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27th May 2020, 22:08 | #461 | Link | |
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Also, how are you getting the image files back into video? We discussed this with zapp7 earlier in the thread. If don't right you shouldn't have a color shift (unless Topaz is broken or we don't understand what it's doing). |
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27th May 2020, 23:11 | #462 | Link | |
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Stereodude,
This was based on a video file, not PNG or TIFF output. I started to play with lossless at one point but had underestimated the storage requirements (Emissary and even PNG output don't mix unless you've planned on the storage requirement beforehand). Both HQ-CG (Topaz 1.1.0) and Gaia-CG can cause a color shift, but they do it rather differently. HQ-CG had a *very* subtle lightening effect on DS9. I'm not even sure I dislike it, since one of the persistent complaints about the show is how dark it is. (If I was going to dislike HQ-CG it would be for detail removal, not the very small color shift). Gaia-CG can deviate more widely than HQ-CG, but where HQ-CG had a very subtle effect on everything, Gaia-CG shows this less globally. Also, while I haven't played with the lossless upscale option yet, I had planned to use a method like the one CaptRobau gave in his blog posts. https://captrobau.blogspot.com/2019/...-topaz-ai.html When I duplicated his workflow back when Gigapixel AI was the only tool available, I also duplicated his command and had no problems with it: Quote:
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28th May 2020, 14:32 | #463 | Link |
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1) Not using lossy compression until your final compression step.
2) I probably wouldn't convert to 8-bit H.264, but 10-bit HEVC instead. 3) I wouldn't load the images from a ffmpeg command line. HD video has rec.709 color space. DVD has rec.601. I'm guessing Topaz doesn't compensate for that. You need to make that conversion. We discussed this with zapp7 earlier in the thread. Convert to RGB in your AVIsynth script, and save the output to 16-bit tiff files. Run those through Topaz and then save the output as tiff files. z_ConvertFormat(pixel_type="RGBP16", colorspace_op="170m:601:170m:f=>rgb:srgb:170m:f") Load the 16-bit tiff files into AVIsynth (if using ImageSource, don't forget pixel_type="RGB48") and convert them to 4:3 yuv420 16-bit video with a rec.709 color space. ConvertToPlanarRGB() z_ConvertFormat(width=2880, height=2160, resample_filter="bicubic", pixel_type="YUV420P16", colorspace_op="rgb:srgb:170m:f=>709:709:709:f") Then dither down to 10-bits with f3kdb f3kdb(range=31, grainY=15, grainC=10, sample_mode=2, dither_algo=3, dynamic_grain=true, keep_tv_range=false, output_depth=10) Feed that into x265 to compress it to 10-bit HEVC. |
28th May 2020, 17:17 | #464 | Link |
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I've given up on the 16-bit tiff files. I just don't have the requisite hard drive space as one episode in 16 bit tiff takes more than 2 TB.
I still do the conversion to RGBP16 before Topaz to preserve the full color range, but I save Topaz output as 8-bit .png instead and convert that to YUV420. I honestly couldn't see a difference between the 8-bit and 10-bit final versions. |
28th May 2020, 18:25 | #465 | Link | |
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28th May 2020, 18:57 | #467 | Link |
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Well, you don't have to do the full episode in one shot. You could do some number of frames and convert to a losslessly compressed intermediate file or go straight to HEVC in segments. But the Topaz folks should make it more versatile in terms of what it can open and export.
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28th May 2020, 19:29 | #468 | Link | |
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28th May 2020, 20:48 | #469 | Link | |
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In general: I guess what Joel is trying to accomplish is to come up with a workflow that can be replicated by anyone so the upscale and encoding could be distributed to many people. I could join in with a s mall batch as soon as things are pinned down. |
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28th May 2020, 21:30 | #470 | Link | |
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28th May 2020, 21:35 | #471 | Link | |
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I guess you could buy a very large HDD for the project. |
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28th May 2020, 23:49 | #475 | Link | |
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Keep it at its original resolution, for heaven's sake. You are not "future proofing" anything. |
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29th May 2020, 01:57 | #476 | Link | |
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I'm not saying they're to everyone's taste, but they generally look better than the SD original. At least for the CGI upscaling samples I've seen. Whether you can do just as well by filtering without upscaling is another question, but if you do you're still at the mercy of the player/display upscaling in respect to how it'll look. |
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29th May 2020, 08:11 | #477 | Link | |
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can have very high quality resize. |
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29th May 2020, 11:42 | #478 | Link |
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It was present in an early version and there was a help file about it, then they removed the feature end re-introduced it some versions ago - but the help file is missing now, I just looked up.. I will recover some of the old betas and search for it and post it here, give me some time, got work to do...
