Hi,
thank you. I mainly focused on denoising options but based on my experience, Artemis LQ deforms noses and Artemis MQ introduces many artefacts to substrates like grass. To be honest now some more work is needed to improve models for 480p upscaling. Now I mainly use Artemis MQ for full HD denoising and must say it works well. I have compared with ALQ but again noses are deformed if people are in the clip. In the case of clips without people , ALQ also give good results. Great benefit is the fact it is done automatically.
In general Topaz is on good track, just upgrade some main issues. GAIA HQ is slow but effective for full hd upscaling, better than AHQ but slower, pity.
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For 480p with denoise or deblock, I recommend Gaia HQ or Gaia CG/Artemis AA. In some cases where your 480p source is too good (DVD), go for Artemis HQ. But for best results, stick with Gaia HQ for good 480p and Gaia CG/Artemis AA for bad 480p.
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How is perfomance on macbook air m1?
Hi. Just wanna ask if Topaz VEAI support AVX-512 yet? I saw Intel 11th gen processors have Intel Deep Learning boost and I hope it will help boosting the upscaling processes. Does it have major performance boost for VEAI? Or only Gigapixel for now?
That is a nice list and i appreciate the work.
It will be a good starting orientation for beginners.
And it will work for many BUT not for all.
Its a question of TASTE how we ājudgeā videos.
Some like it normal with grain, some like it ultrasharp and hard without grain and the next likes it soft or ultrasoft.
I also upscaled more than 1200 videos in the last 3 month.
From small 3min 320x240 videos up to 3h 1080p blockbusters and series.
Like that extrem noisy Babylon5 HD Release. After the cleaning itās really watchable.
Before it is just ādirty crapā IMHO.
But still have to test at least 3 different AI models on every video, until i like the previewed results.
And on many videos i have to run 2 upscales.
It depends on the footage, if i start with Gaia HQ5 to sharpen and upscale SD to 1080p
and then import that āgaia upscaleā to upscale it again to 4K with Artemis.
And on the next extrem noisy footage i have to start soft with Artemis and sharp it with Gaia on the 2nd run. If you donāt want to upscale to 4K due to time and hardware shortage, i suggest to upscale to 720p first and 1080p second.
Last but not least
I HATE grain, i even clean and denoise actual blockbuster movies now,
before i watch them. As it seems most directors love grain ā¦ otherwise we would not see that ādirtā on modern movies anymore.
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Grain is good for old movies. Make them look more realistic I agree. However, thumbdown for grain on modern movies. All the way down to 0 for me most of the time since itās pointless and a waste of time. For me, 4K UHD is the way to go every single time. Itās likeā¦a necessity for my own life.
I like Artemis than Gaia since itās faster and more natural than Gaia. But for medium or high compression movies, I had to use Gaia for sharpness boost. Still, it depends on peopleās taste. Because the software is not mature yet, I canāt say which is good and bad. Hopefully the developers can find a way to boost Gaia HQ, at least 15%. I love its sharpness boost, but I also hate the time I had to spend for Gaia HQ which is just a bit better than Artemis. I pick Artemis to save time, and save electricity. Hundreds of movies man, Gaia HQ is not what I want to work with a 2 hour movie. 480p to 1080p is way too easy for me with 0.12s/frame. But anything to 4K costs 0.43s/frame with Artemis, 0.67s/frame with Gaia. Since most of my movies are already blu-ray, Artemis is a better choice between time and quality. Sharpen a blu-ray movie is useless for my eyes lol.
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well, i must add that i watch my movies/series on an 4K 82" QLED from a 2m (6foot) distance.
Thatās what i call home cinema 
Time and 4K rendering is a challenge, especially on a mid-range gpu.
Even with my RTX3090 i have to clean/upscale those 2h blockbusters overnight.
1h movie = 7h to 9h rendering (depending on the used AI model)
And as VEAI is not using the full potential of the new nvidia 30x0 series yet, i am running 2 or 3 VEAI instances at the same time. That saves at least 1/3 of the needed time and uses the GPU to its max.
1 VEAI instanceā¦ = 20-40% GPU load
2 VEAI instances = 50-70% GPU load
3 VEAI instances = 70-95% GPU load
video1 video2 video3 (one by one)
3h + 3h + 3h = 9h all
3 parallel instances increase the rendering time for every instance by ~50% (4h-5h)
BUT its only 5h for ALL 3 videos now, so i save 4h
I must confess, i never have chosen the AI model by time but only by āqualityā.
Electricity is definitely a point while upscaling. Especially here, as we have the worlds highest prices for electricity in GerMoney. But i got my own 8KW photovoltaic on the house, so i dont care about that anymore. Others definitely have to keep an eye on their bills.
