As artificial intelligence and machine learning continue to advance, it’s hardly surprising to have newer technologies do what we thought impossible.
Let’s take video enlargement as an example. Until recently, enlarging videos meant sacrificing quality.
But you can now have both thanks to AI video enhancement tools like Topaz Video Enhance AI.
The Topaz Video AI software boasts tools to upscale your low-resolution video clips to 4k and 8k. This review looks at the features, what to expect, pricing, and all you need to know.
Jessica’s Recommendation
Topaz Labs Video Enhance AI is a powerful video enhancement tool that upscales and enhances resolution to improve video quality. It’s a standalone app that works on any devices.
Best for: Video upscaling and enhancement.
Jessica’s Recommendation
Topaz Enhance AI
$299 once off
Topaz Labs Video Enhance AI is a powerful video enhancement tool that upscales and enhances resolution to improve video quality. It’s a standalone app that works on any devices.
Best for: Video upscaling and enhancement.
What is Topaz Labs Video Enhance AI?
Topaz Labs Video Enhance AI is a powerful video enhancement tool that upscales and enhances resolution to improve video quality.
It was developed by Topaz Labs; hence the name Topaz Lab Video Enhance AI, even though the recent upgrade has seen it renamed as simply Topaz Video AI.
The tool has AI models consisting of built-in algorithms that help it to achieve video upscaling, enhancement, denoising, deinterlacing, restoration, and shake stabilization. It can also create slow-motion video footage by adding matching frames between the actual frame rates.
Topaz Labs have a series of image and video editing tools that have been improved using similar file types to what they’d be working on. In the case of Topaz Video AI, its AI engine has been trained with exposure to thousands of challenging video samples to help the application perform better.
Which is why Topaz Video Enhance AI can reduce and remove video flickering, sharpen blurred frame rates, and repair low-resolution video clips. And unlike some of its alternatives, the app is a standalone program that works for Windows and Mac operating systems.
This means downloading the program and ensuring your computer has the basic system requirements. It also saves you from uploading and downloading large video files.
Version release and rebranding as Topaz Video AI
Topaz Labs announced on its website that its video enhancement software would receive major modifications alongside a name change. With the rebrand to Topaz Video AI comes new AI models, filters, and added functionality on a new Photo AI-like user interface.
The older version experiences certain quality issues enhancing variable video frame rates, repeated scenes, and scene changes because it treated videos as constant-rate images. As a result, video AI v3 has a new code base, and a new stabilization AI model considers the entire frame rate instead.
Topaz says in addition to the immediate improvement in quality, it allows them to improve existing models and create new ones. So far, we’ve seen the introduction of a shake stabilization feature, a new Apollo slow-motion model, and a command line interface for advanced users.
Who is Topaz Video AI for?
Topaz Video Enhance AI (TVAI) is ideal for content creators and video editors who need to upscale and improve their video quality. It’s also perfect for photographers who wish to use the tool on their videos.
It comes in handy when shooting with low-resolution cameras or when you want to restore your old footage. The program can also be used as an AI marketing tool by filmmakers, gamers, influencers, bloggers, animators, production companies, and broadcast professionals.
Pros and cons of using TVAI
These are the upsides and downsides of using Topaz Video AI.
Pros
- Video Enhance AI is a standalone desktop-based application that doesn’t need an internet connection to function.
- The software is easy to use with a clean interface, even for beginners without prior experience with similar tools.
- It can apply multiple video enhancement functions, including upscaling to higher resolutions, slow motion, restoration, denoising, deinterlacing, and shake stabilization.
- Topaz Video Enhance AI lets you choose between preset functions and specifying your preferences when upscaling videos.
- It is compatible with multiple video formats.
- You can buy the software once and own it for life. Updates are optional.
- It has an excellent and improving user experience.
- The tool offers fast previews.
- It has an active and knowledgeable customer service team.
- It offers a 30-day money-back guarantee.
