[Help] When AI upscaling, what should I look for?

[Serums]

Hello,

I've happened upon something that could be a base for a very interesting project. It is in HD but it's not the greatest of quality. I'd like to ideally use something like an AI upscaler to bring out whatever quality might be hiding inside (even though such an effort may take a while with my computer)  

I'm aware that upscaling software usually has a few different restoration profiles to choose from. I've never done this before, so could anyone with more experience perhaps lend some advice as to how I should look at these settings so I could choose the most appropriate one for the video I have?

Thanks!

[PDB]

Are you using Topaz VEAI and are looking for which profiles to use?

[Serums]

Yep. Thanks PDB!

[Yarp]

I think this is mostly trial and error. You also wanna make sure your source material is prepped as well as can be (telecined/deinterlaced properly). The source is incredibly important when AI upscaling so if you have access to different options definitely give them all a shot.

I've personally had the most success with Topaz AI and the Gaia preset. I feel like it's one of the only presets that knows how to deal with a grainy source. Most of the others make the video output look to artificial.

I've been working on prepping all the BMW Films. Most of them were only released on a fairly poor non-anamorphic DVD but i've been surprised how good they look AI upscaled. It helps that they have a healthy bitrate:
https://imgsli.com/MTM5Mzg0

[alleycat]

Personally I find myself using Topaz less and less now. Every project is different but I find I can often get similar results in Avisynth and it's much quicker than Topaz. I still use Topaz on certain projects, but I'll do a lot of work in Avisynth first.

I was finding with lower quality sources like Laserdisc and early DVD, that Topaz would produce weird artefacts in certain scenes, whereas Avisynth didn't do this and using Avisynth first to clean and upscale helped to avoid the issues in Topaz.

No option is perfect though. Avisynth is not user friendly and difficult to learn, whereas Topaz has a user friendly interface so I can see why people would be drawn to it. I remember reading a blog from the guy who did the DS9 upscales, his conclusion was a combination of both works best - which I agree with.

[Yarp]

I was finding with lower quality sources like Laserdisc and early DVD, that Topaz would produce weird artefacts in certain scenes, whereas Avisynth didn't do this and using Avisynth first to clean and upscale helped to avoid the issues in Topaz.

Any screenshots of these weird artifacts vs avisynth so we can see what you're seeing? And AI models are everything in Topaz so referring to Topaz without specifying which model you are using/used doesn't give us much. In my expereince after a lot of a/b testing a ton of varying sources, most of the AI models are terrible and make most media look worse, especially on larger screens. I have only had luck with Gaia and the base Topaz medium/high options. And even then, sometimes grain still needs to be added to cover any artifacting.

I remember reading a blog from the guy who did the DS9 upscales, his conclusion was a combination of both works best - which I agree with.

Avisynth, or something like it, should be used to clean up the SD interlaced source material before ai upscaling anyways (ivtc, deinterlace, crop, minor color correction, etc.). so unless you're using the avisynth ai upscale plugin, you're gonna need to use a few programs to get a good end result.