Artificial Intelligence upscaling of old scenes

[brenster5]

That's fair enough garionhall, I guess. I'm afraid I don't understand the technicalities at all, but here's another one that that would be great to see in good quality. Emma R and Armine in the first ever double IM, featuring two fantastic orgasms. The original and the best.

https://www.abbywinters.com/video_ma...ine/video/clip

Still my all time favourite IM shoot (double or otherwise), especially after Emma R's delightful solo videos with her discussing her life and reading habits. The coy start, the building excitement and the bed shaking orgasms

I bought Topaz Video AI a few months back with a view to upscaling many of the earlier AW IM & GG videos. Armine & Emma R's DIM was one of the first I tried taking up to both 720p and 1080p. Managed to get reasonably good results, although my graphics card means a 20 min video takes several hours to render after experimenting with settings and rendering models.

Jacksonpe49 I found the tapes for the Emma R & Armine masturbation shoot, and I have captured it successfully now! We'll add it to the queue to be edited, upscaped and released.

Interestingly, there's also another angle of this shoot, a closer head-to-chest shot of Emma R & Armine from camera-left of the main camera. I wonder if we should edit that in, or release it as a separate video...?

Would LOVE a second, separate video of Armine & Emma R's DIM shoot. One vote here for a separate video, not editing the two together. Much of what I love about the DIM's in general is that they are not editing, no cutting away, just a single long unbroken gaze of the camera.

A reissue of many of those earlier videos upscaled by video people who have a better command of the tools etc would be great, and I'm sure would be better than my own enthusiastic amateur efforts of Topaz Video AI. And I'd like to register my vote for both Jamie-Lee & Krysta, Lacey & Sharee, Anneke & Irene and Katia & Patty's classic early DIM videos!

[Gaylen]

When we upscale the old content, yes, they will be released as single videos instead of multipart (except when it's logical to keep them separate, for example, the Yoga Girls shoot is one of the first we'll release. It has a sizable backstage video that we'll post separately to the main scene itself). In girl girl hard sex shoots, the "Before" and "After" interviews will be separate videos, but the main scene will be one video.

Promotional clips from the Yoga Girls shoot were how I first became aware of AW. Everything about that video immediately caught my attention and sparked my interest. I think it still ranks as my overall favorite video of all time (anywhere on any porn site ever), although it might have to share that distinction now because earlier I raved about a recent AW solo/posing shoot with Dee V that appeals perfectly to my tastes). If there is ever any talk of doing a new Yoga Girls shoot (or anything along similar lines), you can count me as a voting highly in favor.

BTW, I love the concept of multi-model activity videos, and I've enjoyed some of the others (e.g., Fitball Girls), but none of them have ever quite lived up to the gold standard set by Yoga Girls because it seems to me that the other ones don't have nearly enough prolonged non-masturbation closeups to satisfy me.

[monkeymagic27]

I've found that a number of existing HD videos only have half vertical resolution for some reason, and would consequently benefit highly from AI upscale. Videos like Gala_Thais, Flora_Thais, Dannah_Gala, etc. Each horizontal row of pixels is doubled up, making everything very pixelated/jaggy, and low rez. I wonder if there are uncompressed source files that don't have this issue? If not, the issue can be fixed up with AI upscaling to proper HD.
The process is to resize to 1920x540, with nearest neighbor filtering, and X:1.0 Y:2.0 pixel aspect. Save that as uncompressed or prores MOV, then run that MOV through Topaz to 1920x1080 (or even higher, if you're feeling plucky)

[monkeymagic27]

Really hope this project is still going ahead, and making progress!
As some may or may not be aware, AI tools have advanced immensely in the meantime. Still images of practically anything can now be generated entirely by AI. Including realistic racy photos. believable photos of nonexistent people are shockingly simple to generate, like the attached below. It would even be possible to train custom models to create new unique images of current or former AW models, with the permission of the model in question, in virtually any style or setting, from photographic to illustrated or painted.

