Topaz Labs video enhancer

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Ellory Yu

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Topaz Labs video enhancer

PostThu Oct 06, 2022 5:27 pm

Does anyone have any experience with the Topaz Labs video enhance AI? If so, can you attribute the product and what's your workflow when use with DaVinci Studio.

https://www.topazlabs.com/video-enhance-ai
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carlomacchiavello

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Re: Topaz Labs video enhancer

PostSat Oct 08, 2022 10:07 am

I use it from three years and beta tester of newer.
I start usually from resolve, I optimise color, export prores multiple clips for every cut to choose later best Ai model to upscale and optimise, I go back in resolve for final edit and often compositing be cause sometimes you should have miracle only if you do different export from VeIa and composte then for best section.
For example I did a restoration of old dv movie interlaced where I should did some scene upscale with different models, background with one model and people with another, I should use different tool to rotoscope people optimised and put them on right background.
Ai is matter of luck, sometimes do miracle all around, sometimes do half miracle, one times is better superscale of resolve :-)


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Ellory Yu

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Re: Topaz Labs video enhancer

PostSat Oct 08, 2022 2:50 pm

Thanks Carlo. I have some old DV that I want to fix hence I was looking at this. So bottom line, what you’re saying is that this product is hit and miss at times (a matter of luck with the Topaz aI algorithm).
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carlomacchiavello

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Re: Topaz Labs video enhancer

PostSat Oct 08, 2022 3:12 pm

Ellory Yu wrote:Thanks Carlo. I have some old DV that I want to fix hence I was looking at this. So bottom line, what you’re saying is that this product is hit and miss at times (a matter of luck with the Topaz aI algorithm).

i mean that you should be luck about subject, i had old 640x480 videos from old bridge photo cam (worst mpeg compression you can think) that give me miracle, topaz upscale correctly the fur of my old cat, and correctyl face of my father. Some other times better footage give not me miracles, a simple upscaling without newer dectails.

here two good example of original classic upscaling and topaz veia result.
Schermata 2021-10-01 alle 22.40.05.jpg
Schermata 2021-10-01 alle 22.40.05.jpg (196.64 KiB) Viewed 7118 times

Schermata 2021-10-01 alle 19.09.29.jpg
Schermata 2021-10-01 alle 19.09.29.jpg (235.28 KiB) Viewed 7118 times


here you can see wrong result, let's see the skin on right face of actor, appair a crocodile skin that not exist in the original picture
Schermata 2021-10-01 alle 22.58.00.jpg
Schermata 2021-10-01 alle 22.58.00.jpg (206.73 KiB) Viewed 7116 times
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Ellory Yu

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Re: Topaz Labs video enhancer

PostSat Oct 08, 2022 3:52 pm

I got you now. Thanks for explaining and the samples.
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Steve Fishwick

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Re: Topaz Labs video enhancer

PostSat Oct 08, 2022 4:00 pm

It's very very slow, Ellory too.
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Ellory Yu

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Re: Topaz Labs video enhancer

PostSat Oct 08, 2022 6:08 pm

Steve Fishwick wrote:It's very very slow, Ellory too.

I kind of expected anything that does “aI” is calculation intensive and reiterative in its algorithm.
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Steve Fishwick

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Re: Topaz Labs video enhancer

PostSun Oct 09, 2022 6:47 am

Ellory Yu wrote:I kind of expected anything that does “aI” is calculation intensive and reiterative in its algorithm.


AI is almost a misnomer these days, at least I would say it's not nearly as intelligent as the marketing would suggest, as you can see from Carlo's third example. I bought Topaz on an offer that was going but I hardly use it, since the workflow is cumbersome and slow. It's perhaps best for uprezzing BMD HD slo mo shots to 4K. But nothing is really a magic bullet, and as with de-noising less is almost always better than more, the difference between results from all methods are subtle rather then dramatic. It's easy to make an image very plastic looking with these tools. Most of it ends up looking like severe edge enhancement from the old video camera days, which is beginning to happen, I would say, in Carlo's first two examples too.

