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This Topaz program is discussed in several posts regarding older, lower rez videos. See this post and others following in that thread:
https://community.adobe.com/t5/premiere-pro-discussions/capturing-analog-video/m-p/12631621#M387740
I'm starting this thread in the lounge to ask a question about Topaz. The results are nothing short of incredible.
I'm running the latest version 2.6.2. Google searches and older Topaz forum posts suggest there have been changes in the program, and I'm not sure I understand the latest options.
I now plan to re-process many of my low rez projects, but I want to get the right settings.
Do I have control of the output frame rate?
My current source (one of several types sources) is DV AVI 720x480 29.97. The Dione Interlaced TV Model does appear to be the best setting, and outputs 1920x1080 and 3840x2160 both at 59.94.
What determines whether Audio can be included in the output file?
Some models appear to require adding audio back in.
Stan
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I, too, use Dione Interlaced TV model but I upscale to 720p50 (no crop, i leave it at 4;3 in a widescreen setting).
This i can burn to BD very easily.
The bd player shows a beautiful image on our 4K tv.
There is however an issue with the framerate.
If source is not exact frame, but a bit off, then so will the output file.
Not a big deal, but if you are going to use Warp Stabilizer you need to interpret all the files to the correct framerate.
Otherwise, the GPU won't seen the rendered WS.
Don't know if it's just my camera that does not play the correct framerate.
The screenshot does show 25 fps but if you use ffmpeg it shows: 24.9996875 (2000000/80001),
Or if its a PAL issue?
BTW i dont know how to use ffmpeg. Topaz told me this.
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Hey Ann,
Are you on VE AI 2.6.2? If so how would you rate it against earlier versions. I'm on 2.4.
Thanks!
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I cannot answer that question, as I started with 2.6.2.
I tested 2.4 a while back and was not impressed.
Tested 2.6.2 and was impressed. Black Friday came along and bought the program.
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Today's email blast from Topaz Labs lists "frame rate conversion" as a new feature in Video Enhance v2.6.2.
I'm still on v2.4.0, but I'll update and see where it's located in the options.
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I was already on 2.6.2 since I was new. I could not find framerate adjustment anywhere. However, I had looked at the same email you saw, and did not see framerate as a new point they are making. But I looked further, and found something in the comments on Brian Matiash's article: https://learn.topazlabs.com/introducing-video-enhance-ai-v2-6-native-apple-m1-silicon-support-improv...
There is an adjustment when using the Chronos model (slo motion or fast motion). I have not tested this because I was totally sold on the video quality of the Dione model. And I see that when you use Chronos, you CANNOT resize the video!
Still a newbie at this....
Stan
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I don't have the Topaz software, but from reading their site, it appears that Chronos is, as you say, about slow or fast motion — exclusively. It's an interpolated frame-generation algorithm more than a rate-control one. While it's possible it would be able to correct frame rate issues as a side-effect of what it does, if nothing else it's likely overkill for the purpose, and probably not entirely necessary anyway.
That 24.999875 you're seeing is an average frame rate — the number of frames, divided by the runtime. Quite literally, frames ÷ seconds == frames/seconds == fps. But that doesn't mean your video's timing is bad. At least, not 99.9% of it.
With just an average rate, there's no way to tell a video with inconsistent timing throughout, from one with mostly perfect timing, but one or two short/long frames... usually at either the start or the end. Fortunately, the second scenario is both much more common, and easier to correct. (And it does need be corrected. As you've discovered, software can do amazingly stupid things if there are issues with a video's average frame rate. Too often, computations are based on it that lead to processing or playback issues with the entire file.)
I went through my video files to find one with "weird" timing, and came up with one I'll use as an example. It's an old Sorenson-encoded MOV file, and here's how MediaInfo reports the timing:
Duration : 00:01:06.865 (00:01:06:14)
Frame rate mode : Variable
Frame rate : 15.015 FPS
Minimum frame rate : 15.000 FPS
Maximum frame rate : 600.000 FPS
Frame count : 1004
(Sure enough, 1004 / 66.865 = 15.015329. It's just a dumb average.) Now, that's gonna throw things off, especially the "maximum" frame rate of 600 FPS. But in reality that's nonsense.
