Topaz Video AI Review 2024: Is It Worth the Price?

Introduction 

Whether you are a casual user, vlogger, or photographer, upscaling video quality is often essential in life. Topaz Video AI has become one of the best upscalers that users would choose. This post offers an in-depth Topaz AI review, covering its key features, AI model's introduction and test results, advantages, drawbacks, pricing, and the best alternative UniFab-All-In-One, which can help you learn about this product and decide whether to pay for it. Keep reading to learn is topaz AI worth it.

What is Topaz Video AI？

Topaz Video AI is an advanced video enhancement software, building on Topaz Lab’s Video Enhance AI, that upscales video quality using specialized AI models like Nyx, Apollo, and Chronos. It also supports noise reduction, sharpening, detail recovery, stabilization, and focus correction. With a redesigned user interface, multi-threaded architecture, and customizable presets, it provides an efficient solution for video enhancement. Read on for a review to see if it meets your needs.

Key Features Of Topaz Video AI

Topaz Video AI supports all the functions that an excellent ai video enhancer should has, and its key features can be concluded into several parts:

• Enhancement: Supports upscale videos to higher resolutions 720P, 1080P, 4K or 8K. And it has developed several AI models to tackle different types of source footage. 
• Deinterlacing: Allows deterlacing interfaced footage to improve video's smoothness and clarity. 
• Frame Interpolation: Supports generating the appropriate number of frames to increase the frame rate of video footage to create slow-motion.
• Adding film grain: Allows the addition of configurable film grain that helps blend digital pixels together for a more natural look, while also suppressing some of the rough edges that can occur when sharpening.
• Motion deblur: Allows reducing motion deblur from camera movement.
• Noise reduction: Supports reducing noise in videos to minimize visual disturbances and make footage cleaner and more professional-looking.
• Face recovery: Employs iris MQ technology to restore facial details.
• Stabilization: Supports reducing camera shake and jitter to create smoother and more stable videos.
• Customizable settings: Supports various models and each model with adjustable parameters, users can control the intensity and type of enhancements applied to the video. 

Many users are unable to distinguish the main functions of each model.The following will introduce several commonly used AI models and their evaluation results. If you want to learn more about the models, you can refer to the summary table below.

1. Proteus
Proteus supports upgrade and sharpen medium quality video by fixing compression artifacts, anti-aliasing and denoise.

Effect

• Detail Enhancement: The Proteus AI model restores details in videos, making textures more defined and improving overall clarity.

Disadvantages

• Basic function: Proteus AI model can be considered more of a foundational model, providing balanced enhancement across all aspects of video restoration, but it doesn't push any particular feature to the extreme. 
• Facial Restoration: Proteus AI model's effectiveness in facial restoration is somewhat limited. While there is a slight improvement in facial clarity, the results can still feel somewhat lacking in sharpness. However, when applied to other areas, such as armor or intricate details, the improvements are more pronounced, showing a clearer and more distinct enhancement.

Processing Speed

• Exporting a 720P, 30-second, 60fps original video to 4K takes approximately 12 to 14 minutes.

2. Nyx
It is suitable for noise reduction and sharpening for low quality video.

Effect

• Noise Reduction: The Nyx AI model delivers excellent restoration results, effectively eliminating nearly all noise from the video.
  Sharpening: This model sharpens edges and contours, enhancing the perceived resolution and clarity of the video.

Disadvantages

• Possible Over-Smoothing: In some cases, particularly with footage that has extremely high levels of noise, the Nyx AI model might slightly over-smooth the image, leading to a loss of fine details.
• Limited Impact on Well-Lit Footage: While Nyx is highly effective in low-light conditions, its benefits may be less noticeable in well-lit footage, where noise is not as prominent.

Processing Speed

• Exporting a 30-second, 25fps original video takes around 1 minute.

3. Iris
Iris is a general enhancement model for reducing noise and compression. It is great for recovering faces in low to medium quality footage, which is the best model for face recovery.