For DV footage, the best solution I have found is de-interlacing, judicious uprez to HD (4K is not going to happen) and then a very mild filmlike grain applied. Grain often helps with perceptual sharpness in images. Because, for me, as I said the difference between this and what can be achieved directly in the NLE, is subtle, I prefer to choose the quickest workflow, consistent with some useful improvement, but obviously YMMV.
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carlomacchiavello

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Re: Topaz Labs video enhancer

PostSun Oct 09, 2022 8:10 am

Hi think the truth is in the half, Steve, I use veia from a bit, you can recover picture with hard compression problems, you can clean up many problems of low resolution, the quality of deinterlacing is way better than classic resolve, magic bullet deinterlace (red giant) and more…
If you have tried to clean up old movies or old shooting (I work on documentary and I should use tons of old sd interlaced shooting) you tested many solutions, and the harsh of old edge enhancing is one’s of plague of old videos, you have also a model to remove it, and it do a quite good work, but you should do many pass
- deinterlace with edge demotion
- clean pass to remove analog /digital defects
- mild upscale to sd full
- mild upscale to 720p
- try if you can upscale to 1080p
- CC, regrain and debanding

Like told from Steve is not a Magic bullet, but you can do more than many other software, but forget to do in one step all.


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Steve Fishwick

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Re: Topaz Labs video enhancer

PostSun Oct 09, 2022 8:20 am

Yes Carlo, it's true, it has some very innovative tools, I should experiment more with it :) However as I say, it's often a time/workflow issue and I have never seen an ideal solution for SD DV interlaced footage. You can see that very often on 4K Netflix documentaries that incorporate DV archive. I am currently, in between working for a living :lol: , restoring an old TV series I made around 2006, shot in DVCam. There was a thread here where I submitted stills, but nobody provided a better solution than I can get myself, even though they recommended a very complex method. My TV series is 5 hours! And so to run it all through Topaz would be an ordeal. But I will follow your suggestions for some tests. Thank you. As I mentioned a very fine filmlike grain is really quite nice, it starts to look like 16mm.
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Re: Topaz Labs video enhancer

PostSun Oct 09, 2022 12:49 pm

I am in the process of encoding family video from VHS in 1983 to the last of interlaced Hi8, DV on tape plus some AVCHD etc. I have Topaz and the latest beta 3 but at the moment the quickest acceptable output for me is using TMPGenc MasterWorks 7 to straight deinterlace double frame rate ( maintains temporal motion ) to h265. This is from source tape or DVD for things I no longer have source tapes. This maybe 10 times faster than Topaz for marginal difference to me anyway for most sources I have so far. For really special video I have then used Topaz to upscale to HD. Am looking forward to full version 3 as the beta lacks some controls at the moment but is faster.
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Ellory Yu

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Re: Topaz Labs video enhancer

PostSun Oct 09, 2022 8:20 pm

TMPGenc MasterWorks Would be useful for me if ONLY it can encode Out Prores on Windows from other middle or mastering format coders in DR.
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Re: Topaz Labs video enhancer

PostSun Oct 09, 2022 8:28 pm

Ellory Yu wrote:TMPGenc MasterWorks Would be useful for me if ONLY it can encode Out Prores on Windows from other middle or mastering format coders in DR.



Since you are on Windows, what do you use now for Prores ? It has GrassValley HQX
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carlomacchiavello

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Re: Topaz Labs video enhancer

PostMon Oct 10, 2022 7:26 am

Steve Fishwick wrote:Yes Carlo, it's true, it has some very innovative tools, I should experiment more with it :) However as I say, it's often a time/workflow issue and I have never seen an ideal solution for SD DV interlaced footage. You can see that very often on 4K Netflix documentaries that incorporate DV archive. I am currently, in between working for a living :lol: , restoring an old TV series I made around 2006, shot in DVCam. There was a thread here where I submitted stills, but nobody provided a better solution than I can get myself, even though they recommended a very complex method. My TV series is 5 hours! And so to run it all through Topaz would be an ordeal. But I will follow your suggestions for some tests. Thank you. As I mentioned a very fine filmlike grain is really quite nice, it starts to look like 16mm.


Topaz unfortunately is not a fast solution, i tried many times every AI solution that i founded, Gain based and more, but also if faster, i not founded better solution for some problems like edge sharpening of old analog / low res cam or to deinterlace in the good way.
And often i should composite different version to have the best, but i'm enough lucky to do on short sequence, and i had time to do that.
A full solution on long time tv series is a very complex task, i know that is a very time consuming task.
a possible solution (i not tested) under windows is to run by command line interface more task at same time on different GPU Nvidia, it's not avaible for all, it's in new betas of 3.0, i will test it in future, i had a windows computer with three nvidia for 3d rendering and for intensive denoise by neatvideo.
VEIA is better otpimized for Nvidia (actually i use it under win with nvidia old and under mac with Amd vega 64, and old nvidia 980ti go more faster than Vega).
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Re: Topaz Labs video enhancer

PostTue Oct 11, 2022 6:56 am

carlomacchiavello wrote:A full solution on long time tv series is a very complex task, i know that is a very time consuming task.
a possible solution (i not tested) under windows is to run by command line interface more task at same time on different GPU Nvidia, it's not avaible for all, it's in new betas of 3.0, i will test it in future, i had a windows computer with three nvidia for 3d rendering and for intensive denoise by neatvideo.


