU capability. And we still have seen nothing to indicate that it works any better than it did before.
Couple of points:
- Commercial license is a yearly subscription… so this isn’t one time perpetual. No subscription then no continued use … so $1000+ buys you one year of use.
- Multi-GPU is missing details, multiple GPUs in a single computer or multiple GPUs being used across several computers? Are embedded GPUs considered as Multi-GPU support?
Lots of questions, huge price jump, no answers?
Rob
That’s the most important point. Pro is a rental license while VAI is a perpetual license.
I don’t do subscriptions.
How to go back to a previous version off VAIE with multi GPU ?
I have 3 GPU on my Computer. I can’t work with one only GPU. It’s too slow.
I would say precisely zero. Indeed, I’m not even sure if the whole “read and click a box” method of “accepting” a EULA has ever really been tested by a court… A few companies require you to completely scroll through the agreement, I suppose so you cannot claim that you “never saw it”, but I don’t know if that’s true for Topaz or if it really matters from a legalistic perspective.
However, changing the TOS after the fact is, to me, a non-starter. I “agreed” (if checking a box truly counts) to an agreement that Said X, Y, and Z, and the vendor cannot change the terms of that contract without my express written consent.
I am talking more generically than anything specific to Topaz, but it’s something that I’ve been wondering about for some time.
Sadly changing ToS is common practice and IMHO shouldn’t be allowed and controlled via some judiciary department at one’s local government. YouTube, Apple, Microsoft … so many companies bait you in with one ToS and then change it post “hook” to a different ToS so that one’s “investment” based on the original ToS is no longer an “investment” and can change business revenue/practice/operations. It’s a variant of “bait and switch” which I’m surprised more haven’t litigated against such practices.
Anyway, to a more realistic point:
- Video AI 4X upscale will often just either stop processing or drop to 0.8 fps from 14-19 fps. The only way to fix the bizarre slowdown is to pause the process which then will continue to other exports at 14-19 fps. Then come back to the “paused” exports and start them again and they go at 14-19 fps again … so clearly a BUG.
- I’m not going to rent software every year for over $1000 when it doesn’t work as advertised.
- I’m not going to rent software that doesn’t provide details on Multi-GPU support (heck can’t even make one GPU work reliably).
- The processing when completed will often generate duplicate frames (results in a pause) or sometimes no frames (looks like it skips/stutter) especially during parts with motion … not going to rent $1000+ for that.
Pay a company for what they “do for me” and NOT for what they want to “do to me”.
Rob.
I think if anyone actually cared enough Topaz would already have been sued out of business.
Up to V2 I would have said it was a good product, it’s pretty much been a Ponzi scheme since. Not that they haven’t added any useful features, it’s just perpetually broken beta software now. You don’t update in the hopes you’re getting something new, you update hoping that they’ve fixed the thing they broke 6 months ago. Something weird definitely happened with Topaz between 2.6 and v3, either somebody bought them out or someone made a capital investment that caused them to shill the daylights out of TVAI.
As for “multi GPU” they’ve effectively stripped this function out from the standard version to put it in pro. Multi GPU worked very well in v2.6, and they’ve been silently crippling it with the appearance that it still works but it really doesn’t. I have 2 GPUs in my rig, I always have. I just realized it’s become completely pointless to run the 2nd one so I stopped. I’m pretty much done updating and will NOT buy another standard license so who knows if you can even select 2 GPUs anymore, all I know is they took away something they advertised and I paid for.
Let them play that game with a commercial entity who actually exceeds their supposed revenue cap. If any of the update shenanigans costs any of those businesses money it’ll be alot more than a negative forum post.
