From so many readed topics at this forum (and not only this) it is still difficult to me to figure out what video enhancer to choose. At the begginning of this year I readed random paper after search for “Best video enhancers”. In the paper there were different frograms and everyone had its description. At the bottom line of the paper there was a conclusion that contained Topaz video as the best of the best. Then I install the free trial version on my laptop and I was really impressed with the results when give to a program videos with poor quality. I tried both live action footage and cartoon. Both were with bad to very bad quality. And in both cases TVAI done the work pretty good! But to be honest. If the quality of source material varies from poor to ultra poor there is not significant improvment in the details. For example in one of the footages there was text (more exactly music sheet) that were totaly unreedable in the original video. In the processed video the music sheet was also unreedable but in a different way. In the original notes in the sheet were recognisable like music notes but pixelated and blurry. In the rendered version the note lines became solid black lines on the paper. Looks exactly like classic 2D cartoon. Well it is good in its own way but if you want realistic looking video then that is not good. This particular video was shoted with old low quality digital camera without proper settings for semi-dark environment. For this video I tried different filters in the progressive section and Artemis gave the best results. Now the second two videos were old TV rips of cartoons. One with bad quality, second one with EXTREMELY BAD quality. Both videos had poor 240p resolution. The second one on top of that had also ton of video noise, blurriness, pixelisation, distortions. For both videos I used triple enhansment: upscale to FULL HD, Dione TV filter and Deblur. On the first poor (but not extremely poor) video the results were magnificient! On the second one for my surprise results also were pretty good but there were places in the footage where the limits of TVAI were noticeable. More specifically there were certain frames that were still a bit blurry especially in the small details. But even that I was impressed! The only problem that I had were the fact that I ran the program on computer with integrated intel graphics and the speed of processing was vvvery slow (0,1 - 0,2 FPS). Now I ordered desctop PC with powerfull GPU but after reading a lot of posts in this forum, especially the comments in the section of updates I started to loss trust in TVAI. There are constant complaints about various bugs, loss of license after update, not improvment of the filters for a long time, bad training and so on. The last time I run Topaz was about two weeks ago but this time on a machine with serious graphic card (Nvidia 4060 Ti). Again I experimented with poor quality live shotted video. I used Proteus filter in the Progressive section and I could say that there is visible improvment in this particular filter compared to it a few months ago. Also the speed of rendering with three on enhancement tools (upscale from 480p to 1080p, filter and deblur) was decent (13 - 14 FPS, more than 100 times compared with intel UHD graphics!). But I also notice some annoying bug. For whatever reason there is uncontrollable zooming of the preview section when I switched between different previews. This is not something that makes the application unusable but will be better without it. At recent time I started again to dig around the web for video enhancers aside from TVAI and I have two conclusions:
First, there is not best video enhancer. Even pro ones have their strenghts and weakness.
Second, in every one program there are functions that I don’t need.
Now, to conclude. I need three genneral functions - upscalling, filtering and increasing FPS. The proper (for me) program should not only contain those functions but also to apply them in the best possible way that is available to this moment. I don’t need too specific instruments like colorising black and white footage, supporting of 360 degree videos, 3D videos, portrait/selfie instruments, sky replacements, advanced face/body corrections, slow motion effects, upscalling to ridiculous high 8K and 16K resolutions (the last one are refferenced to TVAI).
So for me there are three essentials:
- Frame interpolation/conversion. I want to convert videos from low 24, 25, 30 FPS to 60 - 120 FPS. I have no need more than 120 FPS (somewhere in this forum I found one complain that TVAI doesn’t support 240 FPS).
- Upscalling to FHD, QHD, UHD. The upper limit for me is a bit more than 4K (something like 5K or 6K). I definitely do not need 8K/16K stuff so this advantage of TVAI is not essential.
- Filtering, Filtering and Filtering. I will often work with poor quality videos so the program should has very good tools in this regard to tackle different disturbances like noise, blurriness, compressions, linear and non-linear distortions, aliasing, dropouts (common in VHS shoots) and so on.
So, to conclude. The app that I need should really be capable in adding new information when upscalling and interpolating. Not only duplication of pixels and frames. That is the most important thing because it will be applicable to any source video, especially such with already high quality. The second essential for me is tackling with various disturbances. Here I could make a little compromise (only a little!). In the best case the app should remove any kind of imperfection, including in very poor video, without destruction or artifacts. In the compromise variant the app maybe would be not capable of removing all kind of disturbancies and not be capable of fine tuning every single filter parameter. For example which particular imperfection to be removed, which not, to what degree to be removed certain imperfection and so on. I don’t care of too much manual control, even the opposite. It would be good the program to have some automaticity, but automaticity should be good. In this regard I think that TVAI is enough good. The results with auto parameters I find very pleasant but is good that you have manual control on them. Another thing that make me trust about Topaz is that from everything that I read and watched I ended with the impression that Topaz is very capable of FPS enhancing and that is very important to me together with filtering and resolution enhancing. But I am scared of complaints that many people here have. So what to choose? TVAI or to look other (AVCLabs, HitPaw, Neat Video, PowerDirector…)? Please help me.