Cons
- Processing videos, especially large ones, can take several minutes to hours.
- Your computer needs to be powerful and have excellent graphics to ensure the application runs smoothly.
- The pricing plan isn’t flexible, especially for someone who wants to upscale only a few videos.
- It may not be effective for low-quality videos.
- It may generate huge videos after enhancement.
Topaz Video AI features overview
Topaz Video Enhance AI has several powerful features, and these are the most notable ones.
🔨 Features Overview
1. Natural Video Upscaling
2. Video Denoising
3. Video Deinterlacing
4. Old Video Restoration and Enhancement
5. Frame Rate Conversion
6. Non-Stuttering Slow Motion
7. Shake Stabilization
8. Command Line Interface
1. Natural video upscaling
Video upscaling has been a popular strategy for video enhancement, but the result isn’t always perfect. Meanwhile, with Video Enhance AI, you can upscale videos to higher video qualities without occasional flickers and glimmers that plague the output from other software.
According to Topaz Labs, their application uses temporal information acquired from other frames to upscale the resolution and enhance the frames. This way, it can result in fewer motion artifacts that may cause the video to appear unrealistic.
While the video may not have the resolution of another video shot directly at the resolution, Topaz Video AI delivers something close and gives you high-quality results when you combine it with other enhancement features.
2. Video denoising
When shooting a video with a camera with high ISO settings or in an environment with poor lighting, your video footage may end up with a grainy texture known as noise. Not only does this make the quality poor, but it also renders it unclear.
Through Topaz’s DeNoise AI, you can remove the noise in a video to enhance its quality. What this feature does is suppress the grainy texture of the video.
Denoising a video can soften the clip or add flickers, but you do not have to worry about these with Topaz Video Enhance AI. Instead, the results are clear, sharp, detailed, and without flickering.
3. Video deinterlacing
Many videos, especially old ones, are interlaced because they used to be the most affordable. They result in lower-quality clips and disturbing artifacts.
Topaz Video Enhance AI can deinterlace videos and convert them to high-quality progressive format using the Dione AI model. It can also eliminate resulting artifacts to create clean and natural footage.
4. Old video restoration and enhancement
Old videos can contain low-quality features like compression and aliasing, but with Video Enhance AI, you can remove any of these defects to restore old footage. It usually works excellently with compressions but may only offer enough with aliasing and general restoration if the quality of the original video is good.
5. Frame rate conversion
Topaz Labs Video Enhance introduced the Chronos AI model with version v2.3. This new Chronos Slo-Mo/FPS Conversion model makes it possible to convert frame rates without the risk of significant artifacts.
Video Enhance AI gets multiple similar frames and uses them to deduce the best frame that fits the video. Therefore, you have identical frames and a smooth video.
6. Non-stuttering slow-motion effects
Topaz Video Enhance AI can create realistic slow-motion effects using the same technique as the frame rate conversion. However, unlike the traditional feature-matching algorithm, there is no stuttering in the footage created with Topaz Video AI.
With the introduction of the Apollo slow motion model, you can now enhance motion blurs and non-linear motion. Like the old Chronos models, it introduces matching frames but performs better by sampling up to four adjacent frames.
It’s a good idea to use the Apollo model for slow-motion effects in videos that do not have non-mechanical movements, and you’ll work faster trying it before the Chronos models, especially if your video is blurred.
7. Shake stabilization
The shake stabilization model is a fairly new feature. As a result, it may take a while before it starts producing outstanding results for challenging footage containing moving objects, blurriness, poor contrast, and illumination changes.
Nevertheless, it’s a reliable feature that eliminates unwanted motion from the footage, usually due to erratic camera movements when shooting the video.
It works by polishing each camera frame after establishing the movements between multiple frames. The result is a smoother motion than products of traditional techniques that aim to match different frame points.
Topaz Video Enhance AI also reduces spatial jitters, reduces parallax effects, and performs Full-Frame stabilization in addition to its Auto-Crop function.