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29th May 2020, 12:11 | #479 | Link | |
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While dealing with AI Upscalers, I learned one thing (I am refering to techniques that deal with single frames only, to keep it simple) IF the AI starts to "see" somehting, i can re-interpret what it sees and replace the low resolution or noisy stuff with something new - preferably somehting looking similar or at least more pleasing to the eye.. This is very easy with cartoons which mostly have simple geometrical forms as lines, areas, fades, rectangles, etc.. - not to many textures and no "real life footage". So the Ai only has to "know" these types of image content and has an easy job replacing everything with something that looks good and very "realistik"... As soon as real life footage is to be dealt with, the content becomes endlessly complex... If a Model is trained on landscape footage like mountains, sky, clouds, grass, trees, etc... It will pick up these kinds of objects and "repaints" them - but it will fail horribly on faces and other stuff. Itīs obvious that no model can cover every possible situation. Companies like TOPAZ use training sets which have a wild mix of "most common footage" in them to get a good coverage of all possible situations. But of course, there is a lot missing in the models. Thatīs the reason why a spezialized model can work so much better on specific footage than a generic one. The game-upscale community is training models on very specific games or techniques to take that into account. So when throwing DS) into VEAI from Topaz - TOPAZ only can do as much as it knows - which isnīt tooo much in the case of DS9.... I exeprimented with some older DVDs, originally filmed a few decades ago with conventional film-cameras, containing mostly live footage (no special effects, no "mean" postprocessig, effects, filters, just "point the cam and film")... With this kind of material, it works really well (I simply love "police squad" in 1080p now..). But DS9 - not much luck. (In fact, I would propose whipping up an open source "upscale project" with some nifty AI Upscalers and the possibility to train own models and then take something similar to DS9 available in true HD, downscale it to DVD or record to VHS - train on that and make a "DS9" model.... Startrek Movies, Next Generation, etc... Most of the stuff neede is out there, itīs the matter of having enough GPU power, time, knowledge to whip it all together.... ok, back to DS9 and "how much is enough"... If the AI picks up: "ah, hair" - it replaces it with new hair, almost similar to the old one. If the model is done right, the alog is good, etc... one could now go up to whatever the model and framework limit - 8K - no problem (with most models).. But - if the AI doesn`t know what to do - it simply upscales the original, bicubic, Lancoz, etc.... In this case, no more detail is produced. VEAI now has frameworks which are able to recover details from multiple frames and add some deconvolution stuff into the workflow - so in some cases even if the model isnīt getting "hair", it is able to get some detail back - works good on still shots - in some cases I even got garbage on a pc-screen to reveal the actual numbers on the screen (SG1 NTSC DVD in this case). This mostly is refered to "super resolution". But it has ists limits. A quick turning head simply doesnīt have enough previous and following frames with the same info as the frame in question to recover anything out of the time domain... The Deconvolution sometimes is able to sharpen a little or make it at least visually more pleasing - but in my oppinion, in the case of VEAI - Topaz has done too much of it... This is very visible with compression artefacts (blocking) or noise or halos or ghosting etc... These get pronounced too much by the VEAI implementation.. For the moment, I personaly would stick to 1080p and keep the source for future usage. In the case of VEAI: I would wait for them to sort things out before making a final upscale. If I had the time and knowledge, Iīd go the route if implemting an open source solution and train a DS9 Model |
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29th May 2020, 12:14 | #480 | Link | |
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So it really differs from tradtional upscaling (if it works, read my post above) |
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