I went through a phase of testing out Topaz AI upscale tools on videos. Ultimately I didn’t like the results, as impressive as they are you always end up with some hallucinations ruining details.
The exception is cartoons. They upscale really well.
Yeah, most of the open source models that do the upscaling were meant for anime waifus. Also, cartoons don’t often have things out of focus in a frame like live action does.
I’ve tried upscaling an old cartoon from 1080p to 4k using some open source models and it worked quite well. However when I tried to add frames with interpolation, it added a bunch of frames that were quite horrific, especially during quick movements.
I also tried to upcale a 90s live action class so I could see some of the details the instructor was showing. It was not near as good and even without frame interpolation, there were a bunch of new artifact glitches that were added so I didn’t keep that version.
AI upscale generally gives a perceived improved fidelity at a loss of some finer detail and grain. It is a trade off and it is almost never a objective improvement
Couldn’t tell you if it was AI upscaling a normal upscaler, but the only time I’ve ever had to delete a torrent from my external hard drive was an upscaled cartoon where you could really tell it was upscaled. The outlines didn’t look right and things just looked kinda blurry and slightly fuzzy and off somehow. So, definitely depends on how it was upscaled.
I’ve seen fan-made AI upscale works that don’t suck, but I expect cartoons benefit more from the technology than live action footage ever could.
I went through a phase of testing out Topaz AI upscale tools on videos. Ultimately I didn’t like the results, as impressive as they are you always end up with some hallucinations ruining details.
The exception is cartoons. They upscale really well.
Yeah, most of the open source models that do the upscaling were meant for anime waifus. Also, cartoons don’t often have things out of focus in a frame like live action does.
I’ve tried upscaling an old cartoon from 1080p to 4k using some open source models and it worked quite well. However when I tried to add frames with interpolation, it added a bunch of frames that were quite horrific, especially during quick movements.
I also tried to upcale a 90s live action class so I could see some of the details the instructor was showing. It was not near as good and even without frame interpolation, there were a bunch of new artifact glitches that were added so I didn’t keep that version.
Yeah I can see that.
I’ve watched most of DS9 upscaled. And it was an improvement for sure. I never noticed anything strange like these examples.
But I also don’t think the upscaling/cleanup was this aggressive.
AI upscale generally gives a perceived improved fidelity at a loss of some finer detail and grain. It is a trade off and it is almost never a objective improvement
Yeah, I don’t know what they did, how or from what source material.
You can get less artifacty AI upscaling in real time on a mid-size PC these days.
I was similarly thinking of the Voyager upscale I have that’s actually quite good!
Couldn’t tell you if it was AI upscaling a normal upscaler, but the only time I’ve ever had to delete a torrent from my external hard drive was an upscaled cartoon where you could really tell it was upscaled. The outlines didn’t look right and things just looked kinda blurry and slightly fuzzy and off somehow. So, definitely depends on how it was upscaled.