Anyone here using Topaz Video Enchance AI? De-noising?
Anyone here using Topaz Video Enchance AI? De-noising?
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Mr Whippy

Original Poster:

32,200 posts

264 months

Tuesday 9th February 2021
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I recently decided to sack off all my DVD/BR players and all that jazz, and just have an ATV 4K with the telly (mainly driven by kids/kids film needs and mashing the DVD/BR player doors and touching things!)
I've been ripping all my DVD/BR to a file server running Jellyfin and Infuse at the ATV end. And recording oodles of HD DVB-S films and TV series.


But it's amazing looking how noisy some old BR etc can be.

Jurassic Park (1993) and Krull (1983) as two examples I'm transcoding and they're HUGE files because of all the noise. And, well, just noisy, amazingly so.



I'd bought the Topaz suite for some work stuff and have been playing on and off for a year or so, but I recently updated the video enhance.

The latest MQ profile just doing de-noise on 1080p BR footage is on another level now.

On a GTX1070 it's taken about 2 days to process a 2hr 1080p film, but it's very nice.


As much as I'm fond of some noise in a film to fill out the mystique of the fine details, and as much as in the past de-noise has often eaten away real details as much as the noise, this latest version of the software is very impressive. I'm not at a point with Krull that I think I'll be using a de-noised version on my server... previously I've not been keen on the results with things looking odd or whatever.
Now it just fits my expectations of what was hidden in the noise (when watching side by side)

In an ideal world I'd take a fully denoised version and the original version, and do per-scene mixing to retain a consistent but low level of noise throughout, rather than just all zero noise.

Has anyone else tried it?

Sophisticated Sarah

15,078 posts

192 months

Wednesday 10th February 2021
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I used the trial version for fixing photos I’d have usually dumped, however it wasn’t that good in my experience. (A year ago so could have improved by now)

Mr Whippy

Original Poster:

32,200 posts

264 months

Friday 12th February 2021
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It’s an odd software as it’s still early days in training the AI across all the suites (arguably lots of overlap, could be just one or two packages)

I used the suite mainly for photo work too, but they had a mega deal on and the video bit was only £50 extra for the whole bundle.



I recently dug out my Split Second BR and has a bash at that... it’s just not clearing the noise at all now.

While Krull is just perfect looking, Split Second is doing weird things like making people look freaky and distorting their eyes etc.


So obviously I’d upgraded the software and hit a perfect example with Krull.

And/or it’s something to do with the transfers... an old 720p copy of Split Second I had from somewhere looks just as detailed as my 1080p BR so I’m wondering if the Split Second BR is just an upscale from a DVD, or a 720p transfer upscaled to 1080p, and the noise is basically not being seen by the AI so well.

I’m going to have a bash at scaling the BR source down to 720p and 576p and see how it responds to denoising again.


I can imagine in 5 years this sort of thing will probably be built into some players and done in real-time with really well exercised pattern matching algorithms.

Sophisticated Sarah

15,078 posts

192 months

Friday 12th February 2021
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I had some funny results using Remini that caused subjects to look bonk eyed hehe but when it works it’s incredible.

Quite exciting to see how it improves and the potential results.