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Video Upscaling Applications (lemmy.dbzer0.com)
submitted 11 months ago by patchwork@lemmy.dbzer0.com to c/linux@lemmy.ml
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Hi, I need a video upscaling solution to enhance some old family videos. As much as I’d love to use a FOSS program, I can’t find anything that comes close to Topaz Video AI.

I purchased the license and I’ve been battling with the application for a week trying to get it running on Linux. I’ve tried Wine, Bottles, Lutris, ProtonGE and tinkering with prefixes.

I’ve read on the Topaz community forums that people have got it working previously on Linux, but I’ve been unable to replicate their setup.

On the forums they said it takes a performance hit on Linux, but I’m willing to deal with that to avoid Windows. In the end I may have to purchase a copy of Windows for the first time in over decade to run this app, but I’m not going to give up without a good effort.

Does anyone have any experience with this application or know of a similar application working on Linux? I’m also willing to run older versions of the client just to use it, anything but a Windows install please!

Thank you!

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[-] d3Xt3r@lemmy.nz 15 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago)

You could use ffmpeg or python to split the video into a sequence of images and an audio file, then AI upscale the images using Upscayl, and finally combine the upscaled images and audio back into a video, using ffmpeg.

I've seen issues in the past where the audio would be out-of-sync when recombining the frames because ffmpeg wouldn't output the right number of frames, so someone wrote a python script to split the video into frames and apparently it works correctly.

Also see: https://superuser.com/questions/1758192/how-can-i-split-a-video-into-frames-and-then-reassemble-it-with-the-audio-too

[-] kevincox@lemmy.ml 3 points 11 months ago

This probably won't work well because you will want stability between images. An upscaler that isn't video-aware will result in lots of distracting flickering.

[-] patchwork@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 points 11 months ago

Wow, I didn’t think of that. Thank you!

[-] MaliciousKebab@sh.itjust.works 2 points 11 months ago

Off topic but that one answer on superuser looks a lot like it was AI generated.

[-] whitecapstromgard@sh.itjust.works 1 points 11 months ago

Wouldn't you lose a lot of quality during decode/encode?

[-] d3Xt3r@lemmy.nz 5 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago)

Not really, because you can output to png so decoding is lossless, and since your AI upscaled images are of a much higher quality, the resultant video would be a higher quality video as well.

[-] Tibert@compuverse.uk 4 points 11 months ago

You do not need to purchase windows 10/11 to use it.

And maybe if you really want to purchase windows, you may find very cheap keys online.

In France I can find win11 keys for 20-30 cents on Cdiscount. Most of the time, you just need to input the key after installing windows.

[-] thanksforallthefish@literature.cafe 1 points 11 months ago

To expand on this (very correct reply), simply download the win 10 install media from microsoft, run the install, during setup it will ask for your licence key and there will be a little icon saying something like "I don't have my key handy I'll do it later" the install will then finish fine and the only restriction is you can't customise wallpaper.

Other things to note, do NOT connect it to the internet when you're installing, let it moan and then you can create a local account. Otherwise it makes you setup a microsoft account.

Do use 10, don't use 11.

Dual boot works but windows has to be installed first and it will mess with your linux boot - backup your machine before install. I'd run up a windows Virtual Machine first before doing a dual boot install if it were me

[-] Tibert@compuverse.uk 1 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago)

I don't know about dual boot. Maybe windows has to be installed first. Never tried it.

Tho I know that it is possible during the drive choice, in the windows install, to select an empty space, then clic on the create partition, and there creating a sufficiently big enough partition for windows will create 3 partitions : The boot, reserved and windows. Then just select the main windows partition, and it will auto detect the boot and reserved partition.

However that is happening on an empty drive. I do not know what can happen on a drive where there is already an OS.

Windows 11 can be used, however a oobe command needs to be input at install, without Internet, to not have to use an online account. Tho windows may ask later to connect with an online account.

For an alternative, windows may also be used in a VM. There may also be a way to pass through all the main gpu if needed, and switch between Linux / windows. But I didn't really use it. So I don't know where it is or what are the steps.

If the Linux os needs to be used, but the gpu also has to be in the vm, there is a way to split it. Tho the last time I checked (4+ months ago) the project was incompatible with amd due to some kernel/driver stuff. I sadly lost the link to it...

[-] nyan@lemmy.cafe 2 points 11 months ago

The simplest and dumbest way of getting a Windows VM up and running on Linux is to install VirtualBox and then download one of Microsoft's own Windows VM developer images. Dead simple. Disadvantages: They're time-limited, it's Windows 11, and I don't know if the Guest Extensions that will allow video acceleration are pre-installed.

this post was submitted on 18 Sep 2023
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