Effect

• Enhanced Facial Details: It significantly improves facial features, including sharpening features like eyes, lips, and skin texture, which makes the appearance of faces more detailed and textured.
• Improved Saturation and Contrast: It improves the saturation and contrast of the video, the restored video footage will feel soft and real, and will look very much like the real shot.

Disadvantages

• Artificial Appearance: While the model does an excellent job of enhancing face detail, the effect can sometimes appear over-processed, especially at higher resolutions such as 4K. The enhancements look like they were generated by artificial intelligence and lack the natural feel of a real picture.

Processing Speed

• Exporting a 720p, 30-second, 25fps original video to 4K takes around 4 minutes.

4. Themis
Themis supports reducing motion blur caused by panning, rotation, or zoom.

Effect

• We can see the subtle difference between the before and after, where the edges of the original video were slightly blurred. The restoration has sharpened the edges and eliminated motion artifacts.

Disadvantages

• Stuble Changes: It effectively stabilizes and reduces noise, but the overall visual changes may be subtle, making it ideal for users looking for moderate improvements rather than dramatic transformations.

Processing Speed

• Exporting a 720p, 30-second, 25fps video takes between 30 seconds to 1 minute.

5. Hyperion

Hyperion SDR-to-HDR model is a new model being tested by Topaz Video AI, designed to convert videos from SDR to HDR, and is expected to launched officially soon, although the test results were not favorable.

Effect

• Output Quality: The Hyperion model's output is generally average, with the final result showing little difference from the original SDR video.
• Visual Impact: The overall visual effect tends to have overly high saturation and brightness, with significant color oversaturation, particularly in warm tones, causing the entire image to appear warmer than intended.
• Lighting and Shadows: The model struggles with delivering a well-defined play of light and shadow, resulting in a lack of depth and dimensionality.
• Color Handling: The effect feels like applying a LUT (Look-Up Table) to the original video, simply enriching the color palette without paying sufficient attention to the details in highlights and shadows. This can lead to noticeable distortion and an unrealistic visual experience.
• Processing Speed: The Hyperion model is notably slow, requiring 14-15 hours to export a 10-minute SDR video into HDR10 mode, which could be a significant drawback for time-sensitive projects.

Processing Speed

• Exporting a 10-minute SDR original video to HDR10 format takes approximately 14 to 15 hours.

Testing machine
GPU : NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4070
CPU：AMD Ryzen 7 5700G with Radeon Gra 

Here is a summary table of the various models in Topaz Video AI, highlighting their purpose and key functions:

Is Topaz Video AI a Free Tool?

You might be wondering if Topaz Video AI is free? We want to inform you that the price of Topaz Video AI is $299 lifetime, includes one year of unlimited upgrades, If you want to subsequent update the software, you need to pay $149 per year, and the prices change every year. 

Steps Involved In Enhancing Videos Using Topaz Video AI

Step 1: Get Started with a Free Trial

Step 2: Import Your Video

Step 3: Explore Enhancement Options and Adjust Settings

You will find various video enhancement options on the right side of the interface. The functions can be broadly grouped into the following categories: Preset, Video, Stabilization, Motion Deblur, Frame Interpolation, Enhancement, and Grain. You can set the parameters you need.

Step 4: Export Enhanced Video

Click the "Export" button to export videos and you can adjust detailed settings, including container, quality level, bitrate, profile, codec and more.

Pros of Topaz Video AI

As one of the most popular video enhancers in the world, Topaz Video AI has its own advantages and unique features.

• High Quality Output: Video enhancement is outstanding, especially when upscaling low-resolution footage to higher resolutions such as 4K or 8K, with excellent detail retention.
• Cross-Platform Compatibility: Supports operating on Windows 10 and 11 and macOS for Intel and Silicon variants.
• Batch Processing: Allows processing multiple videos simultaneously to save time and effort.
• Crash Recovery: Ensures that your edits resume exactly where you left off, even after a crash, system reboot, or power loss.
• Instant Previews: Experience real-time previews with automatically rendered frames as you navigate with the cursor.