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Can we expect that VEAI will eventually support Appleās M-series architecture and the Metal API? Since Apple are moving their entire desktop/laptop product line to ARM, it would seem that this move is inevitable.
Currently running VEAI on a maxed-out M1 Mac mini and although itās rather slow (about a 50:1 ratio using Artemis V11) the results are astonishing. For my use case, I can just leave the render running overnight so Iām not too concerned but it would certainly be nice if VEAI could take better advantage of the new silicon.
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Hmm, I shall check. So you wrote about cleaning 480p files. So to clarify:
- Denoising/deblocking for full HD - I use Artemis MQ, HQ is not far behind, LQ introduces strange nose deformation - you recommend Gaia HQ or Gaia CG/Artemis AA, I shall check it.
- Upscaling poor 480p content - ALQ and AMQ destroys substrates, ALQ ntroduces strange nose deformation - what do you recommend?
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Full HD to 4K you recommend Artemis HQ? I believe Gaia HQ gives a little better sharpness, but is much slower. I have not compared ānatural lookā between them.
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in my experience when upscaling 1080 to 4K:
if the source footage is already very high quality with little-to-no noise and/or compression ā Gaia HQ retains the most quality and fidelity while adding a little more detail. Artemis HQ will do an equally good job as well although it will completely remove noise and give that plasticky look, and it will smooth out colors while retaining texture and detail. this can be great for smoothing out skin tone, but it also changes the overall look of things so itās not as high fidelity as Gaia HQ.
so basically when going from 1080 to 4K ā Gaia HQ will keep whatever detail is already there while enhancing it or adding more wherever itās needed. Artemis HQ will alter the detail thatās already there and replace it with what it thinks is better.
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For poor 480p, itās hard to get more detail, but cleaning it is what you can only do. So use Gaia CG or Artemis AA, then use Gaia HQ for like 10-20 second scene. See if you like it. If not, then nothing you can do. If okay then it will be a bit better.
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It depends on your source. But for good source like bluray I mostly use, I only go for Artemis to avoid oversharp and motion flickering. Also sharpen things that donāt need to be sharp is just a waste of time. Theyāre not even visible anymore. Itās time consuming for Gaia, and I only use it for medium compression movies and below.
Iām about to buy Nvidia A100 for VEAI. But for saving, I think I have to wait for Quadro lineup. If I can get one on hand, time is nothing to me anymore since I can run multiple instances at once. But still, the gap between Gaia HQ and Artemis HQ is too close and small which I canāt tell if I rename the file. A lot of people say Gaia HQ is better, I agree. No doubt. But with less details added, I donāt think itās worth my time to use Gaia.
Cut the clip from the original video including audio BEFORE using VEAI. Then itās a matter of literal seconds to add the audio back in. Youāre making it FAR more difficult than it is.
I just investigated Artemis HQ again to verify what you said about color smooth out. And surprisingly, it doesnāt seem like that. I believe the problem is the color/gamma change of the preview. However, the output videos are pretty good with no gamma error like the one in the preview. Gaia HQ is pretty good, but if your source is not good enough, sometimes, it introduces you more artifacts that Iām pretty sure it can cause motion flickering. So I tried Gaia HQ and Artemis today, they are almost identical. But I prefer less artifacts than more details (Artemis > Gaia). Itās also not worth having double in rendering time. Therefore, Artemis HQ v11 is what I choose for blu-ray movies the most. Since Artemis chooses to reduce AA and slightly sharpen the edges, Gaia HQ in contrast does less in AA (what? why?).
But the problem that Iām having in 2.0.0 is the compression CRF. It seems weird when the output should be the same for 1 video. I use CRF 16 all the time on a 6gb 25m movie. First run, it gives me 38gb output (really?). Second run again, now it gives me 13gb (which is the size I need). Only Artemis models do this. Gaia HQ is fine. I think it is a bug.
Are you saying AHQ is faster that GHQ? When I use it I get half the speed of GHQ upscaling 540p>4K. I assumed as it was doing way more smoothing than GHQ so it made sense, but how are you getting the reverse?
Using AHQ in general is like going back to pre ver. 1.70. Am I missing files or something?
Artemis preview will give you higher gamma. Gaia preview has lower gamma. This is just the preview that does not affect the output at all. Higher gamma makes you feel that the video has less details, but thatās not true. Lower gamma will highlight more details. But as I compared 2 outputs, no major differences anyway. I believe itās happened since version 1.8.0.
Feature request: Would love to have the ability to side by side compare frames from the different AI methods.
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