Improve video quality with AI

Alfns wrote on 5/14/2025, 2:31 PM

A few years ago I transferred the content of a number of miniDV tapes to VHS tapes. I then transferred the content of the VHS tapes to digital mp4 format. The image quality of the mp4 files is therefore worse than the image quality of the miniDV tapes. Unfortunately, I discarded the miniDV tapes. Now AI programs have been introduced that claim to improve the image quality of movie files by, among other things, increasing the number of pixels. How does it work? Could it be worth trying this on my mp4 files that come from VHS tapes as described above? Magix Movie Studio 2025?

Comments

CubeAce wrote on 5/14/2025, 5:23 PM

@Alfns

Probably one of the better sites to get information from and try out for free is Topaz Labs,

There is a complete set of questions and answers at the base of the page in the link.

It does state results can vary.

Ray.

me_again wrote on 5/15/2025, 12:37 AM

@Alfns

I too process a lot of VHS transfers, some probably worse than yours being VHS-C (the camera) to BETAMAX (wow, remember that?) to VHS to H.264 MP4. I'm lucky though as I still have some of the original VHS-C tapes to work with. Having said that I still have to work with some of the 4th generation copies.

For these, I do sometimes use the AI Sharpening and Dehaze that's available in MS2025 but I'm not totally convinced as to how intelligent the AI is, if you follow my drift.

The AI Sharpener seems to work by adjusting contrast (Low, Medium or High) and Colour Temperature. It's quite effective BUT you can get the same effect by adjusting Contrast, Colour Temperature and Brightness manually. This is fine for short clips.

Where the AI Sharpener DOES come into it's own is in clips that are longer. It appears to dynamically alter the contrast etc and so is therefore much quicker for editing purposes. If you do use it for longer clips then a big GPU is preferable as the editing playback can get very "jerky".

Does it actually sharpen? I don't honestly think it does BUT it does a very good job of tricking the eye - well my "not what they were" eyes anyway.

More or less the same comments apply to AI Dehaze, although this is more geared to colour.

What really makes a difference to my poor quality tape editingt is NeatVideo Noise Reducer (V5 is very good, V6 is excellent if you nave a powerful GPU). This cleans up the video, reduces flicker/noise/jitter and also sharpens. This plugin I use all the time, especially as V6 is so much quicker when encoding if you have a compatible GPU.

If you don't already have MS2025 then try the free trial, although I don't know if that includes the AI plugins but it will have the contrast, brightness, colour temperature adjustment etc. to manually see the potential.

The Magix AI when used in combination with NeatVideo really does improve the final viewing experience!

Hope this helps - AndyW

Alfns wrote on 5/15/2025, 1:54 AM

Thank you!

emmrecs wrote on 5/15/2025, 3:45 AM

@Alfns

I have Topaz Video AI but have not really tested it on very poor footage, sorry. (The lowest "quality" I encounter is after digitising original VHS footage).

The results are "pleasing" but the processing involved absolutely demands a powerful GPU/CPU combination, in my experience. And it can take a "long time", processing as slow as 3fps (for especially poor footage)!

Topaz do offer a "cloud" service within the app but I have never used it, yet. (As a purchaser of the software you automatically receive a certain number of "credits".) But I suspect the time needed to upload and later download the footage may well makes this option not very viable, unless you have a very fast internet connection.

HTH

Jeff
Forum Moderator