Seems like you may have a misunderstanding of some of the functions of Topaz.
Topaz can compress the output file down to however small you want it at the cost of quality. If you are going to output to .mp4 and NOT perform any other processing, I recommend using a CRF setting of 19. You can go adjust from there.
If you are going to hand off the Topaz upscaled video to another processing step, such as Flowframes, then I recommend you set Topaz to output uncompressed .mp4 and do your compression at the final step. Yes, Topazâs output file will be large, but you wonât be losing quality unnecessarily. You can always delete it after you have the final output.
Thank you for your reply.
To complete with TOPAZ only, set OUTPUT SIZE to 4 K and CRFsetting to 19.
When TOPAZ and Flowframes are used together, TOPAZ outputs OUTPUT SIZE at 100% and processes it in Flowframes.
Is it correct that TOPAZ will compress to 4k next?
Just wondering since it hasnât been mentioned/asked but could you share AN starting point preset for Topaz for Live video and anime/CGI content? Or are one of the default starting presets already an good reference point?
Since you want to keep what makes your encodings G90âed an secret I presume.
Wanted to make sure as wasnât sure about if it was as simple as that if I did get my hands on Topaz as my previous experience stuff has been only with Handbrake and Sony Vegas 13-14 (years ago) where there was many settings and such to change/deal with so something simple is very surprising honestly.
Often times with restoration in general, less is more. I see people running multiple passes of various AI models and I cringe. Itâll never be perfect and every added step is destroying original data youâll never get back. Remember, youâre trying to enhance the original, not make something entirely new.
Iâm back again, looking at flowframes this timeâŚas Iâm think about using it to just increase FPS from 30 to 60 and then after encoding the audio back in to finally use handbrake to compress.
As a result settings wise would you say itâs okay to use lossless or that should still do CRF 19 if not maybe slightly less for more quality?
To see if the settings Iâve been tuning in handbrake are better to use than flowframes along with as you said previously here to have compression be the final step in the process. Also in the past I accidentally Handbraked some of your upscales it cut nearly 40% of the file size off without noticeable quality drop in my experience that I wish to investigate.
oh, just use a higher CRF. H.264 is a universal codec. one program isnât going to do it better than another one generally. You never ever ever want to double compress something.
Yeeeep unless you use H.265 which can result in much better compression. I agree also about double compressing as you risk a lot of quality loss for very little size saving.
Did spot that flowframes does offer doing H.265 so will be giving that a test/adding to the comparison to see what works best.
H.265 is generally better compression, but it does have some issues with certain types of video. Itâs very aggressive and tailored for streaming content. Games and CGI content can be a struggle for h.265 at times. High bitrate H.264 is preferable IMHO for content under 4K (over 4K you gotta go H.265 to leverage hardware decoders). Under 4K, H.264 generally more compatible with devices + players (although there is a LOT of hardware accelerated H.265 devices, so that is becoming a moot point). Not to mention that H.265 takes MUCH more time to encode.
Storage overall is pretty cheap, so I personally would rather have a more compatible output that I know is of optimum quality, even though I might be âwasting spaceâ.
But hey, if youâre short on space, and have cheap electricity, H.265 might be the way to go for all videos.
I decided on using AV1 myself after doing some testing and research, AV1 has the best quality-to-size ratio, but it is not as widespread because it is still quite new. But I want the best for my upscales since I upscale content that I myself enjoy and want to keep. It also takes less space on my drive and on Mega, AV1 is also playable in Mega, as is H.264 but not H.265.
I donât really like H.264 at all after my testing though, since you need to crank up the bitrate to insane amounts to get similar quality, we are talking double-size over AV1 at lower bitrates. I made some comparison shots, and you can see that even on the 10bit H.264, there are some streaks of pixel glitches, while AV1 at half the size got none.
It all comes down to what you want/need though: compatibility, size, and quality wise.
Oh yep AV1 has already been around for ages actually (6 ish years ago it was starting to be used by Facebook and Youtube) just wasnât that viable due to the PC requirements. (same as x265 though even more taxing) I couldnât do tests with it in handbrake since it wasnât included at the time. (and so I forgot about it and missed that it was added in 2022 Iâve just noticed whoosp)
There was talk about VVC back then too which was said to be AV1âs rival but then licensing stuff made it go into the shadow realm. Although in just checking dates of this there appears to have been some talk of FFMPEG or MPC-HC maybe supporting it now and Handbrake is waiting for polish before it looks at adding it. (May look into this more though, EDIT found an way to encode and view VVC but extremely clunky and half time it works the file is bigger than other formats)
I have spotted that flowframes can do AV1 and so added it to my experiment list along with doing the age old classic AVI (thatâs an i at the end not a 1) just to have more comparison.
EDIT: Holy CowâŚis flowframes setup specifically for AV1 or the other way around? As Lossless results in tiny file sizes and great quality it seems compared to the others as a result. Like took an upscale roughly 10gb and put it down to 124mb (Original file was 107mb) and appeared to be the best quality despite being the smallest. (am using the Rife model v2.3)
EDIT2
I found out why the file size was so smallâŚwhich is that Flowframes when it does Lossless AV1 attempts to tell FFMPEG to do CRF0âŚwhich isnât possible, as a result it sets the CRF to itâs default value of 35 meaning a lot of quality is lost in exchange for file size. (CRF 1 results in lossless it seems btw) From testing I found that doing CRF 20 you gain roughly 20-30% file size increase and some quality is noticeableâŚCRF 30 meanwhile is maybe 10-15% file size increase (compared to CRF 35) and very hard to tell quality decrease. (compared to CRF 20) But that was for files that werenât interpolated and instead run through FFMPEG 7.1âŚwhen I compared the CRF 30 file to an interpolated CRF 35 file I couldnât tell the difference and their file size are both equal give or take.
So yeahâŚIâve been very surprised about AV1 and thoroughly converted to using it for compressing upscaled files and have found some success in re-encoding 2160p/1440p in decreasing file size decently enough by going to CRF 20 while not losing noticable quality if not maybe some improvement. Why improvement though? Iâve noticed that one way it appears to cut down on file size is by looking at pixels in an area and if possible make them all the same color instead of different shades, e.g. red box on screen having slightly different red hueâs on it when put through AV1 softens them all to be more closer to the overall red color.
This as a result gives in my view an softening of over sharpened edges often caused in Animated upscales. (Havenât quite nailed down what it does for Real Porn stuff yet other than background softening I believe) However that all said it does mean that AV1 doesnât compress as much as x264 in some cases (25% smaller maybe) and definitely x265 (40% maybe 50% smaller at best) but does keep the quality as a result alongside this softening/de-sharpening.
I have just started getting into enhancing old videos. Iâve been focusing on VR since some of those older czechvr videos are crying out for an update!
I have a copy of topaz video AI 5.1 and have been playing around with some of the models. How do you find models like proteus and gaia compared to artemis HQ? From my perspective as a beginner, Gaia seems to work really well! I hear proteus CAN work well, but it needs a lot of fine-tuning thatâs currently above my pay grade.
Best way to find out is to do it yourself via taking a short clip video (thereâs many anime ones and you can probably find an boob drop one for real life porn) and then use those models on the videos and try to compare the difference between them via an good image comparison tool. (I found ICAT to do well for me though itâs Nvidia built)
Wanted to make sure as wasnât sure about if it was as simple as that if I did get my hands on Topaz as my previous experience stuff has been only with Handbrake and Sony Vegas 13-14 (years ago) where there was many settings and such to change/deal with so something simple is very surprising honestly.
whoosp)