There's a great open-source program called QCTools, developed a few years ago by MediaArea (who also wrote MediaInfo) in partnership with the Bay Area Video Coalition, a group of archivists and preservationists. The GUI uses ffmpeg to collect statistical metrics of a video encoding's quality in all sorts of ways I don't really understand, but one of the display options is a graph of a video's packet durations (which, in simplified terms, translate to frame durations). When I fed the video above into it, this is what I got:
That black line is actually the graph (I was hoping I could change the plot color to something other than black, but... I can't figure it out. QCtools can graph in multiple colors, but... ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ What it's showing, though, is that the video's timing is perfectly steady for almost the entire runtime... until it falls off right at the very end. Which we can see if I zoom way in:
Clicking around the graph, I find that the duration is exactly 0.06667s for EVERY frame except the last two. It starts to fall off in frame 1002, and frame 1003 has a duration of only 0.00167 seconds... which is the source of that "600 FPS" "maximum" frame rate.
Knowing that it's only the last two frames causing problems, though, I can simply slice them off using ffmpeg. I'll actually keep 1001 frames (0 - 1000) and slice off the last three, since 1000 × 0.06667 is 66.67 seconds. (It'll tack on the duration of the last frame automatically.)
$ ffmpeg -t 66.67 -i bad_timing.mov corrected.mov
Input #0, mov,mp4,m4a,3gp,3g2,mj2, from 'bad_timing.mov':
Metadata:
creation_time : 2000-01-06T22:31:42.000000Z
Duration: 00:01:06.87, start: 0.000000, bitrate: 163 kb/s
Stream #0:0(eng): Video: svq1 (SVQ1 / 0x31515653), yuv410p, 256x192, 162 kb/s, 15.02 fps, 15 tbr, 600 tbn, 600 tbc (default)
Metadata:
creation_time : 2000-01-06T22:31:42.000000Z
handler_name : Apple Video Media Handler
vendor_id : SVis
encoder : Sorenson Video
Stream #0:1(eng): Data: none, 60 kb/s (default)
Metadata:
creation_time : 2000-01-06T22:31:42.000000Z
handler_name : Sprite Animation Media Handler
Stream mapping:
Stream #0:0 -> #0:0 (svq1 (native) -> h264 (libx264))
Output #0, mov, to 'corrected.mov':
Metadata:
encoder : Lavf58.76.100
Stream #0:0(eng): Video: h264 (avc1 / 0x31637661), yuv420p(tv, progressive), 256x192, q=2-31, 15 fps, 15360 tbn (default)
Metadata:
creation_time : 2000-01-06T22:31:42.000000Z
handler_name : Apple Video Media Handler
vendor_id : SVis
encoder : Lavc58.134.100 libx264
Side data:
cpb: bitrate max/min/avg: 0/0/0 buffer size: 0 vbv_delay: N/A
frame= 1 fps=0.0 q=0.0 size= 0kB time=00:00:00.00 bitrate=N/A speed=N/Aframe= 258 fps=0.0 q=27.0 size= 256kB time=00:00:13.66 bitrate= 153.5kbits/frame= 488 fps=486 q=27.0 size= 512kB time=00:00:29.00 bitrate= 144.6kbits/frame= 721 fps=479 q=27.0 size= 768kB time=00:00:44.53 bitrate= 141.3kbits/frame= 950 fps=474 q=27.0 size= 1024kB time=00:00:59.80 bitrate= 140.3kbits/frame= 1001 fps=454 q=-1.0 Lsize= 1360kB time=00:01:06.53 bitrate= 167.5kbits/s speed=30.2x
video:1350kB audio:0kB subtitle:0kB other streams:0kB global headers:0kB muxing overhead: 0.771125%
After processing, ffmpeg and MediaInfo agree: A file with perfect 15 FPS, constant-rate encoding.
$ ffprobe -i corrected.mov
Input #0, mov,mp4,m4a,3gp,3g2,mj2, from 'corrected.mov':
Metadata:
major_brand : qt
minor_version : 512
compatible_brands: qt
encoder : Lavf58.76.100
Duration: 00:01:06.73, start: 0.000000, bitrate: 166 kb/s
Stream #0:0(eng): Video: h264 (High) (avc1 / 0x31637661), yuv420p, 256x192, 165 kb/s, 15 fps, 15 tbr, 15360 tbn, 30 tbc (default)
$ mediainfo -full corrected.mov
Duration : 00:01:06.734 (00:01:06:11)
Frame rate mode : Constant
FrameRate_Mode_Original : VFR
Frame rate : 15.000 FPS
Frame count : 1001
No more "maximum" frame rate from MediaInfo, either. It still shows the video was originally variable-rate, supposedly, but that shouldn't matter. And if I load the processed video into QCTools, the timing graph now goes straight across from start to finish.
It's worth trimming off problem frames before doing any other sort of processing, since you can never be sure what calculations they're foul
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you can never be sure what calculations they're foul
...ing up. (Stupid post editor.)