8. Command line interface (CLI)
The CLI is an advanced operational system built for experts familiar with script execution. It’s an opportunity to work and customize processes with flexibility. To learn more about the Command Line Interface, check the documentation on the website.
How to upscale and enhance videos with Topaz AI
Using the tool is pretty straightforward, especially if you dedicate time to seeing what it does. I’ll get you up to speed by explaining the basics below.
1. Import video
Start by importing the video you want to work with. Then, drag and drop the video in the window or click the ‘Browse’ button in the middle of the screen to open a dialog box that lets you select the video.
You can apply the same effects to multiple videos together. To do that, you can drag and drop more videos or click the “+” icon.
The videos will be displayed at the bottom of the screen; you can either pick anyone to apply edits to or do so for all the videos. You can also delete a video by clicking the delete icon above the video.
2. Select file parameters
On the side panel, adjust file parameters appropriately or choose the preset model you’d like to work with from the drop-down menu.
Depending on the option you select, you’ll notice the right-hand side panel display related options. Feel free to adjust to your preference. For example, these are the options available under the Upscale to 4K preset.
3. Trim video clip
The processing speed for the video depends on the length and size. So, it is a good idea to trim the video to remove unwanted parts. You can do so with the panel below your video. Adjust the slider to the points you want, and use the scissor icon to trim.
4. Preview the video
You can also make additional adjustments related to rendering, sizing, etc., and you may check a preview before processing the video. Position the slider where you want to start previewing and wait a bit for the clip to load.
During the preview, you can zoom in or out to check videos using the percentage slider or enter a specific zoom percentage.
You may also preview with an external video player.
5. Process the video
If the video looks like you want it, you can click the “Export” button or select “Export as” to save the enhanced video in a different folder from the edited file.
Then, just enter a name for your video in the dialog box that pops up and select the new location.
Topaz Video Enhance AI will process the video frame by frame, and you can locate the file when it’s done.
Topaz Video Enhance AI system requirements
The Topaz Video AI software is downloaded and installed on a computer. And for the tool to function properly, the computer must meet minimum operating system requirements.
- Windows: Windows 10 (build 19041 v2004 and above) and Windows 11. This software doesn’t support Windows 7 and Windows 8.
- Mac: 10.14 Mojave and above for CPU support, and 10.15 Catalina and above for GPU support.
- Processor: Intel HD 5000 iGPU or above AMD CPUs from 2016
- System Memory: 8GB (at least 16GB for better performance)
- Graphics Card: Intel HD 5000 (on CPU DirectX 12, compatible with all Windows) and Mac 10.15 and above.
- Dedicated Graphics Memory: 2GB (at least 8GB for better performance)
To find out more about the minimum system requirements, check out the official information on Topaz Labs’ website.
How much is Topaz Video Enhance AI?
You can use Topaz Video Enhancer AI for a lifetime pricing fee of $299.
This is a great price, especially compared to alternatives that charge monthly or annual subscription fees.
You can get the software at a lower fee because Topaz Labs do offer discounts and special deals. So, be on the lookout. They also offer a 30-day free trial to use all the features and see how the software does.
Topaz Labs continues to improve the tool for better performance, and after installation, you may need software updates to get the improved version. Software update for the first year is free, but further optional upgrades are priced at $149.
My 2 cents
While many software development companies have created applications to help you enhance videos, not many can match the powerful features offered by Topaz Video Enhance AI.
It lets you apply multiple enhancement features to restore the quality of the footage. For example, you can denoise, deinterlace, upscale, apply slow-motion effects, and much more without rendering the video unrealistic.
Its performance is solid, especially if your computer meets the minimum system requirements.
However, it must also be said that Video AI isn’t magic and has flaws. For instance, it may be less effective on some extremely low-quality videos, and render time may be slow.
If you’re not sure about the software yet, I’d suggest you go for the free trial version and upgrade later.
Good luck!
Jessica La