Cons of Topaz Video AI

Now that you have gained an understanding of its features and advantages, let's analyze its disadvantages to decide if Topaz Video AI is worth it:

• High Price: The price of Topaz Video AI is relatively high compared to other video enhancement software, which can cause casual users or amateurs to refuse to buy it.
• High System Requirements: Topaz Video AI is resource-intensive and may not perform well on lightweight systems, requires at least 32 GB of RAM and high-performance CPUs and GPUs for smooth operation.
• Learning Curve for Advanced Features: While the basic features are easy to use, it can take some time and learning to fully understand and use the advanced settings and models, especially for less experienced users.
• Potential for Overprocessing: Overuse of certain features may lead to unnatural results.
• Slow Motion Encoding: The tool's slow-motion encoding capabilities do not meet the desired standard.
• Output Size Increase: The enhanced output size increases substantially and processing large videos is time-consuming. 

User Feedback from Topaz Video AI

Despite being a highly promising video enhancer, Topaz AI has many loopholes and many claims made by users that have been listed below:

• Stability Problems: The software's stability is poor, with users frequently encountering crashes and errors during use. Moreover, version updates often bring a host of bugs. Topaz should focus on the practicality and stability of the software's features rather than just on model updates and marketing strategies.
• Color Shift Issue: Users often report that Topaz Video AI alters saturation, hue, and brightness levels, causing the final product to look significantly different from the original, affecting output quality. Topaz should support lossless OCIO profiles for major color spaces to ensure color consistency.
• Pricing Concerns: A one-time payment of $299 may be prohibitive for some users, and users have to buy a license for software upgrades yearly.  In recent years, Topaz's operating model has been changing and prices have been increasing.Topaz AI should consider offering additional monthly and quarterly payment plans similar to those its competitors provide.
• User Interface: User feedback that fonts are too small and need to be adjusted and the new logo on the 5-issue version makes it look cheap.
   

Topaz AI has attracted a large user base with its powerful video enhancement capabilities, but recent issues and the emergence of numerous competitors have put its market position at risk. To maintain its leadership, Topaz AI must make significant improvements.

Best Alternative to Topaz AI: UniFab All-In-One

If you're dissatisfied with Topaz Video AI's results or its high price, UniFab offers an effective and affordable alternative. With versatile features for various video types, UniFab might be the solution you're seeking. Read on to see if it's the right fit for you!

UniFab All-In-One contains 7 AI video and audio enhancing tools. Offering rapid GPU-accelerated performance and advanced AI technology, it outperforms Topaz Video AI with superior video noise reduction, 4K upscaling, and lossless compression. Its intuitive editing options simplify tasks like flipping, rotating, and cropping. Discover how UniFab's exceptional features can enhance your video quality and boost efficiency!

Key features of UniFab-All-In-One

• HDR Upconverter AI: Allows converting videos from SDR to HDR10 and Dolby Vision to enhance video quality by improving vibrancy, contrast, and clarity.
• AI Video Upscaler: Supports enlarging video resolution up to 720P, 1080P and 4K.
• Denoise AI: Allows remove noise accurately and quicky from any cause.
• Smoother AI: Allows improving video fluidity by increasing frame rates and reducing flickering and jittering, creating smoother and more natural motion in fast-moving scenes.
• Deinterlace AI: Supports using AI to deinterlace interlaced sources, removing motion artifacts and edge blurring caused by interlaced scanning.
• Audio Upmix AI: Allows upmixing audio tracks from your video to premium EAC3 5.1/DTS 7.1.
• Vocal Remover AI: Supports separating vocal and background audio tracks from music/MV files, creating new video/audio files.
• Video Converter: It is a video conversion tool that supports converting various video formats from multiple sources, including the internet, digital camcorders, and capture cards.

How to upscale videos with UniFab

Step 1: Import the video
Step 2: Set the parameters of the imported video and preview the result. 

