Thank you!
Yesterday I was looking for some such clips and today I shall send you a few via WeTransfer. Recently I have been using very different upscaling settings to achieve 1280x960, 2x, and soon upload. As I can see some people have a lot of old family etc 480p clips and are interested in remastering them. I have gathered different suggestions and upload the results. I am curious what some users think about it. Next step would be to have 1080p and even maybe 4K…
I would be grateful for your help in making a few clips more fluid. Pity I have hardly ever recorded in 1024x720p in 15 fps. Now it would be much easier and probably better to get at least good quality output.
Hi Viktorz3008, Jcp29, Muf, Imo, Johnnystar, mxrevolution,
Thank you very much for your helpful comments and advices once again. Based on them, I have again prepared upscaling of a clip with potential plenty of detail - some scenery and “architecture”.
Hence below I give you results, please look at them and write what you think. Maybe it will also help even more other people to decide which approach is “the best” for them having similiar original footage. As proposed by Jcp29, I have also used deflicker in DaVinci Resolve and followed his path.
So I reached 1280x920 by 2x uplscaling. Now the question is which models I should use to have at least 1080p and maybe more. So I plan to choose 1-3 results obtained and again try to upscale 2x and the most promising results I could later on downsize to 1080p or/and upscale to 4K.
I would be grateful for any more 2x upscaling suggestions to achieve 960p and for upscaling from 960p to get higher resolution output. We would all have some ready-to-use path(s) for such footage.
https://we.tl/t-DV2oLBWVcn
PS I used AVI clip but since it contained some voices, I used Shutter Encoder to create ProRes 422HQ clip without audio and then upscaled.
I’m still waiting for the new update of VEAI. It seems they fixed artifact issue with Artemis models. But still, they smooth out the details too much. All I can recommend right now is Gaia models.
1 Like
Yes, I also wait for update to see if I could somehow improve much clips. I have quite a lot such clips, so I am interested in improving them. Gaia are ok but probably the better way is to use step approach, not just one upscaling. What about GAIA CG vs 5 vs 6 which someone recommned to substitute?
Thank you! I have just found some 15fps clips for you. I really wonder how they would look like after making them 30 fps and maybe even 60 fps.
Please find enclosed the WeTransfer link:
If no problem, please make 30 and 60 fps and leave ProRes format HQ.
Thank you!
https://we.tl/t-hQN2Z4TyTq
I am going to throw my hat in here. If it comes down to a decision between Gaia CG version 5 or version 6, I would (personal preference) go with version 5 for now.
Version 6 does have a good quality in general, but sometimes it introduces a bit of a “grid pattern”, which is most noticeable with close-up shots (for example faces). In its appearance, it is similar to the artefacting that sometimes happens with Artemis LQ when being applied to nature (like trees, bushes, fire etc.).
It would be nice if those artefacting / grid pattern issues could be fixed on both Artemis LQ (v12 and 13) and Gaia CG v6, then those would be better. I had to switch to Artemis MQ for some scenes to avoid the issue.
Thank you for your contribution and additional comments/ suggestions. So it seems that for the time being it is better just to wait and see what new update will bring.
I guess so. That’s not to say that I don’t appreciate updates, model modifications and GUI overhauls.
Personally, I’m really grateful to the developers, beta testers and the community. I have rarely seen such an active group of people, dedicated to improving things.
Naturally, whenever something new comes along, there will be bugs and it won’t be perfect the first time around (that’s why we have betas), but I think we should let all developers and beta testers know that we are grateful. I own a bunch of other software solutions, none of them are updated so regularly and for a reasonable price, considering the work that goes into development and releases.
Not to mention actually being able to feel like your comments and ideas have been noticed - I can’t tell you how many times I have send mails to customer services with big names that basically think of themselves as the “Apex of video editing” and all I got (if I got any response at all) was “sorry, we don’t currently support …” which is very disappointing when the software has a price tag that makes you think “Have I paid for the product, or do I own shares in the company?”
Anyway, Topaz does things right. Betas are not always stable, but that’s what betas are for. Keep going guys, no model can “do it all” and not every desire will be satisfied, but whenever I work on something with Topaz and compare the results to the source I can’t help but to think back to mid kiddy days in the VHS era and be amazed on what has become possible working from a Gaming Laptop in your own home. And a few of my friends have also been impressed when they get their material back and say “How do you get that much out of the crap I gave you?” - I call it “The Topaz Effect”. It’s fun.