Yes Carlo, I agree. The best solution I found is to recapture the DVCam tapes (I still have them) via a JVC HDV deck through Utlrastudio Mini 4K, to Avid. The deck has a very good HDMI out that upscales the footage to HD (1080i), quite capably. Then de-interlacing is performed and Neat Video has an excellent sharpening filter, as well as denoising and removing macro blocking.

This series, was shot by me, on a broadcast DSR570 with J11 and J17 top quality lenses. At the time I had very careful settings that reduced edge sharpening to a minimum, so fortunately that is not a huge problem. Also at the time I had a JVC HD101E (one of the first in Europe), that could shoot progressive DV and this is much sharper footage to uprez, even though the camera was somewhat cheaper than the Sony.

Professionally Teranex is still used for this type of work, more often but I cannot justify the cost for this one show. BCC Uprez is also quite good, at least as good as Topaz, in my experience and has the advantage of working directly within an NLE.

Even if you look at the examples on Topaz's website, they are not very convincing and presumably they were the best showcases. It is simply impossible to invent real detail convincingly, though uprezzing from 720p and FHD to 4K can be much more successful. Maybe one day AI can do this much better but it has a very long way to go IMV.
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Re: Topaz Labs video enhancer

PostThu Oct 27, 2022 4:36 pm

I'd love to go through and re-cut all my old mini DV movies to see if I could make them good I mean acceptable LOL. Might have to try to find a rental DV deck as I don't really want to buy one.

My (limited) experience with video enhance AI has not been incredibly positive. I find that it mostly just muddies the images up. I did, however, do a test where I exported some good 4k video to 480p and then enhanced back to 4k and I'd say the results were pretty good. I recently cut a documentary with a lot of rough old VHS footage and I wish I'd had this tool then.

I've also been using photo AI and it's saved my butt. I'll occasionally grab some stills with my pocket and, well, I didn't know I had AF LOL. Photo AI did an acceptable job of knocking down the OOF blur. Same here though, you have to go really gentle with it. I find that on the sharpening, anything over 5-10% becomes very fake very fast.

I have a 2nd chair for the photo AI package if anyone wants to trade for their 2nd chair video AI :)
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Re: Topaz Labs video enhancer

PostThu Oct 27, 2022 8:34 pm

There is a new version they say is much faster and it has new AI capabilities. Those that have an active license get it free ( meaning those that purchased last year or those that purchased an upgrade license.. if no there is a special price for almost 50% of

view video viewtopic.php?f=3&t=169319

Ricardo Marty
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Re: Topaz Labs video enhancer

PostThu Oct 27, 2022 8:47 pm

Yes version 3 is faster. But for me TMPGenc MW7 for deinterlace and then Resolve superscale with a little noise reduction is still almost three times faster than Topaz and I am not sure the quality difference is worth it for my use so far.
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ricardo marty

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Re: Topaz Labs video enhancer

PostThu Oct 27, 2022 9:33 pm

SkierEvans wrote:Yes version 3 is faster. But for me TMPGenc MW7 for deinterlace and then Resolve superscale with a little noise reduction is still almost three times faster than Topaz and I am not sure the quality difference is worth it for my use so far.


Use video enhancer for what its good for then resolve or what ever. They both have different capacities.
If you can get it free then why worry.


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Re: Topaz Labs video enhancer

PostMon Oct 31, 2022 5:36 pm

New Topaz update is much better for my DV files now. Deinterlace to 59.94 with x2 upscale is taking about 5 times reatime and is very good on my Studio Max. On the PC, time is almost twice that of the Studio Max. This update a real improvement.
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ricardo marty

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Re: Topaz Labs video enhancer

PostMon Oct 31, 2022 6:33 pm

SkierEvans wrote:New Topaz update is much better for my DV files now. Deinterlace to 59.94 with x2 upscale is taking about 5 times reatime and is very good on my Studio Max. On the PC, time is almost twice that of the Studio Max. This update a real improvement.


Philip bloom in his latest video on the sony fx30 speaks very well about the topaz video enhancer and states that he uses it a lot.

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