Step 3: Click "Start" to export videos

I tested the UniFab HDR upconverter AI to convert a video from SDR to HDR. Below are the original SDR image, the original HDR image, the HDR image generated by UniFab, and the HDR image generated by Topaz Video AI. Comparing these, we can draw the following conclusions:

• UniFab handles the depth and layers of wide scenes more effectively and creates a more three-dimensional effect, with brightness and contrast closer to original HDR10.
• Topaz simply brightens the video content in a rather simplistic manner, resulting in overly saturated colors and a lack of spatial depth in the image.

Original SDR
Original HDR
SDR to HDR10
Hyperion(alpha 400nit 0730)

Topaz Video AI VS UniFab All-In-One

In the field of video processing, choosing the right tool is crucial. Topaz Video AI and UniFab All-In-One are two highly regarded video processing tools on the market, each with its unique strengths and applications. To help you better understand the differences between them, we will provide a detailed comparison table and video demonstration, offering an in-depth analysis of the features and performance of these two tools, enabling you to make the best choice.

Comparison	UniFab All-In-One	Topaz Video AI
Supported OS	Windows/Mac	Windows/Mac
Pricing	$349.99/Lifetime License for 5 computers 30$ Amazon Gift Card 14-day money back guarantee	$299/Lifetime, includes one year of unlimited upgrades $149/Upgrade per year License for 2 computers 30-day money back guarantee
Free Trail	30-day free trial	30-Day Free Trial with Watermark
User Experience	Easy to use and friendly for newbies The interface is simple and guidelines are clear	Difficult to use The interface is complex Requires technical knowledge to learn functions of different AI models
Main Features	HDR Upconverter AI Video Upscaler AI Smoother AI Denoise AI Deinterlace AI Audio Upmix AI Vocal Remover AI Video Converter	Enhancement Noise reduction Motion Deblur Face recovery Stabiliazation Addition of grain SDR to HDR
Custom Configuration	Codec, Resolution, Format Rate, Color Space, Encoding Method, Bits/Pixel, Audio Passthrough (Codec&Channel, Sample Rate, Bit Rate) Output Visual Mode, Format	Output type, Codec, Profile, Bitrate, Quality level, Audio mode, Container, Apply LUT
Processing results	720P to 4K effect comparison for an urban landscape video
	UniFab can provide more realistic results, especially in the lines and details, and it can make the video image more colorful.	Topaz Video AI can provide smoother and visually results with less pixelation, but it can not match the realistic detail UniFab offers.
Processing Speed	Testing machine GPU : NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4070 CPU：AMD Ryzen 7 5700G with Radeon Gra
	720P to 4K speed comparison
	Original video for 30 seconds Export video for 8 minutes 16 times the original video	Original video for 30 seconds Export video for 13 minutes 26 times the original video

You can get a more intuitive understanding of UniFab and Topaz Video AI by watching the video below, helping you choose the product that best suits your needs.

Conclusion

We hope today's Topaz Video AI review has answered all your queries about this tool. Topaz Video AI significantly advances video enhancement technology, offering broader format support, a refined user interface, and a helpful preview feature that elevates the user experience. However, it is not without its drawbacks, including limited advanced enhancement capabilities, slow processing speeds, high hardware requirements, and sometimes unnatural face enhancement results. For those seeking to overcome these challenges and achieve superior performance in content revitalization, exploring UniFab may be a worthwhile alternative. If you are also interested in Avclabs Video Enhancer review, head to this post.

FAQs 

Is Topaz's AI Video Enhancer Worth It?

Topaz Video AI provides robust tools for enhancing your videos by upscaling resolution, reducing noise, and effectively deinterlacing, making it particularly useful for older footage. A free version is available to help you determine if the results meet your expectations. However, the software is quite pricey, with a one-time cost of around $299. 

Is Topaz Video AI Safe?

Topaz Video AI is safe to use. It does not collect your information without your consent and does not share any collected data with third parties.