I just bought a Topaz Video AI license to enhance my videos from digitizing old VHS tapes with the Elgato Video Capture Kit.
The source file is a 640*480 mp4 in 25 fps (progressive)
Which model are the most suitable to have a better sharpness of the faces, a smoother movement and uspcaler x2? Can we do these steps in 1 go? Do you have to make several passes? (for example first use Iris for faces, then from the generated file go back to double the frame rate, then a third pass for a 2x upscale).
Try this:
Use Proteus v4, with the settings of: “Manual Mode”, Fix Compression=40, Improve Details=40, the rest I leave at “0” (Example ), that works well if your video is noisy.
Another settings I found works pretty good for me for Direct x2 Upscale with Proteus v4, is: “Relative to Auto”, Dehalo= “-100”, the rest at “0” (example )
My Videos are very short so I don’t mind exporting it fully few time with different settings, but if your videos are longer you might want to export like a 30s Preview , to save time. Just make sure you export the same preview (part of the video) on all your settings attempts exports, that way you can truly evaluate the difference in quality once you will upscale them.
As for doubling the frame rate, in theory you can do it at the same time with the above. However, since I have little experience with frame doubling (actually none as the matter of fact), I would probably do it in two steps, because that is how I do things.
you can try both ways and see for yourself if there is any difference at all. If there isn’t any then do the remaining full video in one step
in fact even between 2 VHS tapes I realize that the setting is specific to each video… and that there is no a vhs “profile”. You have to do several tests for each video, and it takes time !
It’s actually worse than that. For a lot of VHS transfers, the optimum setting changes with different scenes, and the only way to fix that is to split the video up and enhance different scenes separately. But you’ll often need to use an editor with color correction adjustments on different scenes anyway because of variations in chroma.
