Resolve Superscale vs Topaz Video Enhance AI

Today I did some 4K up scaling tests.

The Material I used was an old Trailer (MP4 720p) from the film “In Memoriam” that I shot 15 years ago on a Sony FS100.

I up scaled the material to 4K – first in Topaz Video Enhance AI, and than in Resolve with Superscale and an additional node for a bit of sharpening.

I was pretty much surprised, that at the end, the visual difference is nothing to write home about, but the render times are way different – like in more than 800% different.

In a nut shell: IMHO – doing it in Topaz is not really worth the wait – your mileage may vary though, depending on your material and expectations.

To be honest, even the difference between Superscale and the normal (Lanczos) scaling in Resolve is way less than I expected. If you really have a need for speed, Lanczos is probably doing the trick in most cases.

I was a bit disappointed though, cause I really wanted the Topaz result somehow reflecting the sooomuchloooooonger render times, but actually it barely does.

There are some fringe cases – like trees and foliage for example – where it does a bit of a better job than Superscale, but than – with more tweaking in Resolve, I probably could come dammed close. Topaz does definitely a better job in de-banding/de-posterizing compression artefacts though.

And yeah, if you zoom in 800% on a still frame, you can probably find some more, but that’s not the point of up-scaling.

That pretty much reflects my experiences and I did quite a bit of tuning. Well, depending on hardware, speed of VEAI has improved quite a bit.
From my tests, I’d say it does visibly better with natural textures, but sometimes it looks downright ugly with faces.
It does better with de-interlacing, even with DR switched to the neural version.

In general, I’d always check first if either method with its rendering times is justified. Good UHD TVs do a pretty good job upscaling these days, some even claim to use AI.
De-interlacing, not so much.

I used Topaz for stills and could see it as better than just upscale in LR. Not used it on video

I use the Davinchi Superscale on my gopro footage, it only does 2.7k. It still looks like crappy gopro footage after

There is a slight advantage with Topaz in the results, but for me...not enough to justify the cost in both dollars and time.

Thanks for posting about this. I was seriously considering picking this up. After seeing the differences...honestly, I think DR does a better job. I spotted some weird artifacts from the Topaz render that the DR superscale rendered nicely. Maybe the DR superscale wasn't as sharp, but it looked less noisy to me overall.

If you add a tiny (very small) amount of OFX Sharpen Edges, it also can help in some situations.

The only function I found substantially better is de-interlacing. And it's fast (compared to the rest).