[Dekoda]

I just came across this thread, and thought that I'd add a few comments. First, I don't work with video, so I don't know much about what's involved with upscaling. I have been using Topaz Labs software for several years now, but I mainly use their Gigapixel AI program. Using Gigapixel AI, I can enlarge a picture by 600%. Now, while I may not need to enlarge it that much, I do it anyway. The reason that I do it is because, if you shrink the picture down after you've enlarged it, the picture will get ever sharper than the original or the enlarged version. If I want to make a print of a picture...let's say a 4" by 6" print, I'll enlarge the original picture by 600%. Now at 600%, it may be too large for what I need it for, so, using Photoshop, I'll shrink it down to the size I need it to be, and make it at 300 dpi, which is the optimum size for my printer. Sure, my printer will print out much higher dpi pictures, but 300 dpi seems to be the best of both worlds. I have achieved excellent results by doing that.

As for Topaz Labs Video AI, I have read some good things about it, but there are numerous other video AI software packages out there, so I don't know which one is the best. I think that these AI programs will be the wave of the future.

[monkeymagic27]

garionhall Is there any chance at all of this upscaling project continuing?? Despite the sunsetting of the site? I'm not above begging on hands and knees at this point, at very least for Gabrielle & Jamie "Girls in Love". I'd be more than willing to do the upscaling myself, as a passion project.

[monkeymagic27]

Once again, I'm just flat out begging for the upscaling project to continue. It would be incredibly meaningful for me personally, to see the old videos in the quality they should be seen.

[bergy010]

The newest topaz video is a big update, the AI model was trained on video as opposed to only still images before. if the site offered a small reward, I'll get my PC cranking these out.

[Frans]

The newest topaz video is a big update, the AI model was trained on video as opposed to only still images before. if the site offered a small reward, I'll get my PC cranking these out.

Don't you need a commercial license to process content for well.. a commercial site? It would be interesting just to see the result for a few vids, upgrading all old g/g vids would be a bit much. I'm thinking of Yoga girls mostly, but I'm now wondering if that didn't look quite good already.. my screen is bigger these days so may have to re-check

[bergy010]

Don't you need a commercial license to process content for well.. a commercial site? It would be interesting just to see the result for a few vids, upgrading all old g/g vids would be a bit much. I'm thinking of Yoga girls mostly, but I'm now wondering if that didn't look quite good already.. my screen is bigger these days so may have to re-check

Perhaps, I was assumming if it were to happen the correct permissions and guidelines would be ironed out. Movie studios use it. All of them would be a bit much, though they are shorter clips, but hardly watchable in the resolution they're at.

[Frans]

I just read that IFM does use Topaz for their 'restored' re-releases of older content. But they work of source, not the vids as you can download them now. Richard wrote on their forum "We're using Topaz AI. And yes we're working with the original 720px DV tapes. ", not sure if AW has all the source tapes.. I know Garion was reorganizing them some time ago.. there must a be a LOT of tapes given the amount of content on site

[monkeymagic27]

I've upscaled a number of the videos I've downloaded here, just for myself, with incredible results. But the results would be SO much better if I had access to the original uncompressed DV files.
I have a personal license of Topaz, but older versions (2.3 and earlier) have a month free trial without any watermarks, for anyone wishing to try out the software themselves. I would LOVE it if AW would give me a chance and let me upscale a few videos for them from the original source files.

[monkeymagic27]

Unfortunately, there's official confirmation now that the AI upscaling project is abandoned, and isn't going to happen.
Any users wanting to see older videos in decent quality a going to have to upscale for themselves, from videos downloaded from the website here. It's very much worth it, though obviously it will never be as high quality as upscales from the original uncompressed DV tapes would have been. A number of fantastic videos uploaded here are just too severely compressed and low resolution for the AI to salvage anything worthwhile from, in my opinion, for example: Angie & Chloe B, and Gabrielle & Jamie.
I can give upscaling tips, if anyone needs it? Upscaling in Topaz with the Artemis high quality model looks best to my eyes (so long as it's upsacling less than 240%. Gaia looks better, if you need to upscale more than 239%), with maybe 2 units of grain added, and for simplicity the output can be saved directly as a mp4 file, with H265 or H264 encoding, and a bitrate limited to 8 or so.

[Frans]

I think both scenes you mention were released on DVD, that might give you a better start quality? Also Angie/Chloe B scene is available in wmv as well, that might look slightly better? I've noticed wmv sometimes does that on lower bitrate compared to mp4.

[monkeymagic27]

You're absolutely right about the wmv for the Angie & Chloe B scene Frans! Leagues less compression than the mp4 files for that particular one.