3 Likes
Thank you! I shall watch it on my TV set and compare with 15 fps original files. As I can see on my monitor, it is more fluid for sure. And in resolution 1024x720 is of much higher quality than my previous 640x480p files. For sure it would be much better starting point for upscaling and as I can see, now fps are not a big problem. Pity it was not my choice many years ago. I hope that by using different upcaling variants I can achieve much better quality then original clips. Of course there are test clips but I am sure a lot of users are in very similar situation, or even with VHS tapes covered by 1 cm of dust…
You are absolutely right. As nearly always first attemptes are the ones to improve over time. I also hope that Topaz staff will continue great work. I imagine that bugs are inevitable if we take into account the fact that there are plenty of different hardware variants (CPUs and GPUs, systems etc.).
And yes, community here is very active and kind. There are really vigorous discussions on different technical problems/solutions/suggestions. It is really nice nowadays we can use even medium quality hardware to enhance old, sometimes very poor clips and render in new quality. AI based softwares to add fps are also great option. Many years ago it was nearly like a dream or science fiction. Let us keep our fingers crossed for further improvements.
2 Likes
True. I mean seriously, the ways we used back in the golden days to make sure nothing gets more damaged or the quality would degrade. Nowadays, you can use software to restore (and enhance) videos, sometimes just re-encoding them can do a lot.
When I was (a lot) younger, we actually considered several times, if we would watch a VHS medium, since every playback caused quality loss, little by little. We even used cassettes with special cleaning fluid to demagnetize and all … seems funny thinking about it now. Even with the DVDs we had those discs with little fine brushes to take care of the lenses. Insane, but in those days you could actually try to fix things … these days everything is bolted shut or made from one piece, so you can’t even access components.
Anyhow, I love how technology in the consumer segments improves. Always causes nostalgia along the way (at least in my case). Just had a laugh flash last week, when a young teen tried to return a BluRay because there was some split second image error once during the movie playback and the lady at the counter told her she should be glad it wasn’t VHS cause then she’d be in trouble and the teen asked “what’s that supposed to be?”, then (as the teen went further inside the store for a refund) the cashier on the other side looked at her co-worker and said “Millenials” with a smirk - I actually had to go around the corner to crack up.
Yes, it is true. How do you assess 15 fps vs 30 fps? Are they fluid according to you?
Ok, thank you for comments. And it seems 720p is quite good from picture quality standpoint. I deliberately have added the footage with rocks since there is motion while sailing and the rocks were close to me so the movement seemed to be fast - great for such a test.
1 Like
You are right, different times, technology and world in general. I also remember that each playback caused quality loss and now after many years they have degradeded even more, and quality seems to be very poor. They are just usually family souvenirs. In my case I have some 480p footage from Canon G9. Pity the footage is not 720p in 15 fps. As Imo has shown, now we can improve significantly fluidity of the footage while having quite good picture quality, I shall try to upscale to see how they look at 1080p or more.
1 Like
dont know where or how you got Gaia HQ6
i started with the official veai v1.8.0 in dec2020 and since then gaiaV6 never showed up “officialy”
afaik
i remember it came once with a beta …as fast as it disappeared with the next beta.
So in the beginning i used it, thinking its the successor of Gaia HQ5.
But i never saw any “better” results from V6
So i compared the V5 and V6 with a bit by bit comparing tool what showed minimal differences just in one or two script lines. Even the different filesizes were just a handfull of bytes. V5 vs V6.
So i decided to delete it.
IMHO everyone should just ignore that V6 exists… as it has no value, yet
until it is officialy developed and released some day…
maybe some oldshool veai pros proof me wrong, but V6 is something like a “mystical secret”
to me, popping up every once in a while on this forum …
Gaia v6 models have been abandoned for months I believe. So people should not use those incomplete models.
Not really a secret, never official but always available and still is. For example put this in a browser:
http://veai-models.topazlabs.com/gcg-v6-gaia-fp16-288x288-1x-ox.tz
Basically all you have to do is make a copy of gaia-cg-5.json and name the copy gaia-cg-6.json, then open it in a text editor and change the second line “version”: “5”, to “version”: “6”,
Save and it will show up in VEAI and download models as needed.
I’ve moved on from Gaia entirely, but I never argue with anyone who wants to experiment. Nothing will ever replace the old CG from 1.6.1; my understanding is that the code for that was lost or something.
Chase 25th of March has described how to reach GAIA CG v6. I also wonder if it is safe to change from v5 and if I gain any quality …
You can have both Gaia-CG v5 and v6 models at the same time.
From the tests I’ve run Gaia-CG v6 looks much better but covers everything with an annoying (moire pattern? not sure the technical term). If they fix the bug with the pattern it’d be an improvement over v5.
And I couldn’t spot any difference between Gaia-HQ v5 or v6.
