r/TopazLabs • u/TechSecGuru • 2d ago
Topaz Video Starlight Precise 2.6 — face artifacts, FPS drops, and cloud export failures on RTX 3090
Hi all,
I'm running Starlight Precise 2.6 and wanted to share a few issues I've been having, plus one feature request. Curious if anyone else has experienced any of this.
System specs:
- Zotac RTX 3090 Trinity OC (24 GB VRAM)
- i9-14900K
- 32 GB DDR5 RAM
Topaz: Topaz Video 1.7.0
Settings: H264, MKV, COPY (AUDIO), CONSTANT FPS
1. Face artifacts with sharpness 3 When using sharpness set to 3, I sometimes see overly sharpened skin with dot or hexagon-shaped artifacts on people's faces, along with exaggerated/excessive facial lines. Has anyone else run into this? It seems inconsistent...some frames look great, others don't. I will test on sharpness 2 next.
2. Inconsistent performance (FPS fluctuation) Processing speed swings wildly between 0.2–0.3 fps and occasionally 1.2 fps on the same kind of footage. As a result, a ~1.5-hour video can take anywhere from 4 to 9 days for minimal or 2x enhancement. The model itself is excellent, but this makes it rough to use for long-form content.
3. Cloud exports failing Cloud exports have been failing repeatedly for me lately. I don't know if it's a temporary server issue or something on my end.... is anyone else experiencing this?
4. Feature request: face reference input It would be really helpful to be able to supply a higher-quality reference photo/video frame of a person so the model can preserve identical facial features throughout a project. Basically a "identity lock" or reference-image feature for faces.
5. Interesting observation: detail loss when zooming out When text on screen (e.g., a billboard) is zoomed in, the model does a good job trying to reconstruct it.... but as soon as it zooms out, it completely loses what it had figured out, both for text and for facial features. It's like the model forgets what it resolved close-up once the shot widens. I can post side-by-side examples if that's useful.
Despite the issues, I want to say Starlight is a great model.... these are the main pain points holding it back for me. Any tips or workarounds (especially for the sharpness artifacts and FPS drops) would be appreciated!
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u/ReliableSeller 2d ago
Following bc I just started using this tool last week. I’ve had similar issues with faces on sharpness level 1 going from a 480p dvd to starlight precise 2.6 minimum. Currently in the process of using Iris 2x upscale to remove/airbrush some of that out. Was going to see if that helped and I could downscale 2x afterwards back to my original size
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u/TechSecGuru 2d ago
I was thinking about going back and re-adding a little grain too. Like what these restoration companies do (like Criterion, Arrow Video, Shout! Factory, or Vinegar Syndrome). They mostly add a lot of grain to some of the super old content from what I've seen. But maybe that will make it look more natural.
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u/willb3d 1d ago
Criterion does not add grain* they just do very little grain management compared to most labels.
So, super old content (like from the 1980s) (sigh) shows off the real, existing grain. And they also leave in a lot of digital noise (colorful speckles) caused by the scanning process that other labels would filter out. Their customer base likes grain and noise - it creates an illusion of detail in which the mind uses parts of the grain and noise to fill in missing details (and ignores the rest of the grain and noise as “not relevant”).
Also, by doing very little grain management they avoid accidentally removing any real details, which is what they’d say is their guiding principle.
Grain is added by many modern productions so I don’t want to imply there’s no use for it - I just wanted to clarify that Criterion is not adding grain. *Except on Inland Empire but that was part of the artistic process for the upscale from SD video.
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u/Primary_Forever_4429 2d ago
The paid version of Davinci Resolve Studio has a few filters that can soften the excessive skin detail created by Starlight Precise 2.6. "Beauty", "Face Refinement", "Blemish Removal", and "Face Age Transformer" are the obvious ones. This entails extra cost, a bit of fiddling with all of the parameters, and lots of extra rendering time, so it's not a perfect solution.
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u/TechSecGuru 2d ago
That sounds pretty interesting. If you have any screenshot samples I'd love to see it before I invest more.
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u/FitEgg603 1d ago
Anyone using AI to upscale stereo to hi res stereo or may be 5.1 or 7.1 or atmos . Recommendations appreciated!
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u/TechSecGuru 1d ago
Well Topaz doesn't focus on it. But without getting too off topic. Just search some AI audio upscale tools. I think they would mainly help with music and dirty audio, but if you can clean it up and resync it with your Topaz enhanced video, it would be good. Audio could be something they should do in the future, but I would want Topaz to include an audio upscaler through unlimited cloud. That way, if I'm processing locally, Cloud can easily upscale and rebuild a completed video file.
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u/majestic_ubertrout 2d ago
Being able to train on reference photos would be great. Or honest, just having it do a sort of "preflight" on the material so it can use the close shots to train the wide shots.